.Freaky eagle assassin woman.
.LovesLinksShadow.
A/N: For lack of a better title, this is what sprang to mind. There's always one, I've found, who has a tendency to fall from, or rather dive from, some random spot in the sky. If not for the fact that they can't kill him, I am sure she would have killed Ezio by now, the amount of times she'd try and assassinate the same guy as me and practically land on Ezio's back... This is what randomly sprung to mind, as most of these things do, while I was going over what had happened the first time I 'tried' to take over the Borgia Tower in the south of the Campagna district.
Crouched on top of the aqueduct, surveying what lay below, the female assassin recruit watched several Borgia guards patrol the small courtyard area at the base of the nearby tower. The Campagna districts tower was the last one left under Borgia control. It was also one of the best guarded, hence the reason it had yet to be taken. Technically she hadn't really been trained enough for tough combat like this would probably result in, but she wanted to be close by in case the master assassin needed help. The same applied to the other recruits hidden relatively nearby, acting as inconspicuous as possible. All of them knew that the master assassin had planned an attack for that day. But exactly what time that was; only he himself knew.
She watched the men patrolling, memorising their movements, as she knew a true assassin would. From her vantage point she noticed where and how often the guards would stop, little gaps in their patrols that anyone trained with the right skills could easily sneak through. But then, most of the guards would have to be killed if anyone outside Borgia control was going to make it to the top of the tower.
And so she waited, her mind thinking over strategies that could be used in this situation, over her basic training of how to use the weapons she'd been provided with.
If a Borgia guard happened to look her way she would disappear in an instant and not be noticed. She thanked her speed for that. If she was noticed then it could ruin what the master assassin had planned. That would not be good and she didn't want to see herself loosing a rank before she even got anywhere.
Minutes turned to hours and it seemed she had been waiting there most of the day with no action ever happening. So the afternoon swung round and it sudden hit why nothing had been happening. As the day wore on the guards seem to become less attentive. The gaps in their patrols grew. There didn't seem to be as many on the look out for trouble. Now would almost certainly be the best time to attack. But all she could and would do was to sit and wait.
A few more minutes had barely passed when she first noticed a guard disappear over one of the walls. A smile crept to her face as she realised what had happened. He was here and he was active.
She watched as he skilfully took out another guard with his hidden blade, but then she had no idea what happened. It all happened so quickly. The guards had him in their sights.
She saw the guards sprinting across the courtyard to where the assassin had been spotted. Some climbed over the tops of the walls, some charged the longer way round, but all had a desire to fight and hopefully kill the assassin. She watched the fight break out between master assassin and Borgia guards and had to use most of her self restraint not to just leap down into the fray. But no, this might, after all, be part of the plan. So she held back, her eyes closed but her ears open to the sound of the fight, ready and waiting for the quick high-pitched whistle that was the call for aid.
And she didn't have to wait long. Her eyes snapped open and her gaze was earth bound. Almost instantly she singled out the master assassin along with her own selected target. Then she was on her feet, hidden blade poised and ready then, without another thought, she leapt. She brought her hidden blade forwards as she fell and sunk it deep into the guards' neck as she landed upon his shoulders. Then she was on her feet again and, with a quick nod in the master assassins' direction, she was into the fight.
She had her next target selected, then speedily dodged back as a mounted recruit sped past, slashing down at the startled guards. Darting past the horse she swiftly slaughtered another enemy. But it was from that point on that things turned bad.
She turned and, standing on the edge of the fight, realized that the Borgia guards hugely outnumbered the assassins, in both number and skill. A high, wailing whinny signaled that the horse had gone down, its rider thrown from the saddle. She spotted him clamber to his feet before being cut down, then soon after, another recruit fell to a Borgia blade. But she was not going to die, she thought as she sped back into the fray, not today-
A short cry escaped her lips as she felt a blade rip into her back. The weapon was wrenched away and she felt herself crumple to the floor. She trembled. She wasn't ready for this. Her time as a recruit couldn't have already come to an end. It just couldn't…
All around her many more of the recruits were slain by the enemy's sword. The bodies of both people she knew and people she had learnt to hate lay scattered about her. Each one of them a crumpled and bloodied mess.
The last thing she noticed as her life slipped away was the master assassin, forced to retreat, overwhelmed by the shear numbers of Borgia guards. All of the recruits save for the two that had stayed behind at headquarters, lay dead or dying upon the floor. She could only hope, as her last breath left her body, that the two that still lived would rise swiftly through the ranks and that Rome would eventually be free from its Borgia controllers.
A/N: So, as you can see, I ultimately failed at taking that tower the first time. That's what I get for thinking 'Oh, I don't need to train up my recruits. I'll be fine without them'. Only to realise after most of them were killed, that yes, I did need them, and yes, I should have been training them from the start. Still, I have only recently managed to get them up to assassin level. Not that there's a point any more. I finished the game ages ago. Oh well. For one, it is fun to play Assassin's Creed, and two; I think a pretty decent fanfic came from it.
BTW, I put her as sitting on the aqueduct because it's the only place, other than the actual tower, that's high enough for her to do that dive from. Either that or, as the conspiracy among my friends goes, she is actually a shape shifter who enjoys eagle form. Hence the title. She's freaky, she's really an eagle, she's an assassin (sort of) and she's a woman. But I decided to not write the she's an eagle part in.