The Rat Assassin

by Corvo


Caught

Caught

Corvo looked up in amazement. The Castle was huge, with towering spires and large walls! Unfortunately, much of it was destroyed. It may not have been the source of the smoke but that was fine, after all, the day was nearing its end and he needed a place to stay for the night.

‘It could’ve probably passed for the Dunwall Tower back in its prime... If not better.’

He walked slowly around the building and, as he did, he remembered his day. He had been thrown into a unknown universe, landed in an unknown forest, knocked out twice, and now, after following a smoke trail, he was walking up the steps of a nice, but wrecked, roomy castle.

‘Not what I usually get up to..but a nice change of pace.’

As he continued his walk around the castle, inspecting the walls and making sure there was no structural damage to the building and that it would be safe to enter. Deeming it safe enough, he walked until he saw the doors to the castle.

They were big. Very big. The doors or, rather, what was left of them, were open slightly, as though someone had left in a hurry. Above them was a seal, two winged unicorns flying in a circle. Between them were the sun and the moon, as if each unicorn represented one of them. Corvo quite honestly scoffed at that idea. Was it some kind of primitive cult? He wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
Well, at this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if this was some elaborate joke by the Outsider.
The seal, like the rest of the door, was cracked with vines growing out of it. Behind the castle’s entrance hall was an incredibly tall tower. It shot up into the air and had an uncountable number of steps lining the way to its entrance, leading into large doors.
















He slowly walked into the ruined entrance hall, closing the door behind him. All that the hall contained was an incredibly strange stone structure. Atop, sat a large orb, also covered in vines. Was there anything in this damn castle NOT covered in plants? On the side, what looked to be stone fixtures jutted out from every side.

‘Odd... A fountain, maybe? Why build such a thing inside?’

Shaking his head, Corvo continued past the hall and made his way to the back door. Exiting, he saw the beginning of the innumerable steps leading up to the tower. As he carefully walked watching for any signs of danger, the sounds of the forest gave way to a tense silence. As he reached the top, the only thing standing between a possible safe haven and him was the smaller, but no less intimidating, door.

With a push that took considerably more force than he thought initially, the door creaked and opened, despite its groans of protest. Carefully, he stepped inside the dimly lit room.

‘Lucky me, the moon is out tonight.’

Continuing inside, he noticed, after looking to make sure the place was relatively free of potential threats, the astonishingly high ceiling. At the very top was a stain glass window that was shattered in places but, from what remained, he easily concluded that the window possessed the same seal that had been over the huge double doors at the entrance hall.

Turning around, he quickly stalked back to the tower door and slammed it shut. Opening his bags, he took a look at what he had with him. A heavily upgraded wheelock pistol, a crossbow, a small number of bolts, some bullets, elixirs, and his trusty sword.

‘Not much, but it’ll have to do...’

Slowly he took out his wheelock, sat down, and began cleaning it. It was an incredibly simple task that didn’t require a lot of concentration, but it helped him think.

‘So, my options so far... I could try to find a shrine to the Outsider and contact him. I doubt he would help me though. I swear, that man... thing would throw me under a railcar if it thought it would be something amusing to watch. I could continue with my smoke plan, but what’s that going to lead to? Either way, there are no guarantees on the table for me ...’

As he sat there, thinking, he finished polishing the barrel of the weapon. He slowly reassembled it, taking comfort in the weight of the gun. Deciding what to do next, Corvo put away his pistol.

He was going to stay here in the ruins and rest. If the smoke was from a fire, it will have stopped by next morning. if it was from a town, however, the smoke should continue rising. Content with his plan, he slowly took off his weapons. Walking over to a corner of the room, he arranged his weapons on the ground for easy access. Once he was satisfied with the arrangement, he laid down and drifted off to sleep as the fatigue of the day caught up with him.



______________________________________________________________________________


Twilight and the the girls continued their trek through the Everfree forest. Pinkie was practically carrying Rainbow Dash who had claimed to be tired on the basis that she had worked a long shift at the weather center.

Most of the girls were both frustrated and tired except for Twilight, who was determined to follow the magical trail they had picked up, and Pinkie, who was always a little bundle of energy.

As they walked down the path, Rarity let out a small moan. “Twilight? Can we stop? It’s gotten dark and I’m getting tired of looking at this forest’s horrid colors.”

Turning her head around, the purple unicorn fixed Rarity with an odd look. “You do know that this could be a threat to Equestria, right?”

“Yes, darling, I know that this could be a threat.. But that’s just it! It could be a threat! What if it’s nothing?”

Shaking her head, Twilight continued following the trail. “It’s not nothing, that’s for sure. Can you feel that? We’re at the end of the trail and there’s an incredibly intense magic here... Be alert, girls..”

Continuing, they started to realize they recognized the general area. They were near Everfree Castle!

‘Did it take refuge in the Everfree Castle? Only one way to find out...’

With that, she amplified the power of her detection spell. Her magical vision expanded until she saw it. The creature. It was in the far tower of the castle, bottom floor. By its movements, she could tell it was sleeping.

“Girls, it’s in there! It’s asleep!” The unicorn shouted with glee.

Fluttershy looked up from the ground and gave an almost inaudible cheer.

Like Fluttershy, Pinkie began celebrating too, raising her hooves in the air and cheering. “We found it! We found it! We found it! Oh, oh! Do we get a prize?!”

As Pinkie cheered, a snoring Rainbow Dash tumbled off her back. “Wha-oof. Hey! What’s the big idea?”

Bouncing up and down, “We found it Dashie! Twilight says it’s asleep!” The pink mare attempted to explain, “So now that i-” But was promptly cut off when Applejack shoved her hoof in the mare’s mouth.

Twilight gave the three mares an annoyed look. “Come on, your shouting is going to wake it up. Now, I’ve come up with a plan. Applejack, did you bring any rope?”

Applejack turned around and proudly pulled a length of rope out of her saddle bags. “Yup, never leave th’ farm without it.”

“Great. Let’s do this!”

_________________________________________________________________________

The six ponies slowly opened the door to the tower Corvo was sleeping in. Tiptoeing in, Twilight prepared her knock out spell to deepen the odd creature’s sleep. Scrunching up her face in concentration, she reached the perfect amount of power and launched the beam. It hit it square in the chest, ceasing its quiet snoring. Panicking, the creature shout in what seemed to be anger as it realized it was being assaulted. Scrambling, it grabbed an intriguing contraption that fired a bolt towards the group before quickly succumbing to the spell.

As it fell to the ground, the bolt slammed into the great stone wall next to Twilight and violently detonated. The mare was violently thrown forwards by the force of the explosion.
Getting back to her hooves, Twilight gazed at the creature in a mixture of awe and fear.

‘That thing just blew a hole through a stone wall with that gadget! The Princess was right, Equestria is in danger! What if there are more of these creatures?’

Turning around, Twilight attempted to walk to the door but promptly fell with a yelp of pain due to a burning feeling in her leg. Looking back at her leg, she gasped. Her fur and skin had been burned to the third degree! The burn went from her Cutie Mark down to her hoof on her right side.

Looking to the door, she called out for the others. “Hey! I knocked it out! I need help!”

Five mares rushed in. Applejack and Rarity ran straight up to the beast and promptly began tying it up, just as Twilight had instructed. As the two mares handled that, Rainbow, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy were looking at Twilight’s wounds. Dash was dumbstruck, switching from staring at Twilight’s injured foot to the attacker’s unconscious body. Pinkie looked like she had been slapped in the face but was doing her best to cheer up a pained looking Twilight Sparkle by telling jokes and offering encouraging words. Fluttershy was disinfecting and dressing the injury on her friend’s leg.

As the timid mare finished dressing her wounds she asked “What happened? We heard a loud noise and I got scared. Are you hurt anywhere else? Did it do this to you?”

Twilight slowly got up, taking care not to irritate her hoof. “When I shot the spell at him, he woke up for a moment and attacked me with some crazy contraption...Whatever he used missed and hit that wall...then it exploded.”

Rainbow Dash fell out of the air after hearing those words. Quickly she scrambled to her hooves and fixed Twilight with a fearful look “Exploded? It tried to blow you up?

Twilight nodded. “It saw me use the spell, I think it got scared.”

Rainbow’s face morphed from one of caution to one of confusion. “It tried to kill you, and your OK with that?

The lavender mare gave a soft sigh. “Lets just get back to the library, I have a spell that will fix my leg up and we can see about this creature. I think I have a book on it.”

Fluttershy looked at Corvo from behind Twilight, and slowly shook her head. “Umm..excuse me Twilight?

“Yes?

“I don’t think bringing the creature back to the library is such a good idea...”

The purple unicorn looked around at Fluttershy. “Come on Fluttershy, what could possibly go wrong? We tied it up right?”

Fluttershy gave a small squeak in response. Shaking her head the unicorn gingerly walked over to Rarity and Applejack. “Almost done?”

The two mares nodded.

Continuing past them she walked over to where Corvo had been sleeping. Looking around Twilight found what she wanted, his items. Gingerly she levitated up his crossbow, taking a careful look at is she saw it was already reloaded and was primed to fire. She slowly put it in her bag along with the wheelock.

‘Wonder how these work...’

Turning around she limped back to her friends, wincing at the sharp pain in her leg. “Let’s go!”

______________________________________________________________________________


Twilight her living room, her leg like new, she had fixed it as soon as she had gotten a hold of the healing spell book.


Pinkie, Rarity and Applejack had already fallen asleep. Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Twilight however were wide awake. Rainbow was keeping a careful eye on Corvo as Fluttershy attempted to take off his mask to get a better look at his anatomy and figure out just what he was. The task was proving difficult due to the unusual number of things on the mask. Buttons, lenses, latches, levers the only thing they couldn’t find was the release.

As Rainbow and Fluttershy attempted to work with Corvo, Twilight was happily fooling around with is unusual weapons. Though she had almost been killed by one of them after having to follow the winding and twisting trail he had left, she harboured no fear for the objects. In fact she was enjoying watching the crossbow reload itself each time she pulled the trigger.

‘If the royal guards had a few of these...’

***Corvo***

Slowly, Corvo came to, as his brain became aware of the ropes binding him he went into high alert. Taking care to remain still, he looked around by moving just his eyes. He didn’t see much but that didn’t matter what he had been wondering about had already been confirmed. Sitting in front of him, watching him like a hawk, was a sky blue pegasus with a rainbow mane.

‘So the encounter in the castle actually happened.’’

Taking care not to move his head, he looked around the room. Spotting Twilight he gave a mental groan.

‘She survived? I thought that I could at least bring one of them with me. But then again I’m not dead, so I suppose killing one of them wouldn’t do much.’’

Slowly as Corvo attempted to look forward again, he made the smallest of movements with his head. Hoping it had gone unnoticed, he waited.

“Twi! It moved!”

‘Damn. So close.’

The one called “Twi” levitated his crossbow over to the table, and galloped over. She quickly pulled a quill and paper out of...nowhere and began writing furiously with the strange levitation spell. Corvo continued to sit completely still, creating the illusion that he still asleep in a futile attempt to keep the ponies from bothering him.

The mare continued her feverish writing, then she transitioned into pulling books off the shelves and looking between Corvo and them. Suddenly she put her hooves on his shoulders and attempted to look him in the eye through the larger lense of his mask. Then in a quiet but excited voice she began firing questions. “Hello? Can you talk? Are you a human?”

Corvo let out a groan, he had been caught.

‘No use in pretending at this point.’

He turned his attention back to “Twi” who at this point looked like christmas had come early. She looked harder into his lens as if it would somehow allow her to see through the one-way glass.

“Oh wow, can you talk? You don’t speak Equestrian, do you?”

Corvo rolled his eyes, a gesture that went unnoticed due to his mask. Ignoring Twilight Sparkle. He looked around the room and turned his attention to the rainbow one, who was conversing with a diminutive butter yellow pegasus that looked at him through wide cautious eyes.

‘She must have been the one messing with my mask.’

His observations were interrupted by “Twi” who at this point had decided that she was better off attempting to physically observe him rather than converse. As the mare poked and prodded him he gritted his teeth.

‘This is getting old. Fast.’

As Twilight continued to observe (harass) Corvo, his annoyance reached a breaking point.
Giving a threatening growl he jerked his head toward the mare. As he did two things happened. First Twilight jumped backward and fell over. Second, the butter yellow mare across the room gave a squeak of fear and attempted to back away from him. Instead she ended up slamming into Dash and the both of them tumbled to the floor.

“Fluttershy! What are you doing?”

“Sorry, Rainbow Dash.”

‘How original...Rainbow Dash. Who'd have guessed.’

Finding the events somewhat funny he decided to tease the mares.

‘Maybe I’ll mess with them a bit.’

Giving a small chuckle at his idea, Corvo set his plan in motion. He cleared his throat and gave a mirthless laugh, looking straight at Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash as he did. What he didn’t know was that he seemed a lot more creepy than mocking. The way he laughed combined with his emotionless mask made him seem terrifying.

As insane cackling died down, he looked to see the effect it had had on the mares. It wasn’t what he was going for; it was better. Rainbow Dash was looking at him angrily, but the anger was just a mask to hide her fear. Twilight looked somewhat startled and Fluttershy was squeezed into a small ball across the room out of fear.

As his lenses made contact with her eyes, she attempted to squeeze into an even smaller ball against the bookshelf. Giving another quite hoarse chuckle, Corvo took care to make sure that his eyes were level and he was staring directly at her.

The he gave a shout “BOO!”

Rather than running away, as he expected, she burst into tears.

Surprised at her reaction Corvo’s jaw dropped. He had wanted to anger them maybe scare them a bit but, this was just unexpected. He watched as the mare quietly sobbed, sitting on her haunches.











Twilight rushed over to her friend and began comforting her. Rainbow got up and walked in between Corvo and the two ponies.

“First you hurt Twilight, now you make Fluttershy CRY? You’re a jerk!” and with that she assaulted Corvo. The so called fight was over pretty quickly with Corvo, holding down Rainbow Dash by putting a knee on her throat. He may have been bound but he had a lot more experience than her in fighting. Rainbow however didn't go down easily. She has delivered a hard buck to his stomach before getting pinned.

Crovo wheezed, attempting to regain his breath from the burst of movement and the buck. Rainbow continued the insults. “You’re a big meanie! I bet you just go around beating up ponies for no reason. We didn’t even do anything to you, and your being mean to Fluttershy. Now let me up and fight like a real pony!”

Corvo looked down at the pegasus, gave an insane laugh, and pressed down on the hollow of her throat. As he did so Rainbow Dash’s struggling became more feisty, until she began sucumbing to lack of oxygen.

Before he could finish the job something caught him off guard. The something was a bolt of magic that slammed into him and flung him backward into a book case. As he slammed into it many of the tomes came tumbling down on his head, and he could do little to stop it.

When the books stopped their assault, Corvo slowly got up to see an angry Twilight.

“It’s fine that you attacked me, in fact that was expected. But nopony, and I mean nopony hurts my friends!”

Sighing Corvo gave a sarcastic remark. “I’m not a pony. Have you noticed?”

Twilight’s glare intensified. “I don’t care what you are. I’m going to call the princess and she’s going to throw you in...in a dungeon!”

Corvo stared at her. "Didn't you try already try that? I mean you only knocked me out and dragged me here for no reason!"

Slowly Twilight’s eyes narrowed. In a mocking tone she attempted to anger him “I bet you're a you’re a bad person where you come from, I bet they banished you so you came here to make other ponies miserable. What did you do? Commit treason?”

Corvo’s eyes narrowed. This pony who knew nothing about him called him a traitor! He was the empress’s personal bodyguard. Not a traitor! This pony who knew nothing about him was accusing him of killing her! This had already happened at home, it wasn’t happening again.

In all actuality Twilight was just trying to get him to feel bad for what he had done, and provoke him.

Corvo stood up and took a step forward. In a quiet tone through clenched teeth he said “Take that back!”

Twilight gave a small smile. “Nope.”

Corvo shook his arms and took out the safety pin that was keeping a part of his ripped sleeve in place. He used it to cut away the ropes, then slowly brought his hands up, mark glowing with an almost blinding light. Fluttershy gave another squeak and jumped behind Rainbow Dash, who protectively wrapped her hooves around her.

Corvo gritted his teeth and began yelling at Twilight, his fear striking tone and words amplified by the ever expressionless mask. “How dare you! They murdered her and you think you have the right to blame me! I was the empress’ personal bodyguard. You have no grounds to judge me on little horse!”

Twilight’s face took on a look of confusion ‘What is he talking about?’ As she pondered this
Rainbow gave a yell. “We’re PONIES not horses!”

Corvo snapped his head toward her. “Ponies or horses you have no right to judge me! You have no idea what I’ve had to do!”

Corvo’s mind raged looking for someone or thing direct his rage at he choose the one who had sent him here. ‘Curse you Outsider! Of all the places you could have sent me you picked here. Insane pony land!’

Twilight ignored her confusion and lowered her horn. “After what you just did to Rainbow and Fluttershy I have every right to judge you!”

Rainbow Dash flew into the air and pounded her hooves together. “Yeah!”

Fluttershy cowered behind a table and whimpered “Please, just leave them alone! Please?” in an almost inaudible voice.

Corvo raised his hand and pointed the palm at them, the mark flaring up even brighter, to a point where steam was rising off it.

“You have no right, not in this matter!”

Twilight’s horn flared up “You have no right to hurt my friends!”

Sending power pulsing down his arm Corvo steeled himself.

‘I’m not going to stand here and be insulted!’


______Author's note__________

Hello readers, Hope you liked the chapter. Big thanks to this guy for editing the story! I want to thank you all for the support so far, also if you have any interesting ideas you think I should include...leave them in the comments, the more raw Ideas I have the more complex and interesting I cam make this fic.
Thanks again!