"Alright lads, that's another one gone, let's get movin." The watch Captain said behind a mouth full of coyote chew. Dave adjusted his sword belt from his spot leaning against the wall and followed the other five men down the street, carefully stepping over the dead thief laying in the middle of the road. He looked over his shoulder once he passed, watching the nearby peasants descend on the thief, picking him apart for anything of value. Dave scoffed at the sight. Even in a big city like this, the civilia are poor and greedy.
That's not to say that Dave thought more highly of nobles. Hell, the way they worked over and killed the thief back in the streets was proof that the guards were just as shitty as the rest of Silvercrest City, as well. House Garland's motto was "Eye for an eye" not "eye for a life" after all, and Dave wasn't so sure that public execution was the proper method for taking care of mere pickpockets. That's why he stayed out of it. Well, that and the fact that doing any amount of work on behalf this prissy noble house was too much for him to handle. He joined the city watch for the free food and bed, not to clean up the piss-pot of a town and make some 50 year old failure of a watch captain's erection a little bit more bold and intimidating.
He didn't want anyone to get him figured wrong, he wasn't an asshole with a boner for murder like the rest of these "officers of the law", he had a moral compass, and it wasn't crooked so much as it was… well, numb to magnetic currents. Dave took advantage of the system as long as it didn't hurt anyone innocent, and the way he saw it, nobody who lives in a castle while his people suffer is "innocent". That's why he was happy to take Robbert Garland's money while shirking his duties.
Dave didn't think so hard about it, though. He didn't do the whole "introspective thought" thing, he just went with the flow. Dave's thoughts as he patrolled the streets with his "brothers" were centered on much more simple things: mainly food. It had been weeks since he'd had anything but dried pork, bread and cabbage soup. He decided he's spend his next payday on a nice meal at the Junebug in Old Town.
He was so immersed in the thought of a nice pulled pork stew that he didn't notice the slender bronze-skinned woman leaning, naked, against the wall to his left. The rest of the guards sure did, though, and their fixation successfully distracted them from the second figure, perched on the rooftops, a pouch in one hand and a dagger in the other. Dave was the only one in his squadron of six that saw him drop the pouch in front of them, and the only one who jumped out of the way in time to avoid the dense cloud of smoke that enveloped them afterward.
When the smoke bomb went off, the entire situation flew quickly off the handle, and Dave saw the whole scene unfold from his place on the ground, as he struggled up to his feet and unsheathed his rusted piece of shit sword.
The cloaked figure on the roof dived off the roof as soon as the smoke bomb went off, landing on the watch captain blade-first, cutting off his coughing fit with the sting of a black-steel blade. As soon as the watch captain's life had been snuffed, the naked lady pushed herself off the wall, reaching into a tall basket to her left to retrieve a long, thin scimitar, which she proceeded to stick through Corporal Darvish's left thigh, causing him to drop to his knees. From this position, she pulled a hairpin from her ebony hair, letting it fall about her shoulders in elegant curls, and jabbed the sharper end of the pin through the 16-year-old Corporal's eye socket. The Corporal screamed and clawed at his face until she pulled out her second hairpin and plunged it through his other eye, sending him into a fit of seizures, as was his tendency. "Darvish the dervish" they called him. The bronze lady scoffed, and stepped over his quivering form.
By this point, the cloaked man had successfully cut the throats of the rookies named Elbut and Ian, who were now rolling on the dirt, clasping their throats and sobbing for their loss of life through bloody gurgles. Sergeant Malcolm had unsheathed his fine iron blade in the commotion, and now that the smoke had cleared, he set upon the first foe he saw, which happened to be the cloaked man. The assailant artfully dodged each angry swipe, keeping the sergeant busy long enough for the naked lady to strut up behind him and cut both his heels with her scimitar in one stroke, bringing him crashing down to the floor in a flurry of swears.
Dave had stood around long enough, but wasn't stupid enough to charge in head first. It didn't appear that either one of them was paying him much attention, so he took the opportunity to creep into the naked lady's blind spot, bringing his sword up in a perfect arc and cutting deep into the wrist of her sword arm. It would have cut clean through her bone if the sword wasn't so shitty. The lady screamed, surprised, and dropped her scimitar to the floor with a clatter. The cloaked man was also caught off guard, and Dave kicked him in the chest with his right leg, while falling into a crouch to grab the fallen scimitar, replacing his Watch-gifted sword.
The cloaked man caught his balance quickly, and jumped around Dave's side to plunge the dagger into his ribs. Instead, Dave caught the bastard hy the wrist, pulling him in close enough to kick hard at his shin with his steel-toed boots, snapping his shin inward with a loud crunching sound, while also snapping his wrist to the right, making him drop his dagger.
The man hissed inhumanly as he fell, and it wasn't until now that Dave noticed the dull grey horns poking through the top of his hood. It was no wonder that he was covered from head to toe, this particular assassin was a troll. His horns and his bright yellow eyes made that perfectly clear.
Strange. Dave thought, cocking his head to the side as he turned to face the human woman. In this city, humans and nonhumans don't get along so well. I wonder why these two are collaborating to kill guardsmen?
The naked lady, scooping down to grab another shitty sword from the fallen Corporal Darvish, looked shocked. Clearly, she expected the Captain to be the main threat, not a mere recruit like Dave. She didn't study her targets well enough, obviously. She swung at him clumsily with her off-handed, incredibly shitty, weapon, and Dave easily deflected the blow off his stolen scimitar, moving in closer and closer, forcing her backward up against the side of the old brick building she was posing on a moment earlier.
By now, a crowd had gathered, watching and, of course, not helping a bit. Sergeant Malcolm was cursing and pushing himself up to his elbows, unsheathing his dagger and crawling over to the fallen assassin, plunging the dagger into his chest, yelling at Dave: "Keep her for questioning!"
Dave nodded at him, and turned toward the woman again, ducking out of the way of another half-assed swing that she started when he wasn't looking. Fighting dirty was okay by him; in fact, it was sort of his forte. He brought the scimitar up, ready to jab, and stuck it clean through the wrist-bone on her uninjured hand. She dropped her stolen sword, crying in pain.
"Do you yield?" Dave asked, boredly. The inane questioning bit was part of his job, he knew the lady had no other choice. She had lost use of both her hands. The girl looked right through him, tears welling in her eyes and a look of terror evident on her face. "Yo? You there? I'm telling you, yielding is in your best-"
There was a significantly startling thump, and Dave jumped away from her, but not without being streaked with blood. There was a feathered bolt sticking out of the woman's eye, pinning her to the wall by her face, and coating the brick hovel with a fresh coat of red. Dave spun around and followed the trajectory of the bolt. There was another man, standing on the roof where the troll assassin once stood, holding a miniature crossbow in one hand and a curved blade of Eastern make in the other. His face was hidden by a bright orange mask, but his spiked yellow hair stood out, shining in the sunlight brilliantly, the same color as Dave's own hair.
Dave cursed under his breath, readying himself for the second bolt which would surely be targeting him, but this bolt never came. Instead, the man returned his one-handed crossbow to it's holster, returned the katana to the sheath on his back, and bolted across the rooftop in the opposite direction.
Confused, Dave looked to Sergeant Malcolm, who saw the whole thing from his spot on the ground. "Well?" The Captain said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the blonde vigilante, pulling his dagger from the dead troll's chest. "Get after him, grunt." Dave raised an eyebrow at his superior, flicking his chin at the sergeant's bloodied heels. "I'll be fine, reinforcements have gotta be on their way by now. Now go, earn yourself a promotion."
Dave sighed and undid the fastenings on his shoulders, letting his breastplate clamor to the ground, the only armor the watch decided to provide him, beside his kneepads. Now that he was significantly lighter, he took off toward the building the bolt was fired from, scrambling up the stone wall and on to the rooftop. In the distance, Dave saw the man sprinting and leaping from building to building with the grace of someone with wings. Again, these assassins seem to underestimate the rookie in the bunch. Dave pursued him with vigor, executing each jump perfectly, quickly gaining on the assailant. The man looked over his shoulder, obviously surprised by his pursuers prowess. He allowed Dave to gain more ground on him before taking off again.
When Dave was within tackling distance, the masked man suddenly spun to his right dove off the roof, straight into an open well- four stories below. Dave gulped, pulled his arms to his chest, and jumped in after him, narrowly avoiding banging his chin on the way down. He fell in the darkness for a few seconds, then hit a pool of surprisingly warm, dark water. Dave waited until his feet touched soil, then kicked off the floor of the pool toward the surface.
Dave gulped in the dusty air of the underground cave, shaking the water out of his face and looking around for the masked man. He saw him, standing on the shoreline of the cave, his arms crossed. All around him stood figures with light-grey skin and dark horns, hooting and hollering at him, pointing various weapons of various levels of upkeep at his throat. Trolls. Dave never had any luck when it came to trolls.
"I have to admit, I'm surprised." The masked man spoke, muffled by the mask clinging to his face. It was a plain mask that wouldn't pass at one of the Duke's fancy masquerades. It was wooden, painted a bright tangerine color, with little slits for eyeholes and several tiny holes in the bottom for breathing. Perhaps in order to speak to him more audibly, he reached up and removed his mask. Dave was taken aback, the guy looked exactly like his older brother, but obviously a lot younger, and he was missing the lame goatee. His face was cleanly shaven, his eyes a brilliant orange, the color of a sunset in autumn. His sculpted jaw and pointed nose gave him a certain aggressiveness that wasn't entirely hidden by the coy smile playing at his lips. "Most city guards aren't so eager to actually do their job." His voice had a tinge of malice to it that made Dave very squeamish.
Oh shit. Dave thought to himself. If this guy and his pals had a vendetta against the city watch, it wasn't going to be good for him. He didn't say a word, wiping the stale water of the underground lake from his eyes and staring coldly up at the man who looked like his brother's ghost.
"Elkroy. Diltan. Get him out of there, and mind his sword arm, it's quite sharp." The man said to two of the trolls to his left. It was obviously a command, but he said it with such a lack of malice that it sounded like a request. Clearly, the trolls obeyed him out of mutual friendship, rather than authority like it was in the City Watch. The two trolls moved up, baring their teeth at him and brandishing rusted curved sickles. As they pulled him out of the water, the man turned and walked away, yelling over his shoulder: "Put him in the holding cell with Terezi. I'll come by for him later."
God dammit David Sun. He thought to himself, going along with Elkroy and Diltan, ducking out of the way of Diltan's jagged horn which jutted toward his face. What have you gotten yourself into now?
Okay, so something you'll probably notice is that I changed the trolls a TINY bit. Mostly, I just made their horns a dark grey instead of bright orange. Also- the blood caste system is a very very old tradition, that most trolls ignore. Racism among trolls still exists; however, it is fairly rare, except for in the Empress' territory, where the caste system is still enforced.