Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem Awaken- Three Houses, not Awakening. I'm so used to putting down Awakening for The Robin Variable and Varied Awakenings… all rights to the owners.
Second verse, kinda like the first. Church staff and professors go!
"You're an assassin, aren't you?"
"Well, I have assassin training." Byleth says. "Incidentally, you should have come directly from behind if you wanted to surprise me."
"Who said I was trying to?" The raven-haired woman asks, crossing her arms.
"You were slow in climbing, meaning you were likely trying not to make noise. You also were careful to not grab the wooden beams, despite them being good handholds, because they would creak and make noise." Byleth explains. "My hearing is very good though. I heard you anyways."
Shamir purses her lips. "Who are you?"
"Byleth."
"Why are you here?"
"I'm a professor."
"I know that. Why are you up here though?"
"I'm watching my students. Just to see what they're doing." Byleth says neutrally.
Shamir frowns. "I'll be blunt. You look super suspicious up here."
"Only if people see me." Byleth says. "You did, but look, has anyone else?"
The raven-haired lady knows Byleth is right. No one else has raised their gaze high enough to actually see them up here. People seldom look up.
"By the way… you're dead."
"Pardon."
"You're dead. Very dead." Byleth says, and finally turns to face Shamir. The fixed smile on Byleth's face instantly sets the lady on edge. "Unless, of course, you noticed it."
Shamir doesn't know what this woman is talking about. She glances behind her, expecting to see some sort of trap… but there's nothing there. She turns back to look at Byleth, only to find the woman's face only an inch from her own and a sword at her throat.
"Okay, now you're dead." Byleth says calmly. She doesn't seem at all uncomfortable with their extreme proximity, wheas Shamir is quite uncomfortable. "I lied the first time."
"Y-You-" Sharmir is stunned, and quite nervous. She was tricked so easily.
"For someone who I've heard so much about, I thought you would have seen through that. Never turn your back to your enemy if you can avoid it." Byleth advises. She withdraws her blade and takes a few steps back. "Unless, of course, you have a good reason. Like keeping up the appearance that you don't know they're there or something of the like."
"Aren't you quite the instructor." Shamir mutters. She doesn't want to admit it, but Byleth spooked her. Shamir has always prided herself on having sharp eyes and ears, which makes the fact she didn't hear Byleth moving all the more worrisome.
"Indeed I am. That's quite literally my job."
###
When Cyril fell off the statue he was cleaning he was expecting pain, not for someone he didn't even know was there to catch him.
"Careful."
"Uh…" Cyril blinks slowly. His eyes focus on the person holding him, and he instinctively tenses.
He's seen Professor Eisner around before of course. She's the extremely quick, totally silent, ashen-skinned ghost of the monastery who always has a fixed, creepy smile on her face. She's one of the few people Cyril actively avoids (though it's hard to tell where she is at any given time because of the whole "fast and silent" thing).
Maybe she's not as tall as he thought she was, and he can see she really doesn't dress like the weird spy he thought she was; she's got patterned stockings for goddess's sake, and has an exposed stomach and a cleavage window, which seems weird for someone who's a fighter. Aren't those easy targets? That doesn't mean Cyril is any less wary around this woman though. If she can afford to have such obvious weak points and still be respected as a fighter, she must be no joke.
At least, Cyril assumes so. Maybe she's just a nut. She certainly acts the part with all her leaping from buildings and whatnot.
"Thanks." Cyril says cautiously. "I didn't see you there…"
"I've been here for a bit. I thought this might happen." Byelth says. She doesn't realize it, but she's standing uncomfortably close to the boy. Personal space is not a concept she understands all that well. Her fixed smile is enough to unnerve most people, let alone this or any of her other oddities. "Be careful, you can't always rely on me being nearby…"
"Noted." Cyril says. He takes a slow step backwards, and his back meets the statue. He feels cornered, under threat. He wants her gone.
"Do you need help?" Byleth asks softly. She's being totally genuine but, again, her constant smile really doesn't sell that at all. It feels more like a threat considering her expression.
"I'm good." The boy says through a suddenly dry throat. "Totally fine. Thanks."
"Are you sure?" Byleth leans down so that they're eye-to-eye, which really doesn't help because it just brings her face uncomfortably close to his.
"Yep." Cyril squeaks. "Please leave…" He thinks. "And don't stab me."
The lady pulls back. "Alright. If you-" She stops in the middle of her sentence, and suddenly swings a fist in his direction. Cyril flinches instinctively and raises his arms. He hears a crash, an impact against stone, and suddenly he's drenched in soapy water. He's not dead though, so he peeks out from around his arms.
Byelth's fist has smashed into the front of the statue, chipping some of the stone from the sheer force behind it. The broken remains of his cleaning bucket (which had been up on the top of the statue a moment ago) lie around them, completely destroyed in one punch. It must have just fallen, maybe Cyril hit it on his own way down and it slowly slid off. It would have hit his head if Byleth hadn't caught it… or demolished it in this case.
"Oh, oops. I suppose you needed that. My bad." Byleth says, her smile never wavering.
This is all far too much for Cyril. He sits down hard on the ground, his heart pounding. He really wishes he just hit the floor instead of being caught. He would have been healed up by Manuela, nice and simple. There would have been no crazy-strong, creepy woman looming over him and smashing his bucket.
"Are you injured?"
"N-No."
"You don't sound well." Without asking, Byleth scoops the boy off the ground. She doesn't feel as strong as she apparently is. Cyril doesn't feel much muscle. It's just another weird thing about her to add to the list. "I don't know if you're sick, or you're just lying, but I'm taking you to Manuela."
Cyril decides to stay silent from then on. He's not helping his own case by talking apparently. Anything to get this scary lady to just leave him alone…
###
"Professor Eisner." Hanneman begins. The two of them have sat down in the mess hall to eat, claiming one of the tables in the corner away from the main student body. "I have some concerns about your teaching methods…"
"Really?" Byleth hums, and sips her tea. "What issues do you see?
"Well, first there's the constant terrorizing of your students…"
"I did that once, and it was very effective for that matter." Byleth huffs.
"Pardon? Only once?"
"Yes, when I leapt from the rafters."
That was the main thing Hanneman was referring to, but not the only thing. "Yes, well, that is the major instance, but there are multiple accounts of you startling your students by suddenly appearing behind them, or that time you left a note in Miss Von Varley's room, or casually informing your students exactly how you could kill them in any given situation."
"It's important for them to know." Byleth argues. "They're learning to operate in battlefield conditions, and many of my students, all but one, are nobles. Assassination is a constant threat. It's essential for them to be constantly on guard, to be able to see where potential attacks can come from and how to fight back."
Hanneman purses his lips. "That's a rather… depressing way of thinking."
"Pragmatism is much more important for someone in a possibly dangerous position. Nobles, especially important nobles, are in dangerous positions their entire lives." Byleth responds simply. "It's important for you to note that I have a sword at my hip, that your back is to the window which makes you an easy target for a sniper, that any number of the people in this room could be hired by me to help, and that I'm an expert unarmed combatant and could conceivably kill you fairly easily without a weapon at all."
She says all this with a smile. That fixed, fake, unnerving smile that masks anything she might actually be feeling. Hanneman is reminded in that moment that he's taking to a professional mercenary and a trained killer. Almost everything she is and does is designed to keep her alive, and she's teaching her students just that.
Or, at least, that's what Hanneman is assuming. He doesn't know much about Byleth at all beyond that she's Jeralt's daughter, a mercenary, and has some sort of assassin training. They have a trained assassin, a mercenary at that, training their noble students…
Hanneman now worries that she could possibly be bought, but pushes that thought aside. "Even so, your duty is to instruct them, not traumatize them."
"I'm not trying to traumatize them. They're just bad at noticing things."
"Professor Eisner, you may as well be a ghost for all the noise you make moving around." Hanneman says bluntly.
"Ah, good. I haven't lost my touch."
Hanneman shakes his head. "You are missing the point."
"No, everyone else is. Or else they wouldn't be surprised so often."
###
It was a passing comment from Manuela as the two were walking away from a staff meeting. "Your fashion sense is quite curious professor. Not bad, just curious. I'm interested to know if there's a story behind it, because it's certainly unique…"
"My outfit is practical." Byleth says, much to Manuela's surprise.
"How so? If you'll excuse me saying so, it really doesn't look all that combat practical."
"I never said it was practical for combat." Byleth hums. "It's designed to help with assassinations. I have enough armor to protect the easiest parts of my body to hit, like the center of torso, and I have greaves and bracers for some extra simple protection. However, the showing of skin is very important for seduction, and can often give guards pause upon first seeing me which gives me an extra second or two to act which is far more helpful than any armor."
"I-I see…" Manuela didn't think there was extensive thought put into the practical side of her outfit. Clearly she was wrong. "And the cape?"
"It's not what it seems." Byleth murmurs. She offers the end of it to Manuella. The older lady grabs it, and is surprised to find it has a decent weight and rather is rather thick. "The cloth holds a layer of chain-mail. If need be, I can hold it with one hand while fighting to act as a shield. It is not the most effective thing in the world, but still useful. It also gives my back a layer of protection as I fight."
"That seems unnecessarily complicated to me…" Manuela coughs.
"Well, it's also designed so as to be more-or-less appropriate to wear as everyday garb." Byleth adds. "I don't want to be running around in full-plate armor all the time."
"I see." Manuela decides not to comment any further. The mind of a mercenary is apparently beyond her.
###
"You are being unreasonable brother." Flayn huffs. "She is perfectly pleasant. I see no reason to avoid her."
"That is just the issue Flayn, she appears perfectly pleasant." Seteth warns. "Yet, there has been plenty of tales of her leaping from buildings, or startling her students on a constant basis. Supposedly she is a trained assassin. An assassin! Such a profession is inherently unscrupulous."
"Shamir is-"
"A thief, yes, I am well aware. However, she has proven her loyalty time and again. Professor Eisner has not." Seteth says firmly. "While she may be the daughter of Jeralt, we cannot discount the fact that her motivations at any given time are incredibly hard to read. That fixed smile of her is suspicious at best, as are her general tendencies like jumping from rooftops and whatnot."
"She's unique, yes." Flayn says, "but she's nice! She got me that fish I wanted, and she returns a ton of lost items to people!"
"By invading their rooms."
"Well yeah, but she doesn't take or break anything! She's just colorful."
"Colorful, and dangerous."
Flayn didn't notice the hand reaching out towards Seteth from behind until it taps him on the shoulder.
"My goddess!" Seteth startles. He quickly turns in place to face the person. "O-Oh, erm, Professor Eisner. I must ask you to not do that in the future."
"Not try and talk to you?"
"Not startle me."
Byleth tilts her head, still smiling. "I wasn't trying to."
Seteth purses his lips. "Yes, well… fine. What brings you here?"
"Here." She hands a snapped writing quill to Seteth. "This is yours."
"What makes you thin- oh, it is." Seteth coughs. He accepts the broken quill. "Thank you."
"And this is yours." She hands an old wooden hair clasp to Flayn.
"Ah! I was missing this! Thank you Professor." Flayn says, and bows to the woman.
Byleth bows back. Seteth doesn't know if the lady is being polite, or if she's mocking Flayn's formal mannerisms. The fixed smile makes it impossible to tell. This is the core of why Seteth doesn't trust the woman. She's unreadable, but the constant smile makes it seem like she's actively hiding something rather than just having a flat look.
"Seteth." Byleth says to the man. "A correction: assassin training, not a trained assassin."
"Ah." She was listening. He hadn't even noticed she was here. Byleth leaves, moving silently across the stone floor. Seteth shakes his head. "See Flayn? She is very suspicious. She was eavesdropping without our knowledge."
Flayn rolls her eyes. "Yes, yes. I suppose that is true. However, I still think you are seeing malice where ignorance is a viable explanation."
"Preposterous." Seteth huffs. "A woman of her age, ignorant of basic civility?"
"Yes."
The man shakes his head. "That would be colorful, and worrying for completely different reasons…"
###
"Aha! Thank you Byleth!" Alois laughs. "We've been looking for this one!"
The man waves some guards forwards, and they slap shackles onto the glowering man Byleth is restraining, and haul him off towards the dungeon.
"Where did you find him? We've been searching high and low for weeks." The man asks curiously. He's not even fully dressed, this being about midnight.
"He was hiding in plain sight, dressed like a student." Byleth informs him. "I saw him out late and followed him, thinking he was actually a student and I should protect him on his way back to his dorm… and then he left the monastery entirely."
"Ah." The man nods. "So you followed and captured him?"
"Yes." She nods, grinning. "I also found these in his room at the Soaring Crane tavern." She hands over a couple dozen letters.
"Quite the find. Well done!" Alios praises. "It would seem your sneaking skills come in handy for more than scaring the pants of people, eh?"
"Pardon?" Byleth blinks.
"Come now! You can't be totally unaware of how your jumping and sneaking around scares most people." Alios chuckles.
"Well…"
"You don't notice at all, do you?"
"No." She says it with a smile, but her tone conveys some disappointment.
"Ahh… well, it's not too bad." Alios chuckles. "After all, people say I tell bad jokes, but I don't see a problem with them! They're a regular steal as far as I'm concerned!"
He waits, as if expecting a reaction from Byleth. When the girl says nothing, blinking blankly. Alios sighs.
"It's because the man you caught was a suspected thief. A steal, see?" He shakes his head when Byleth still doesn't react. "Ah whatever. It doesn't matter." He reaches out to her shoulder, pauses, and instead ruffles her hair. "You're a good kid Byleth, and a good teacher from what the students say! Even if you do scare the pants off them. Keep up the good work."
Byleth, now with her hair messed up and falling in her face, just nods uncomprehendingly as the man turns about and follows the guards who took away the prisoner earlier. Alios reminds him, in some ways, of the men in her father's mercenary company: loud and fun. Although he seems a bit more childish than anyone she's worked with so far…
###
"Oops."
"Another one?" Catherine chuckles as she watches Byleth drag another broken training dummy off to the side
"Yes."
"You do know the goal isn't to destroy the thing, it's just to help you practice where to hit things."
"But the neck is where I hit things." Byleth says. "And there's no armor there…"
"The neck is a pretty small target." Catherine warns. "A thrust is likely to miss, and trying to swing a sword there is usually just going to have it bounce off a pauldron most of the time."
"But it also kills them."
"Well yes, I suppose it does, but you can also just aim for the head instead."
"Skulls are tough. Necks are flimsy." Byleth responds calmly. "There's less to cut through."
"I suppose…" Catherine says slowly. "I won't stop you. You've done fine thus far. I'm just giving you food for thought."
Byleth pulls another dummy into the training area, and resumes practicing. This time she doesn't use a training sword, instead choosing to grab gloves and practice her brawling skills.
You would think with padded gloves on that Byleth wouldn't be able to destroy a dummy, and you would be right. However, she succeeds in something equally difficult: knocking the dummy over. The stand a dummy is on, two planks in a cross, is quite sturdy, so it's a surprise that with a single devastating punch Byleth manages to knock the thing over.
"Oops."
Catherine shakes her head and returns to her own training. "That lady is hopeless, in a brutally powerful sort of way."
###
"Professor."
"Yes?"
"Please don't leer at the priests during ceremonies." Rhea sighs. "And do not accost them afterwards."
Byleth tilts her head. She's smiling, but the head motion is enough to suggest confusion. "I did nothing of the sort."
The two women are sitting in Rhea's private quarters. Rhea called Byleth in only a few hours after a large ceremony, and the girl didn't have any idea why until now.
"Then please, inform me as to what happened." Rhea sighs.
"I was watching him." Byleth says simply. "He was cute, so I tried to talk with him afterwards…"
Reah blinks. "Pardon me. You are saying you were attempting to… flirt."
"Yes."
The archbishop brings a hand up and massages the bridge of her nose. "Professor."
"Yes?"
"Don't do that." She says bluntly.
"Oh…" Byleth is still smiling, but her disappointment is clear.
"I…" The archbishop stops, then sighs deeply. "Professor, I have nothing against you pursuing someone, but please don't terrorize my priests."
"Terrorize?"
"Just…" There's no good way to explain this to her, is there? Rhea settles for something else: "Leave the clergy alone, alright?"
"Okay…"
###
"That's really creepy you know." Sothis murmurs as Byleth leaves the bar.
"Them?"
"Them too, but also you." The green-haired girl says. "It's just eerie how easily you can slip into that persona."
"I have practiced several personas extensively." Byleth says calmly. "So that I may use them to fish for information or infiltrate. That was just one of many. A young, sly, seductive trader, who is not afraid of some fun."
"Sounds like a book character."
"Yes. The more generic you are, the less people will remember you." Byleth nods. "It was a persona my mentor used as well. She based it off the Annas, so as to stand out even less. While I did not here, it was common practice for her to use red hair dye when assuming the persona."
"So what did you actually learn? It just looked like to me like a bunch of thugs badly flirting with you."
"Remember when I asked the blonde one about the tattoo on his neck?"
"Yes."
"An eagle. That's the national symbol of Adrestia." Byleth says. "The burly black-haired man got agitated upon seeing it. Either he's not Adrestian, or discontent with the government there. Also, the man with the eagle tattoo mentioned that many of his friends also have it. A gang tattoo most likely. Perhaps with nationalist ideals of some sort."
"Oh." Sothis's eyes widen. "What a strange thing to find close to Garreg Mach…"
"Indeed." Byleth murmurs. "And the black-haired man? While drunk, he enunciated more than the others, and rarely used contractions. A noble, or at least someone of standing. Strange to find such a person in a bar that does not cater to them."
"Why was he there then?"
"I am unsure." Byleth admits. "He was resistant to my attempts to pry, despite desiring my attention. He has to keep something quiet, confidential." She's quiet for a moment, then murmurs. "That is assuming, of course, he and the tattooed man are not on the same side. Perhaps he was agitated because the tattooed man was revealing something telling."
Sothis shakes her head. "I'll admit, that's rather impressive. You figured all that off one tattoo and an ugly look?"
"As well as other clues. I am simplifying my observations."
"And all you had to do to get them was get molested."
"Yes."
"You're very calm about this."
"I could have killed them all in seconds if I needed to." Byleth says.
Despite being used to this by now, Sothis is still a bit unnerved how the lady can casually talk about killing half a dozen people with a smile on her face. Yes, she always has a smile on her face, but it's still creepy.
"Sorry, I have to handle this."
"Wha-?" Sothis begins to ask, but she's interrupted by Byleth suddenly turning around while whipping out her sword and running through someone who was sneaking up on her. The man is the black-haired, possibly noble man that she was flirting with in the tavern. A knife slips from the man's hand as he slides of Byleth's sword and lands dead on the ground.
Sothis watches in blank shock as Byleth calmly rifles through the man's pockets, taking a wallet, quill and ink case, sealing wax and stamp, and a number of small personal effects like a handkerchief, wedding ring, spare gloves, and a small tin of shoe-shine.
"No identification. Shame." Byleth murmurs. She calmly picks up the man, finds an alleyway, and dumps him there. She messes up his hair and smears a bit of dirt on his clothes, as well as adding some extra small cuts on his arms and torso to make it seem like there was a struggle rather than an instant kill. She also makes sure to put his knife on the ground near his hand. "There, now it looks like a mugging."
"Y-You just stole all his stuff."
"He was going to stab me. Of course I took his stuff." Byleth hums. "Hopefully I can use his things to identify him. If not… well, more money for me."
"Shouldn't you hand this stuff over to the guards?"
"They won't be able to put it to as good use as I will." Byleth says dismissively. "And they would be less subtle about it. Better for me to keep it."
Sothis shakes her head. "Seteth was right, you are unscrupulous."
"I am concerned with what is practical, not what is proper." Byleth says bluntly. "My father's contacts will be far more help in quietly identifying this man and his connections than the guards."
"Wait, your father has special contacts for that sort of thing?"
"More like his mercenary group happens to have a lot of varying contacts on account of it having such a varied crowd." Byleth murmurs. "One was an assassin from Leicester, another a former Faergian merchant, we have several ex-military from Adrestia, a number of reformed criminals, and we keep in touch with numerous former (and active) spies and information dealers."
"That's a lot of different talent."
"Indeed. It is the exact reason why our group is so effective. We always have someone in the group who knows how to handle a problem, or can tell us about what to expect in an area. It's also the reason we frequently took on such dangerous missions. We are one of the few independent groups with the actual skill and knowledge to tackle such things."
"But you're a mercenary group. You get hired, and then kill things. Why do you need to keep in touch with information dealers and spies?"
"Sometimes we were hired to track down dangerous individuals, and we frequently took part in bounty hunts. Information is just as important there as actual fighting skill, else we would never locate them to begin with." Byleth recounts. "We did not gain a reputation as the most skilled and successful mercenary company merely by being expert fighters."
"Merely expert fighters she says." Sothis huffs under her breath as they walk back to the monastery. "The pride of theses mortals."
Umm… not really humor here I guess. It's quite hard to do F!Byleth's style of humor without the students. She's not quite as dense as M!Byleth is, and the other professors aren't ones to be as easily intimidated or freaked out. So instead it's a focus on her peculiar choice of outfit and leaning into the assassin aspect of her character.