As she made her way out of the Rosa in Fiore, having met Claudia and Mother there at their request, Maria smiled softly. The pair of them had wished to reconnect with her, since with all of their many and varied duties to the Brotherhood and Roma as a whole none of them had had quite as much time to themselves as they might have wanted. Still, as much as all of them enjoyed those peaceful moments they were able to grab for themselves, all three of them knew that moments – as was their nature – would not last forever.
Sure enough, a missive from Niccolò had arrived not long after they had finished their midday meal, telling her of the three veteran soldiers that Cesare had called to his side in an effort to give himself what advantages he could when he was facing the might of a revived Brotherhood of Assassins in Roma. The three of them had known even before she'd finished reading the letter what she'd had to do. And so, making her way back down into the tunnels that allowed her and her brother and sister Assassins to make their secret ways through Roma, Maria had made her way back to Isola Tiberina once again.
Fedele Fabiani and Ottavio Olivieri were quick to volunteer when she put out the call, though it seemed as though Ottavio had previously been through a fight; he was well enough that she didn't send him back into the headquarters to get some rest, but there was a certain light in his eyes that she didn't know what to make of, particularly considering the clear fact that he'd just come out of a fight. She'd speak to Ezio about it once all of this was finished with, of course, but for the moment she had more pressing concerns.
As she and her two apprentices made their way back out into the open air of Roma once more, Maria narrowed her eyes and called up her second-sight once again. Once she'd managed to spot the three men – large and intimidating figures in the finely-polished armor they were wearing – she signaled to Ottavio and Fedele. Priming her own crossbow, she shot the man in the center of the formation right in the back of his neck where the armor was of necessity weaker. Feeling a grim smile pulling at her lips as the last of the three fell dead to the ground, Maria blinked as her sight returned to normal and she signaled to Fedele and Ottavio to follow her.
The three of them swiftly made their way to the nearest tunnel entrance, before they could be spotted by the guards that had been assigned to the training grounds that they had been fortunate enough not to have to infiltrate during the course of their mission to free the people from the oppression of the new soldiers that would have otherwise been trained by those three soldiers from Cesare's upper-echelons. She was glad to be out of that place, and all the more so that she hadn't been forced to deal with yet more guards.
She didn't know just how many of them were hirelings who either didn't know – or tried not to think about – who their employers were and what they were doing, and those who shared the ideals of the Borgia and so needed to share their fate, and so Maria was pleased when she wasn't forced to kill people who might have been innocent.
Sighing as she made her way back into the headquarters hidden on Isola Tiberina once more, Maria found her gaze drawn to Ezio as her brother made his way over to her, after Fedele and Ottavio had left to head for their own separate destinations. She was just about to call out to him, when she saw the look on his face and the way he seemed to be contemplating something.