Ezio liked to think himself a logical man.
One that didn't make stupid mistakes due to impulse and irrationality. But if he said that, he would be a rotten liar. Everything he had up until he hit thirty was built on crazy hormones and insane plans. Even after that he still did stupid things that gave the Brotherhood kittens. But it was at the age of 41 that he made his biggest mistake.
The citizen was insane. Clearly. He was stood on the edge of a cliff in the Antico district of Roma, brown hair almost black in the dying sun. His regular-John-Jack-or-Harry garb stood out like a sore thumb in amongst the Guardia's bloody red uniforms, silver armour glinting like teeth. It looked almost like a regular road in Roma, the guards pestering an innocent man, but this time there was a clear difference. The innocent was dangling a guard off the edge of the cliff by his collar, silent as death himself. He didn't yell at the swarm of guards to get away, to leave before he threw his hostage to their doom. He stood silently, letting the threat linger in the air like smoke.
His sword was at his side, and his legs were spread into an easy defensive position. Strong, almost natural. He had some sort of training; that was for definite. But nobody could teach his absolution. And looking back, Ezio would have said this is what prompted the decision to save the citizen. He would be the last recruit. One of the Guards stepped forwards, and the citizen's eyes glinted. The hostage flew like a rock.
The five other guards advanced, and Ezio moved fast enough to make lightning blanch in jealousy. The citizen sent his sword through a guard's chest, leaning close enough to feel the man's dying breath, before he tore his blade from the ribcage and sent his victim to the dirt. Ezio outshone him like a supernova outshone a firefly. Three guards hit the dirt before they blinked. Ezio's twin blades met two throats, his boot meeting a third spine. The last man fell to the citizen's blade, after he sent him to his knees with a cheeky kick to the balls. He ripped his sword from the guard's throat, before he stopped stock still to stare at Ezio, a blinding angel with the sun at his back.
"Salve," the angel murmured.
"Buona sera," the citizen nodded.
"Are you alright?"
"Si, grazie."
Ezio nodded once, and the silence returned. The citizen stared at him, eyes wandering over the assassin whites before he smiled briefly and wiped his sword on a hastily drawn handkerchief and slid back into the scabbard at his hip. The man bowed slightly, before he straightened and waved over his shoulder. "Arrivederci, assassino."
"Wait…!"
The stranger stopped, and turned slightly to look Ezio in the face. "What? I said thank you."
"Join me. Fight the Borgia, become an assassin."
The citizen smiled like a wild animal, "I thought you'd never ask."
Making Bastiano Pulci into an assassin was like making a cat vomit up gold. Hard, but not necessarily impossible. They made a goose poop gold in some odd fairytale or other. The man was just like Ezio. Flamboyant, stupid, and incredible. He made the other recruits look like the novices they were, he outshone even the veteran novice Raffaele in wit. What he lacked in assassin experience he made up for with his head. He didn't just do what he was told, he used his initiative. It got him a head above the rest. The first day was interesting, to be frank. However high the testosterone ran there were never any real casualties, and Bastiano made friends easily. The novices were infected by his mirth, and found themselves competing against each other, making teams between themselves and trying to best each other. They turned it into a game.
When he put Bastiano on his first mission, the boy shone.
The last surviving French outpost lingered like a turgid spot on the face of a teenager, glowing an ominous yellow in the night. Ezio and La Volpe stood at the base of the tree line circling the encampment, eyes bright in the dark. The five novices they were overseeing dissipated like spectres in the watery moonlight, completely surrounding the sleeping enemy. The camp was moderate size, with seven tents for the men, including the captain. That meant at least twenty, including the five archers patrolling some hastily built scaffolding erected in the middle of the camp.
The seven novices first came up with a game plan.
"First, we are gonna split up and come at them from all sides. Set the tents on fire and kill the captain." Emiliana gestured to the camp fortifications she drew in the dirt at their feet, elaborating where the guards patrolled and where they slept.
"If we do that," Bastiano frowned, "they'll cut us down like lambs. We gotta be sneakier than that. There are more of them than us; we will get overwhelmed if we go for a frontal attack."
"Fine, Pulci. What do you suggest?"
Bastiano grinned, "We're gonna get our freak on!"
Upon closer inspection, Bastiano getting his "freak on" meant they were to run, silently around the French camp like ghosts. They destroyed the guns, hid the weapons and slit the throats of the sentries as they slept. They threw the bodies out into the nearby roads where they could be seen by regular guards and flitted back to the shadows. A scare tactic, for later skirmishes. Then, one of the novices woke up a guard, and the man tottered out and rang the alarm. The five remaining guards looked rather pale when they realised they were outmanned, the others slaughtered in their beds, standing in their underwear and staring at a group of assassino. Not just the one. Four assassins, each rolling their arms or casually leaning on weapons. One even settling on the log between the dead sentries, warming his hands by the fire. The assassins moved in a flurry of fabric, and only a single terrified soldier was able to run. He took off screaming in barely his trousers, stumbling over the corpses that the novices had littered the road with, a recruit leapt out of an idling cart of hay and drove the hidden blade deep into his diaphragm.
The recruits gathered in the light of the dying campfire, and Ezio and La Volpe emerged from the dark, quietly applauding. It was that day that Bastiano made his running for the place as Ezio's right hand man evident. It was that day he and Rafaele became best friends. And the day that Ezio became privy to an old emotion. One that had followed him like a spectre for years.
Good, honest curiosity.
The next day posters clogged the streets, covering nearly every spare wall with assassin likenesses, white robes and red sashes. Ezio looked to La Volpe, and the thief nodded. He clapped his hands, and Ezio was rather glad that he had what he deemed a much more individualised signal like the Eagle's call. The thieves moved like mice, fast and skittering. They vaulted and shifted through the watery morning light, taking posters with them. The torn papers fell to the muck like feathers in their wake. Ezio nodded at the fox for his theatricality, as well as his efficiency. The fox smiled.
"Did you find out anymore about my novice?"
"Pulci?"
"Si."
"Yes. He is a simple man from a smithy's background. Nothing special. He had two sisters, but one is dead and the other is hidden away in the Antico district. Last I heard, she was entering the Order in the shape of a courtesan. Asking Lady Claudia would be your best bet. If she is anything like her brother, you want her in assassin Whites rather than the drabs of an escort."
"Dearly noted."