Hit the lights

"Just to let you know, what you're doing with the whole defying authority thing is the right thing to do." Thomas reassured from the back of the boat.

Samuel turned around and looked him in the eye. "Sonny. I don't trust you. Bear in mind I can turn this boat around right now."

Thomas huffed and sat back as Emily giggled. The boat neared the Kaldwin Bridge, clouds swirling between the giant towering spires. "You ever visit this, your empressness?" Thomas asked, curious.

Emily nodded. "Mother would take me there, sometimes, when she was free. We'd look over the traffic, and she'd tell me that one day, I'd have to look after all these people…" She blinked and sniffed. "What about you?"

"I climbed it once." Thomas said, indifferently. "We should check out the view from the top while we're here."

In front of them, Samuel sighed. "Sure. Make sure to enjoy yourselves while you take care of your political kidnapping."

Then he squinted, and groaned. "Oh perfect. I don't think I'll be able to take you much further, miss. They've set up spotlights over the river."

I need some kind of spyglass. Emily bemoaned to herself as she looked into the distance, but she could see the spotlights alright, their harsh circles of light illuminating the river, despite the cloud cover dimming the area to barely visible. She could see the fins of hagfish flashing above the waves.

"You'll have to turn them off if you want me to get any closer than this to the house." Samuel stated, pulling into dock below the main road. "I still don't know why or even how you're going to kidnap the royal physician, but I'll help however I can."

Emily shrugged as Thomas pulled her out of the boat, then grabbed him round the waist. "We'll wing it." She smiled, before pulling her veil down and vanishing from sight.

"This is the girl who's going to rule the Isles. Lovely." Samuel sighed, before sitting down to wait.

._.

Emily dropped them through the window of a tower off the main road and moved up the stairs as Thomas retched in the corner. "How come I never puke when I teleport?"

"My driver once said he'd always get motion sickness unless he was driving. Maybe it's like that?"

"Because of course you got a car when you needed to go places." Thomas rolled his eyes, seeing a tendril flash out to grab an oil canister before vanishing upstairs, and he followed it. "Where I come from? You gotta learn to run, climb, know the alleyways-"

"Or hitch a ride." When he got up there, he saw Emily sat on some kind of train cart that led past a guarded street.

He raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? You're just gonna cheat and drive a cart to the bridge?"

A look came across Emily's face. "It's not cheating… especially if it's a race."

There was a pause. The pair looked each other in the eyes. Then Thomas reached down and slammed on the lever that opened the aperture before leaping out into the street.

He hurled himself onto one of the street lights, balancing for a moment and looking back to see Emily's cart already moving. He jumped over the heads of the oblivious guards, swinging himself from another street light onto a balcony. Seeing no way forwards on the street, he went further into the balcony's house, barging through a locked door and revealing a small room with a hole in the wall. He jumped through that, gripped by sudden vertigo as he fell into a harbour of sorts. He softened his fall with a guards face, knocking the poor man out cold, before darting up a series of steps, barging through another door-

And colliding with Emily.

They both collapsed to the street, Emily's veil slipping off, both issuing short gasps of pain and bewilderment, before looking up at each other.

"So I guess that was a tie, huh?" Said Thomas.

"It was a fast cart." Emily acknowledged, giggling. Her mirth lasted a whole two seconds. "Hey! You! Who are-oh. Oh." The two children spun round and quickly realised that they were both stood on a patrolled street. A group of guards were looking at them in horror. They had guns. Slipping into character, Emily slipped the veil back down, gave them a giggle and a cheerful wave, then grabbed Thomas' arm and ran.

._.

"See this, this is a good job!"

Jack sighed at his partners antics. "Geoff, why are you celebrating? We are in not the Golden Cat, this is a far worse job."

The two stood at the base of Kaldwin's bridge, an arc pylon buzzing quietly beside them. Geoff shrugged. "Well, look, I reckon it's a promotion. I mean, before we were just guarding politicians, but now it's the bloomin' royal physician! I bet it's because we scared off those witch children."

"Yeah, they sure ran off. With our charges. What's with you, you're acting all boisterous?"

Geoff blinked. "Is it not working? I'm trying to be brave!" He then muttered beneath his breath. "I thought you said you liked brave people…"

Jack full on laughed. "Yeah. Okay, that's-"

They were cut off from a shout from down the street. "Bobbies! Let's shank 'em, boys!" A small group of thugs rushed up to the pair. Geoff quickly shoved himself in front of Jack, brandishing his sword and shouting. "Don't worry, my friend! I will defend us!"

The thugs drew closer, Geoff tensed, and the pylon beside them whirred to life, bolts of lightning blasting forth to disintegrate the thugs.

"…Oh." Was Geoff's only response, as he shifted awkwardly in his fighting stance and a few ashes fell to the floor.

"Don't worry buddy." Jack sniggered, patting his crestfallen friend on the shoulder. "How about we turn off the super useful lightning thing and next time the scum turn up, you can kill them?"

Geoff opened his mouth to reply-

"Get the witch!"

"Run faster- aw crap, Arc pylon!"

"Arc what?"

"Just don't go near it!"

The two spun round to see a far too muscled boy in bandages and a veiled girl in a dress sprinting towards them, a group of guards hot on their trail. Geoff let out a whimper, even as Jack grimaced. "Oh you've gotta be kidding me, them again?"

.-.

Emily clicked her fingers again, another of the guards following tripping over his own shadow, literally. The Kaldwin Bridge loomed above them, but before it were two strangely familiar guards and an 'arc pylon', with another pylon stationed on the bridge proper. She saw the whale oil tank connected to it, considering the use of her slingshot. Then she had another idea. "Thomas!" She panted. "How far can you boost me up?"

He pointed to his chest wound. "If I risk using this...well, how far do you need boosting?"

They were almost upon the checkpoint. "Up and forwards, as far as you can. Now!"

Moving in front, Thomas fell to a knee. Emily ran up onto his back, then lurched as he exploded upwards, catapulting her high into the air. She flew right over the shocked faces of the guards and the pylon, and then launched a grapple down to the whale oil tank. Heaving, she detached it from its port, killing the pylon, and, as she reached the apex of her leap, she flung the tendril and tank over her head and into the second pylon, the resulting explosion hurling nearby guards backwards and shaking the bridge itself. When the smoke cleared, the two children were gone.

._.

Emily sat at the peak of the Kaldwin bridge, legs dangling off the edge as she watched the sunset. Thomas approached from behind, setting down two detached whale oil tanks and flopping beside her. "These seemed important so I nicked 'em, so now the lights are out, Samuel should be moving up further now." He remarked, stretching. "Cool stunt, by the way. I don't know where you get these ideas, but I'm pretty sure those guards are even more scared of you now."

He turned to Emily, but she was silent, gazing out over the river and Dunwall beyond it.

"This is my city." She stated, quietly. "It looks pretty in the sunset, doesn't it?"

"...Yes?" Thomas replied, cautiously.

"But it isn't when you look closely. It's full of plague, corruption, violence... And it's my job, as empress, to fix it." She stood up, looking towards the large building in the near distance. "Come on. Let's go get our physician."

Thomas just sat there, smiling at her back as she leapt from the roof, before jumping to his feet and following her.

III LIIIIIIIVE! Alrighty, put the pitchforks down, let me explain. I was revising for tests, then i was doing the tests, then i was on work experience for a fortnight, and now i'm here. I have no real excuse, but now I'm back, and i can promise the next chapter next week, because i've already written the tossing thing.

So...Dishonored two gameplay trailer. Well damn. Just saying, the pacify everyone demon thing seems a lot like Emily's singing...Eh? Eh?

Next chapter has significantly more progress and stuff to talk about, so you'll have to wait for for now, enjoy your first update in a month or so, and See y'all next week!