The Less Formal, Alternate Summary: Lovino is a badass with a sucky past, Antonio is both hopelessly confused and hopelessly confusing, and (predictably) they don't fight for the same team. Let the games begin.

Warnings: Lots of violence, mild dark themes, filthy language, and one strange cat-and-mouse relationship.

Disclaimed. Hetalia is the property of Himaruya and others.

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Credo

From the first encounter

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A woman gives a short scream of surprise as a laughing man wraps his arms around her waist from behind. A vendor down the narrow cobblestone street boasts of the pears he has for sale. Bystanders attempt to ignore the minstrel playing for spare coins. The witchdoctor coerces a young boy into buying his cures. An aging mother leans out the second-story window of a building and shouts onto the clamor below for her teenaged daughter to hurry back when she finishes with her errands. On a platform, a herald preaches important news to the crowds.

The din of the city diminishes into a muffled fear when the guards, their armor polished and otherwise red attire spotless, pass by on their rounds. The general assembly feels a chill but has largely learned to ignore the sight, as normal as it's become.

Nobody notices the lone figure observing with a scowl from twenty feet above their heads.

Lovino, no longer stock-still on the clay tiles, thinks he's one badass motherfucker - and to give him credit, that title can be well justified. Surviving in Rome with these guards messing everything up isn't exactly a walk through the countryside; the fact that he's done a lot of illegal things under their regime for almost two years without dying should count for something, at least. The other citizens still get shoved around, though, as well as cheated and sometimes killed, and that really pisses him off - hence his career choice.

In a surprisingly graceful fashion, he drops down from the side of the building and lands on the stone without even grunting. A few people notice with murmurs, and he hears one man say, "Well that's an unusual sight!" but he is otherwise ignored as he steps to the edge of the stone rail and looks over the Tiber River. He's staring intently at the giant wall of stone enclosing Castel Sant'Angelo. His lip curves upward into a sneer and he feels his hand reaching for his dagger but knows there isn't a single fucking thing he can do anymore.

(They can't be brought back, and he knows it - but then again, he sure as hell can aim to get revenge.)

Finally, he allows his anger to ebb away and heads south, away from the cold stone and instead towards the Pantheon. His black hood hides his eyes from most of the by-passers - as it should - and he even encounters a few Borgia assholes without being noticed. This gives him a smug sense of satisfaction; those stupid bastards can't even recognize him! It's good that he doesn't have to completely rely on tunnels or rooftops to travel, then, because underground becomes creepy at night and high above ground sometimes freaks him out - he swears he'll fucking break something from a fall, one of these days.

About a block from the Pantheon, he passes a soldier who stares at him a little too long for comfort, and so he quickly ducks into an alley to avoid the trouble. And then, provincially, he sees it.

"The fuck is this?" Lovino asks himself.

It's a poster. A God damn poster. It's easy enough to read - big block letters are screaming DEAD OR ALIVE, after all - but the absolute stupidity of it is what makes him stop and stare. Eventually, he stares long enough to get some sense back, shake his head, and then deftly rip it off and stash it in his belt.

"What the hell is the point of posting my name all over the city if those bastards got my face all wrong?" he mumbles as he stalks away.

"Lovino."

He's still further south, in the heart of Rome, when he hears the tone of the one person whom he wisely doesn't talk shit about. Familiar with the dark corners of Tiber Island like the back of his hand, he slides out of the sun and sits onto the shadowed bench next to the voice. This conversation should be interesting. "Imagine finding a son of a bitch like you here," he casually comments.

"Eloquent, as usual. And please, if you call my mother names, don't treat the consequences lightly: her knife-work is better than most men I know." The tone is dry, but Lovino senses that the speaker is smiling to himself. "Did you see?"

"Way ahead of you. Ass." Lovino hands the poster over.

The figure chuckles and discards it on the dirty ground. He gets to business. "I have a job for you."

"No, really? I just sat down here on accident."

"As do most of the assassins. It takes one to know one, friend - "

"I'm not your fucking friend."

" - and this job should be easy, I promise."

Lovino pauses. If it's easy, he might consider it. "And you're not doing it yourself because...?"

"I have obligations to other organizations at this time." Meaning he doesn't feel like doing it right now, the bastard. "You kill one man and then get out."

"What, you think I'd be enough of a dumbass to get caught?"

"Lovino."

"If you want help, then give me details instead of just stating the obvious, dammit."

The figure stands. "Sometime tomorrow morning," he elaborates, "there will be a new captain, all the way from Barcelona, coming through the western city gate." Pointing across the dirty Tiber River in the general direction of the gate, he continues, "The Borgia have hired him specifically to combat us. I say we send him a personal welcoming committee."

"His name?"

"Carriedo. Not that it matters, you realize."

"And that's it? What's in it for me?"

He crosses his arms, waiting. Apparently, Lovino receives the usual reward for this job: allies, support, protection. Friends, if he was to go that far.

"Eh... what the hell." Lovino also stands. "Consider it done."

There are few things more satisfying to Lovino than killing Spanish bastards for his own pleasure; one of these things is looting their bodies.

Usually.

He growls to himself as he finds only ten florentines in one particular lookout's pocket. What the fuck - he doesn't even have any arrows or bullets on him? He has to find something to shoot at his enemies, dammit, and he sure isn't planning on fucking buying any of his own ammo! Pissed, Lovino picks up the body and tosses it into a storage structure, the cloth flapping in the breeze. Since it's well past midnight and everyone on the street is either in love or drunk, nobody notices.

He huffs in extreme annoyance and sits down cross-legged on the roof tiles. Glancing onto the dimly lit street, he sees the tell-tale flash of red and silver armor and wishes he could jump down to kill more guards. But, God damn, duty calls. Assassinating this particular captain had better be worth his time.

"Hey! Get down from there!"

He briefly glances to his right and spies another guard running towards him from the other rooftop; without even looking, he pulls out his gun and shoots. Apparently, his aim is good (which is a miracle in itself, since most of the time the gunpowder just explodes in his face). He hears the guard swallow his own death-cry before falling - an audible crunch resounds on ground-level. This time, a few civilians scream but still don't think to look upward in Lovino's direction.

"Well la-di-da," he sarcastically says to himself. "Look at all the fucks I give."

Finally, after an obscenely boring wait through the night and into midmorning, his target comes into the city with three guards as escorts. Strutting through the open street, it's apparent he wasn't expecting any trouble on the walk north to the Vatican. Rolling the ache away from his shoulders, Lovino grabs four throwing knives from his pouch and takes aim so automatically that he doesn't even consider that he's ending human life anymore.

From the rooftop, he sees the moment when the blade pierces the captain in the spine and observes how the necks of the guards bend as they fall, their legs going limp. He's used to it now, and has learned to see the beauty in the death of his targets. A few people yell, but overall the busy street maintains its average volume, and no exaggerated commotion is made. Grinning - that had been easy - he jumps down from the roof and heads towards the bodies.

The bystanders (of which there are still plenty) simply stand and watch him, some of them talking to one another in horror and morbid fascination. Not one turns and runs.

The captain is definitely a goner; when Lovino flips him over, his eyes are widened in death and his mouth is forever open in an "O" of surprise. Snorting to himself at the stupid expression, Lovino shuts him up and closes the body's eyelids out of protocol rather than personal respect.

"Requiescat in pace," he deadpans. Briefly, he considers the same respect for the two dead guards, but then figures his time is better spent by -

...Two guards?

Lovino turns around.

The last one, the third soldier he'd counted, is standing there, shaking in his boots and attempting to back into an alleyway unseen. When Lovino faces him, he accidentally squeaks out of fear, and the assassin sees his eyes flash a sickening bright green.

Lovino's own eyes narrow. His right hand flexes for his dagger, but suddenly the guard is sprinting away and out of sight. For a moment, Lovino starts toward him, but then he thinks better of it and stops himself. He should let that fucker be a witness - all the better to catch the Borgia family's attention. Besides, he's not going to just leave these bodies sitting here in favor of chasing some fucking coward.

With that in mind, he turns back around. A few people in the small crowd stumble away when he heads in their direction, but he blatantly ignores them and searches one of the guards' pockets.

Ooh, bullets. Awesome.

After dragging the three bodies to the river and dumping them in without ceremony, he heads south into the countryside of the city to get a little sleep before nightfall. He's actually tired enough that he might be able to overcome his insomnia and crash for a while. The thieves on the outskirts of the country, near the border, have taken a liking to him and his habit of stealing all the shit he can find; maybe there's an open bed in their faction.

The doctor who sells him a sleeping draught sends him a grin, missing a few teeth. "Sweet dreams, signore."

"Sure." Lovino tosses him a few florentines.

With a frown, he notices the bottle is tinted green.

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Notes: (Yes, I know Lovino is a huge jerk in this. It makes sense in context, promise.)

Hooray for historical-AUs. I searched around FFN and didn't find anything quite like this, so here we are.

The setting is largely based off of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (which, as a side note, is literally the best game I've ever played), but since there's very little resemblance to the plot and pretty much none of the characters appearing, it's not going to be labeled as a crossover. Besides, if you got to the end of this chapter and understood everything happening, there really isn't a point in labeling this fic into some obscure corner of the fandom.

But I digress: all the portions and landmarks of Rome described in this chapter and in the rest of the story can actually be identified on some level of historical accuracy. All the details of the papacy and the Borgia family also fit in with real history; if I change something on purpose, I'll mention it.

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