Things are weird.

That's not a commentary on the socio-economic state of Central Italy during the early sixteenth century; that's a universal constant that our space-fairing descendants will need to deal with, even more so when we evolve out of our physical bodies and download ourselves into computers. But I digress.

By the time most of Roma was barely tumbling out of bed, Laura was already reading assignments and lurking the streets. She was a morning person like that.

Fucking morning people.

Whenever she slept, Adele transfigured into an octopus and escaping her grasp was an elaborate activity that took up to half an hour and a trained locksmith. Though Laura like the comfort and security of a seemingly endless net of arms, she didn't want to wake up her mate before the sun was even visible.

After several minutes of stealthy disengagement of arms and legs, Laura managed to free herself and rolled out of the bed, landing on the floor with barely a sound.

Silent.

She quickly began searching the room for her robes, hoping to be at the hideout before it was light. Months of training couldn't prepare her for the pain associated with kicking her toenail off against the foot of the bed, however, and she collapsed onto the ground, biting her fist to keep from screaming.

Adele didn't even stir.

Since it would probably be a couple of minutes before she could walk without screaming, and since her foot felt dry and blood-free anyway, Laura decided to lay on the ground for a bit and just not move. Adele breathed quietly on her bed. Wind tugged gently on the windowsill.

Laura got it together and pulled herself up to her feet (foot) and continued searching for her clothes.

There was a soft rustling coming from where Laura assumed the wall was. "Mmm. You leaving?"

That's not a wall, that's the bed, Laura thought. "Si. Go back to sleep, mia bella." She pulled on one boot.

"Mmm..."

A couple of minutes later, just as Laura was getting ready to dive out the window, Adele mumbled something incoherent, then something coherent. "Ti amo, patatina."

Laura stopped cold for a few seconds. Her fingers gripped the window frame, relaxed, then tightened again.

Then she let go and walked to the bed. She climbed onto it until she was kneeling over Adele's body. In the unbelievably dim light, she could just barely make out the distinction between Adele's dark hair and her skin. Relying on touch to guide her, Laura reached down, put her hand on her friend's shoulder, rolled her onto her back, and bent down and kissed her.

The kiss went on for what seemed like several minutes. In reality it was probably only ten seconds or so, but to Laura it felt like it went on forever. They parted faces and Laura searched desperately for Adele's eyes in the darkness so she could look at something. "Ti amo anch'io."

And then Laura climbed off the bed and went to the window, glancing back one last time before sailing out the window.


For the past few weeks, Laura struggled to figure out what to call them. "Dating" was too strong and too scary for her, but "Friends with benefits" no longer described the complex feelings of attraction and romance between them. She recently decided to think that "Going out" was a good alternative. It was less dependent, had less romantic connotations, and seemed like the phase that came to mind when Laura thought of their relationship.

She supposed it didn't matter anyway, at least not at the moment.

There weren't any pigeons with her name on them in the coop, which meant her day was basically following Ezio around and hoping he didn't call. Most days he didn't, but occasionally he got into a mess and needed an escape route.

Though at the time Laura was absolutely grateful for Ezio saving her life, she recently realized with disappointment that she actually would have been able to get out of trouble that day. Slit the guard's throat and make for the wall behind her, where a window and ledge would have made a perfect escape route. Sure, she was thankful to have meaning in her life and to be working for a higher cause, but still, she kind of felt like a jerk.

Ezio moved between the city and the countryside a lot, and it was up to her and whoever else wasn't on assignment to follow him undetected. And when he used a horse, Laura had to climb on the smelly beast and follow him on one of those. Stupid horses.

Several meters beneath her feet, a horse nipped at weeds on the street. Ezio was already moving off into tthe fields quickly, and she needed to follow.

Laura hated this part. She couldn't figure out how other people did it so easily. With a deep breath, Laura stepped off the rooftop and plummeted to the horse below.

The landing winded her and she was pretty certain that she would be bow-legged for the rest of her life.

But like I said before, that didn't matter.

Doubled over the pommel, Laura urged the horse forward, to follow Ezio. Citizens leapt out of the way, because Laura couldn't see them and just kind of bowled through them.

Once she was out in the countryside, all Laura had to do was simply stop drawing attention to herself and keep several dozen meters behind Ezio. This was rather easy, as Laura looked unassuming on a horse and being so far away from Ezio allowed her to quickly track his movements and react in case he did something stupid.

Within a few hours, Ezio had been in three sword fights with guards, climbed to the top of the Colosseo, assassinated an extremelybeautiful woman in the ruins of the bathhouse (Laura stopped to admire the corpse and couldn't help but think it a waste), and paid to fix several parts of the old aqueduct.

But when Laura was having trouble paying her landlord, Ezio can't just hand out money.

This would have been just another boring day if Ezio hadn't tried to take on a Borgia tower.

That evening, many months ago, when Ezio handed her directions to the Tiber Island Hideout, she knocked on the door of the facility to find Niccolo Machiavelli waiting to open it for her. Once she was inside, Machiavelli explained what it meant to be an Assassin. He implored that Laura forget her preconceived ideas about them, which was pretty easy to do because she'd never heard of the Assassins before.

He explained that being an Assassin was more than stabbing people until they died, although that was a huge part. Machiavelli told her that being an Assassin was about devotion: devotion to her cause, to her mentor, and to her ideals. To keep fighting for something even though everyone else has fallen simply because you're the only one standing.

For Laura, all this meant was that she couldn't just walk out when she pleased. Which was okay with her, as long as she had something to do during the weekend. However, she shortly learned that devotion meant every damn day. She quit her job and became a full-time recruit within a few weeks.

She began to learn the truth about the Assassins and the Templars, the history of their orders, and the story of their millenia-long feud. She knew the Templars wouldn't stop until they were dead or everyone on Earth was enslaved.

She would fight to the death to make sure it was the first one.

Laura knew the idea about the Borgia towers. Ezio swoops in and wastes the Captain, sets the tower on fire, and the surrounding shops open and rejoice. Most of the time, it was as simple as getting above the captain and air-assassinating him. On some days (usually Mondays) it required a swordfight and lots of smelling salts.

Ezio was good at killing the captains. However, this guy was on a horse too. Laura watched from a distance, expecting this to be another routine assassination. Any minute now, Ezio would dismount his horse, get a couple of meters from the captain, pull out his hidden gun or his crossbow, aim at the...

Ezio pulled the captain off his horse and got on it. On the horse. And rode in a large circle before the angry captain slashed his sword at the beast's legs and he was thrown through the air. Laura tensed her body, ready for the whistle that signaled come help my dumb ass.

The scene below looked bad, with guards pouring out of- pretty much everywhere. Laura thought she honestly would not be surprised if there were a dozen hidden in the well a couple of meters off.

"Ezio, you idiot," she mumbled with a smirk. He was a big boy, he could handle a few guards.

Wait, not a few, dozens. Seriously, where were they all coming from? There had to be fifty of them down there.

Though Laura knew to only come when Ezio whistled for help, she also knew that he couldn't whistle when he was dead, and he was just absolutely inundated.

Then she heard it. A piercing squeal, the sound of a warrior in distress. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee.

(That was a whistle by the way.)

Laura snapped into action, urging the beast forward towards the weirdly massive orgy of guards.

Like, no, I don't think you understand exactly how many guards there were.

The captain was getting away. Not today, Laura thought, drawing her sword.

He kept glancing behind him, making sure he wasn't being followed by the crazy guy in blue robes. If he'd only looked ahead of him, he'd have been able to react to the woman in blue robes streaking towards him, a sword drawn.

They met in the middle of a road running perpendicular to their paths. The captain was on Laura's sword side, frantically looking back while urging his men to fight on and not surrender.

How ironic, Laura though, as her sword was thrust through his ribcage with their combined speeds, puncturing his heart and filling his lungs with blood.

Unfortunately for Laura, physics took over and her sword was ripped from her hand as the frightened horse sped off, its rider leaning away at a weird angle.

Oh well. Ezio didn't give her this dagger for nothing.

Laura guided her horse around the thronging mass of guards, picking some of them off with her dagger. They barely noticed her.

Another horse galloping caught Laura's attention. She looked up from stabbing a guard in the back of the neck to see Mino Ricoveri charging towards them, sword drawn and lungs split with a war cry. He slashed several guards wide open before having to tun around and come back.

While she was looking at Mino, a guard noticed Laura on her horse. He reached up, grabbed her leg, and yanked her down. She barely had time to think when there was a knee on her chest and a disgusting smell in her face.

"Oh, you're pretty," the guard snarled. "I think I'll keep you around for a bit."

Fighting a dry heave, Laura swung her left leg up around the man's face and snapped it back down, scissoring his head between her legs. Turning his own blade against him, she wrestled it put of his hand and stabbed his through the chest.

As Laura stood up and shook the dead man's corpse out of her thighs, she realized with dull disappointment that she couldn't actually say that he was the only person ever to die between her legs.

The horse had run off. Good, she didn't want it around her. Already, some guards had noticed her and begun to surround her, swords drawn and angry looking.

"You think you can defeat the Borgia?" one of them snarled. Laura raised her hands out slightly. What kind of a question was that? Shaking her head, she picked up her own dagger and dropped into a fighting stance. The circle of guards around her completed itself, and Laura was surrounded.

Just as she resigned to fighting off six guards at once, Mino rode by on his horse and slashed two of them open. They fell backwards and died. Well then, four it was. For now anyway.

One of the men lunged forward, thrusting his sword at Laura's face. She immediately countered, spinning out of the way and slashing his neck arteries open. As he collapsed to the ground, she retained her momentum enough to plunge her dagger into the chest of the guard on the left of him. He died and she moved on to the next one.

The fourth guard collapsed onto the ground and Laura looked at the seven bodies around her. Seriously, how were there so many guards? Just then a few more broke off the main throng surrounding Ezio to challenge her. Again, she went into her stance and prepared to fight.

What she didn't prepare for was Mino coming back and yelling "Laura!" while charging his horse through the guards around her and knocking her to the ground. She rolled along for a few meters and jumped back to her feet. In the chaos, she forgot about the men attacking her and let her guard down. She was quickly rewarded with a sharp pain across her back and a boot kicking her forward.

One of the guards laying on the ground where she was a second ago had a large caved-in portion of his chest, about fifteen centimeters in diameter, or the size of a horse's hoof. Laura smiled; Mino's accident hadn't been a waste.

The guards were still following her as she ran through the small cluster of buildings. No matter, she could jump into that well up ahead and start pulling them in. Or that was the plan, until something hit the back of her foot, stumbling her and sending her into the ground.

There wasn't much she could do against the slashing but just hold her vambrace up and try to block most of it. The guards behind it finally stopped and she jumped up, burying her hidden blade into his stomach. Other men surrounded her; she couldn't find her dagger anywhere. She must have dropped it when she tripped.

One of the guards rushed forward, raising his blade and preparing to deliver a finishing blow. Laura simply reached out and pinned his jaw to his head with her hidden blade.

His sword clattered to the ground. She lunged to grab it, but something fast and painful knocked her hand away. Upon closer inspection it was revealed to be a crossbow bolt. Looking up to find the shooter, Laura saw the crossbowman a few meters behind the others, reloading his weapon.

Laura had been better. She ached all over, her head and legs hurt, and there was a crossbow bolt jutting out from between her radius and ulna. Something wet was running down her forehead, whether it was sweat or blood remained to be seen. Her vision occasionally defocused, and she had to grab at the rib of the well behind her to keep from falling over.

"Keep attacking, men! She will die or surrender soon!" one guard declared with a hearty laugh that the others copied.

If she strained her ears, she could her the sounds of Ezio's fight some distance away. There were four guards in a half-circle in front of her, and one crossbowman behind them. Her left arm felt numb and her right arm wouldn't pronate, due to the bolt. Laura felt sick, and she knew why.

She opened her mouth. The sound of blades and grunts was getting closer. Ezio was fighting his way towards her. Mino was nowhere to be seen. This wasn't good.

Off in the corner of her vision, Ezio burst out from between two buildings, facing back to fight off the guards following him. "If I die... I won't die alone," she announced.

The guards laughed until Laura reached out, plunged her blade into the guard on the far left's chest, and threw him bodily into the crossbowman. In shock, he fired his bolt into the other guy's body before he was knocked over. With an enormous amount of exertion and a shocking amount of pain, she high-kicked the sword out of the next guard's hand, then killed him too. The next man cried out as she kicked him in the knee, splitting the joint and sending him down. His sword, grasped limply in his hand, was quickly yanked out and lodged inside his ribcage.

Wiping what she was sure was blood from her mouth, Laura looked over at the sole guard remaining. His hands were up pitifully, and he lowered himself on his knees.

"Please, madonna, please spare me... I'm not like the others..."

Laura remembered the last guard who begged her to let him live. He died with his testicles lodged in his spinal column. "Do you know how to swim?" she asked menacingly.

"I'm... I'm sorry?"

"Can you swim?" Laura found herself short of breath and very dizzy.

"No, I... I never learned." The guard stared at the ground and blinked a lot.

Gently, Laura reached out and took hold of the guard's wrist, pulling him to his feet. "Doesn't matter; this well's dry." With all of her strength, she swung him around and against the rim of the well. His body folded over the lip, and he tumbled down, landing with a splash.

Oh. Guess it wasn't dry. Laura stood for a second, breathing heavily for a second before breathing became too challenging and she leaned over and grabbed her knees.

Waves of nausea battered her, and the world spun constantly. "Oh, wow," she muttered before dropping to her knees. Her side, just below her ribcage on her right was in pain. Probably a muscle cramp.

Ezio was still fighting, though he had reduced his opponents to about ten. He was somewhere behind Laura, who was on all fours next to a well hoping the world would stop spinning.

Her breath catching in her throat, Laura got down even further and rolled onto her back. This was it. She felt it.

She knew the Creed required her to dedicate her life. And she would gladly give it, if it would aid the fight against evil. But never in a million years would she have thought collections would be taken so soon.

Above her, stringy clouds floated through the sky. The sky was beautiful. Whenever she could, Laura like to arrange her assassinations so that her victim could see the sky. Everyone should be able to see the sky before they die.

Laura's fingertips found a wet spot on her robes, right where she felt pain from. She lifted her fingertips to see them red: covered in blood.

Was this- When had she been stabbed? She felt around the wound with her fingers. The hole itself was about four centimeters long and absolutely gushed blood. She couldn't even remember getting injured there.

Early sixteenth-century medical science was strongly lacking, but most people knew that a wound in that particular area was almost always fatal. As it goes, the kidneys see all of the blood in the body pass through them multiple times a day- 180 liters of blood pass through them in 24 hours, or one hundred twenty five milliliters a minute. Severing the renal arteries is almost always fatal.

Now Laura began to gasp. She was going to die. Her left hand groped futily at the dirt, hoping to find perhaps Adele's hand, or her thigh or breast, yet finding only dirt and a dead guard's boot. Laura didn't want that.

Oh, Adele. Where was she? She wouldn't want to miss this. Laura realized that her blood loss was making her delusional. She wouldn't see Adele again. Damn it...

Laura's eyes went back up to the sky. Clouds drifted over. her left hand curled up, her right hand covered her wound. She squinted at the clouds. If she was going to die, she may as well look at something nice before she went.

Footsteps tearing across dirt caught her attention. "Laura!" It was Ezio. He had taken care of his attackers and was running to find her. She smiled and called back.

"Ezio!"

The footsteps stopped, then picked back up. Then suddenly Ezio was leaning over her, blocking the sky. His mouth opened in shock.

"Laura... are you alright?" He asked, but he knew the answer.

Laura didn't say anything, because Ezio lifted her hand off the injury to see it. His mouth closed and his jaw clenched.

"Laura, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He found her left hand and picked it up, squeezing it tightly. With his other hand he lifted her head up and allowed her hood to fall off. Her hair fell out around her head.

Ezio knew that there was nothing he could do. His smelling salts would be useless, they only stopped pain, not cured flesh wounds. The best thing would be to make sure she was comfortable.

Words formed in Laura's mind. She needed to tell Ezio.

"Adele... don't let her dwell," she sputtered. Dwell? Of all the last words she could say, dwell wasn't a very good one.

"Adele?" Ezio frowned. He had no idea who she was.

Laura nodded. "Adele. At the Rosa."

Suddenly Ezio remembered that Laura seemed to spend a lot of time at the Rosa in Fiore. Claudia would know more. "Alright. I'll tell her. Is there anything else?"

People were stopping to watch the two of them share their last moments. Neither cared. Laura's eyes went up to the sky again, then back to Ezio, then the sky. She swallowed heavily. "I love her. I didn't say it enough. I wish I had said it more." She'd said it earlier that day, but that had been the first time in about a week. Laura's daddy issues made it very hard to say.

"Sure. Of course." Ezio stroked the back of her head with his thumb. He could tell; she was close.

Laura didn't look away from the sky. She swallowed again, then her mouth opened and she blinked and she died.