Just a Quiet Touch of Steel.

Chapter 1:

Diamonds

Night reigned over Canterlot.

But not like it used to. It used to be beautiful. It used to be peaceful, it used to be silent. It used to be watched over by the beautiful Princess of the Night, Luna.

Now it was hideous. Lights on in the rich homes, loud shouting. Drinking. The rich becoming richer and the poor crawling through the dust of life and getting from one thing to the next.

The hooded person stood atop a flat-roofed building. Her face was covered by a black mask, only her sapphire eyes visible beneath the black hood. She looked upon Canterlot with hate and malice. The Capitol she had once known was ruined by a corrupt government. Celestia refusing to assist her people in correcting the economy, as she was required to do. There was only one word for it.

Anarchy.

The woman looked at the area within a hundred or so yards of where she stood. Five buildings, two with flat roofing and the others with angled slants, between her and her target. She was after a politician. He had done only what suited himself, only that which would benefit him in his position.

He had to die.

The woman made sure her weapons were secure and ready before she moved. She jumped from the roof of the building she stood on, and landed eight or nine feet below on the next roof. She heard steps and she slipped back down the side of the building, holding on to a ledge. Peeking up above the side, she saw a single guard, carrying a spear, walking back and forth, peering over the edges at the ground below. The woman slid out her weapon, a short blade concealed under her clothing attached to her right wrist.

She waited.

Her target walked to the edge of the roof that the assassin clung to. He looked over, and did not have time to react before the blade inserted itself into his throat and sprayed blood all over the woman and the wall behind her. The guard was heavy, with the armor, and now dead, he was simply that, a deadweight. The woman yanked her blade out, more blood gushing out, and pulled herself up onto the roof as the guard tumbled down to the ground, hitting the dirt with a quiet thud. The spear followed, cracking against the ground, and ringing with an echo between the walls. The assassin jumped to the next roof, an angled one with gray shingles, and latched onto the lightning rod that sprung up from the middle, waiting to see if more soldiers had heard and were coming.

No sound.

The assassin continued along the roof. The next jump was simple, onto another angled roof. She managed to balance herself on the gable, sticking out from the side.

The next roof was too high up for her to simply jump up to the side. Her hand flashed flashed, and she used magic, carrying her body to where she wanted it to go. She disappeared from sight, then reappeared atop the roof. A whistling sound came to her ears. She flipped around, grabbed the spear from the hands of the unprepared soldier, turned the weapon around, and hit the man under the chin with the butt of the weapon. The sharp clack of his teeth connecting was painfully loud, more so for him than for the assassin. He let out a painful yell, and the woman tackled him down, forcing his mouth shut. She opened her hidden blade, and cut open his throat, more blood spurting out, and killing the stallion. The assassin back away from her kill, and jumped away from the edge.

Crouching down, she wiped the blood from her face. It was warm, sticky, and not at all pleasant. She pulled out a cloth from her bag and cleaned her blade. The fabric was brand new, yet it was already coated with red stains.

When she was ready, the assassin stood and kept moving. Her target was in a building just over the next one. Leaving no tracks, she jumped into the air and teleported up to the roof of the next building, and pressed herself flat against the side of the angled roofing. The laughing from the party reached her listening ears. There were drunk people in there. Civilians. People she did not have to hurt. But she still hated them. Rich asses who did nothing with their lives other than suck money out of the poor, and use that money for their own pleasure.

Three windows open in the house, more than likely to let in oxygen for the drunk party-goers.

But a window, in every sense, of opportunity for the assassin.

Her task, to slip in poison in her target's food or drink. Her mission, claim a series of documents in his desk. The difficulty and danger of the mission, relatively high.

But she had to do it. To bring about peace and justice to Equestria. It had to be done.

The woman cast an invisibility spell over herself, and leaped through the window. Unfortunately, none of the magicians had yet found the spell that would cast infinite invisibility, so she had to move fast. She had maybe forty-seven seconds, or, at least, that was what she was told when she was briefed for the mission.

Now, among the dozen or so drunk and happy people, she looked for her window of opportunity. Her target was on the opposite side of the room. He was happily having at a beer, whilst flirting with a pair of maids who looked almost certainly drunk out of their wits.

Had she not been there to take care of business, there almost certainly would have been sexual action later in the night.

But before she could dwell on her victory, she had to emerge victorious.

Using her time wisely, she jumped between two men having a conversation about something she could hardly understand, slipped behind a woman who was alone, and then edged along the left wall toward her target. She positioned herself, counting the seconds she had left. Eighteen.

There was a man in her way.

Seventeen.

Sixteen.

The man moved.

Fifteen.

The assassin jumped, but a drunk member of the party tripped over something and crashed on top of her, flattening her to

the floor.

Fourteen.

Thirteen.

Scrambling up and shoving the person away, the assassin dove under the table that held the drinks and food.

Twelve.

Eleven.

The woman slipped the vial of poison from her bag, gripping it with tight fingers.

Ten.

She rolled out from under the table, jumped up next to her target.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

She popped the vial open, letting the cap fall to the ground.

Six.

The assassin positioned herself next to the politician, waited for his drink to stand still in his shaking, drunken hand.

Five.

Four.

Her moment jumped in front of her.

Three.

She tipped the vial, and several drops of clear liquid dripped from it into the bottle of alcohol.

Two.

The woman slipped the bottle into her bag, dropped back to the ground, and rolled under the table once more.

One.

The assassin watched her body become visible once more. Now, she had merely minutes to get out of there before the man was dead and she was discovered.

The talking and laughing and random singing going on in the room had suddenly become much lower. Wary, she check her hood was still up, and she peeked up out of the cloth covering the table.

Three armed guards had come into the room.

Damn.... the assassin thought. This wasn't expected. She was told it was a private party, and she was to get in, kill, filch, and get out. Now, if the soldiers stayed for too long, her target would die under their watchful eyes. The soldiers were mostly certainly not drunk.

One pair of people had become a bit excessive in their attraction, and were kissing fondly, while the man gripped his prey tightly and was pulling her toward one of the several bedrooms in the house.

The woman waited for her chance. The soldiers were walking among the people, who had begun laughing and talking once more, their slurred, drunken voices echoing back and forth against the walls of the house. The assassin waited, and eventually the soldiers disappeared from sight. She glanced around the room from under the table, and then jumped up, and dashed into the office containing the politician's desk, and, more than likely, her target.

Quietly closing the door, she made for the desk. Several draws were closed, but two were open, both full of manilla folders, which in turn were filled with papers. The assassin rifled through the documents until she found what she had been looking for. She yanked the pages from the drawer, and tucked them under her clothing. She turned to leave, but another item on the desk caught her eye.

Two words across the folder:

Algorithm Project.

The assassin opened the folder, and the first page had the word CLASSIFIED stamped in large red letters across the top.

Reason enough. She took  the folder and placed it with the first one, and then heard a hefty thump.

Her target was dead. A few harsh screams were heard, and among those a bit of boisterous laughing.

Several thuds and footsteps were heard, quick and heavy. The assassin opened the door, and was immediately surrounded by three heavy spears.

The soldiers had come back.

“Damn it all.” she whispered to herself.

“Look here, stupid girl, you see what you did? You just got yourself a life sentence to prison.” The guard moved to grab her hands, chain manacles in the other. The woman slapped away his hand and drew her sword. It was a pure silver blade, set with a diamond in the pommel and her code name printed in a foreign language along the blade.

The soldiers laughed and advanced toward her. She knocked away the spear of one man, kicked him, hard, directly in the crotch, and swung her sword around to guard her other side, all in just a few moments. The one she had kicked was moaning and clutching his genitalia, lying on the ground.

The other two soldiers backed away a few feet.

“Got a bit of a fight in you, huh?” One said. “Maybe I can relieve some of that when we're done here. You have a nice body there...” he dropped his spear and pulled out a long knife. The other soldier re-gripped his hands and aimed the spear at her chest.

The woman flexed her hands. “My body is my own and not for you to touch, with your blade or with your hands.” She swung her sword wildly in the direction of the one who had been speaking, forcing him to jump backwards to avoid her blow. The other soldier was not so prepared, and his spear was sliced in half by her sword, and then his throat pierced by her hidden blade. The woman pulled the sharp edge free of his flesh, and let him fall, clutching his throat, attempting to live for a moment longer. The last soldier charged her, a stupid decision in all aspects. She flicked her sword up, blocking his strike and forcing his blade to glance upwards, and jammed her hidden blade into his lungs as his momentum carried him past.

A moment later she heard the thump as his body fell.

She turned and looked at the carnage. The party-goers were watching, silently. Then, one at a time, they all began clapping and cheering, as though it were some wild performance brought in to entertain them. They would have some surprises in the morning.

Quickly, the woman started walking away, when something latched onto her ankle. It was the soldier she had injured but not killed. She kicked away his hand, and stabbed him to death with her sword.

Bounding across the room, she jumped back out the window she had entered in, smiling at the laughing and talking people, thinking they had been entertained.

The assassin landed on the roof below, and slipped underneath the eaves of the roof.

She checked the folders and made sure they were safe, checked her weapons again, and then disappeared into the night.

The laughing continued from the building, for long after she had disappeared.