Under The Venice Sky.

The sun was just beginning to go down, turning the kilometres of canals that wove in and out of the improbable city a shimmering orange, as if they were on fire. The streets were filled with people, respectable and not so. The former were hurrying to finish their last errands before retreating inside; the latter were waiting for the streets to clear so that they could offer their services, picking pockets and slitting throats for a low price. The whores were beginning to gather on the corners, hitching up their skirts and pouting their lips, all competing for the men with the deepest pockets. The air was filled with aromas of all kinds, from perfume to sewage to blood from slaughtered chickens. For those not accustomed to it, breathing was a challenge in itself.

The man who stood four stories above the ground had no such problem breathing in the mixed stench that was Venice. He was completely used to it, having roamed it for nearly six years; to him, the Venice air was just that. Air. He'd consorted (both for business and personal use) with enough whores to no longer notice their flowery colognes or the wax scent of their makeup. The canals had provided him with enough refuges so that the murky water no longer bothered him and as for blood?

The answer to that was found in Ezio Auditore's eyes, filled with twenty six years of murder and death, many of which had been by his own hands. He no longer remembered how many men he had slaughtered, tearing open their throats with one deft flick of the wrist or disembowelling them with a quick thrust. They had all blurred together into one mass of sprawled limbs and pools of congealed blood.

Crouching, he surveyed the street, his vision adjusting accordingly as the sun went down. The group of prostitutes directly below him worked for a mutual friend, Teodora, who owned a brothel on the west side of the city. Over the last week, no less than six of her girls had turned up dead, raped with their throats slashed, all the work of one man. When Teodora had asked Ezio to intervene, he had immediately agreed; people who went after women, regardless of their profession, absolutely sickened him, even more so than the rest of the scum that could be found in Venice. From his position, he was invisible to most of the guards in the surrounding area, but he could also keep a close eye on the girls. It was only a matter of time before one of them was hired; indeed, it was only five minutes after he took up his position that they were approached by a man of small stature, his face hidden underneath a plumed hat. Within seconds, he was leading one of the girls away across the nearby plaza and towards a section of the neighborhood that was dark.

Ezio was right on top of them. Silently, he stood up and leaped across the street, catching the edge of the adjacent roof in his fingertips. He was only clinging for a brief moment before he was running again, boots gliding over the tiles, eyes still on the prostitute below. He easily jumped across another gap, a mere shadow to anyone who happened to be looking up before quickly shimmying down a floor, perching on a windowsill. The girl and her customer were directly underneath him now, so close that he could hear the quiet coos between them.

He was also close enough to see the tell-tale flash of metal just before it drove into the girl's throat, turning the scream on her lips into a wet gurgle. Ezio was flying through the air before the man even pulled the knife out of her flesh, his own blade descending through the back of the murderer's neck into his spine. With one quick twist, the man was dead, blood spewing from his lips in great clumps as he collapsed. For the moment, Ezio kicked his body aside and turned his attention to the girl. She was weakening quickly, her throat gaping open like a second mouth. Although he was fairly trained in healing himself, there was nothing he could but gather her up into his arms and hold her until she stilled. When that happened, he shut her eyes and whispered a quick prayer.

"Requiescat in pace." Although part of him felt sick at doing so, he repeated the ritual with the murderer before picking up the girl's lifeless body and hurrying through the streets with it, taking back alleys to avoid the gaping stares from the citizens. His eyes sporadically flicked from side to side but he was more relying on his ears to alert him to any suspicious guards in the area.

If Ezio had been paying more attention with his eyes, he may have seen the big blue box that had seemingly appeared out of thin air in the middle of a small plaza. As it was however, he quickly rushed by it, not noticing either the box or the three persons that quickly stepped out of it; two very bewildered and one gleeful, throwing his arms into the air as he spun around once on the spot.

"Amy, Rory, welcome to Venice!"