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The rocking of the train under him was soothing and familiar. It lulled Ezio into that space between wakefulness and sleep where his aches and pains stopped bothering him, but he wouldn't be caught out if the wrong person happened upon him.
It was an express train though, so theoretically he should only have to worry about the conductor.
The man who woke him up wasn't the conductor, though. He was dressed down to fit in with everyone else on the train, with shaggy grey hair that didn't really fit with his apparent age. It didn't quite manage to hide his military stance.
"Aren't you-" he started to ask Ezio, before biting his tongue.
Four men had abruptly stood up from their seats spread around the car, guns waving at anyone who moved.
"No heroes today!" the gunman closest to Ezio barked, holding his gun steadier than the others. "Hands above your heads. We have orders to shoot any who resist."
"Orders?" the grey haired soldier echoed. So he did catch what Ezio had.
"That's enough out of you," yelled another gunman, bringing his pistol down on the soldier's head.
The soldier crumpled and the rest of the car's occupants physically recoiled. They were civilians, each and every one of them, and unprepared to see the violence at the heart of their countries. A couple were even children.
"Didn't I say," said the spokesperson, glaring at Ezio as if there was no one else but them, "to put your hands above your head?"
"Of course, please accept my humblest apologies," Ezio purred, doing as he was asked. He swung his feet off the bench and stood up in a single motion, twitching his wrist just enough to draw attention and allow his sleeve to slip and expose the edge of his braces.
The man was torn between offended at the idea of another man flirting at him in this situation, backing away from the sudden force of Ezio's presence, and confusion about the bracer.
Ezio struck.
An arm around his shoulders to spin him, a sharp punch to the kidney from the back, then tighten the stranglehold until he passed out.
A big guy in armour took out the other gunman now behind Ezio, which left the two in front of him. They couldn't shoot him while he was using their comrade as a hostage, but if he gave them too much time to think, they'd turn their guns past him into the crowd.
So Ezio didn't give them that time. Instead, he dropped his shield and rushed forward, taking them out as quickly as possible. Now if only he had some rope to tie them up.
Even as he had that thought, there came the distinctive sound of alchemy from behind him. When he turned around, the armour man had bound his gunman in what was formerly the bench cushion.
"Can you do the others?" Ezio asked, dragging his two back to the middle of the car. "And could you keep an eye on them untile we get to the next stop?"
"Oh, uh, sure," the person inside stammered. The voice was disconcertingly young for the size of the armour he was wearing, and he seemed to glance at the boy he was travelling with, who had somehow slept through the commotion.
"Bene," Ezio muttered, already moving on. He did what he should have down when he first got on the train and tapped into the ambient alchemical energy, letting it take over his sight in that way that seemed to be unique to him.
The world turned grey, the gunmen showed up red, the armour and the boy showed up white. The other passengers were there too, but dim. They were as expected.
His father had once told him, before his government-ordered murder, that his ability was a family gift. He had told Ezio that what he was seeing was the essence of the soul.
Ezio wasn't entirely sure that was true. For people, maybe, but some objects shone with an importance that was entirely subjective to the situation, while automail rarely shone with the same brilliance as their user.
The armour shone with the brilliance of flesh in a way that made Ezio think there was no body inside it. It was the first real proof he'd seen to his father's 'essence of the soul' theory.
It was also firmly not his business.
There were ten spots of red further up the train and five spots of white, one of which was on the roof. There was also a spot of target gold burning brighter than the rest.
"Stay here," Ezio commanded the huddled crown. "I'm going to deal with the rest of them." He grabbed his coat off the seat from when he was using it as a pillow. He'd enter the next car in the recognisable hood of the Assassins.
It wasn't actually that hard, to take out the hijackers guarding the other economy cars. They were a ragtag group with little training and all fell for the same open door trick. He didn't even kill them.
The first class passenger car was the one he was actually worried about. Really, he'd prefer to go over to the engine, but there was the guy on the roof to present an unknown.
Eventually he decided there was no helping it and exited the car.
The man on that ladder looked at him, dismissed him, then did a double take. "Aren't you The Assassin? Most wanted man in Amestris right now? What are you doing on this train?"
"Travelling," Ezio answered, making it a lascivious as possible in the rushing wind. "There are so many beautiful women to visit in the countryside, don't you think?"
"Right," the man drawled, clearly not believing him. Technically, Ezio hadn't even lied. "Well, as long as you're here to help, I don't really care. The Blue Squad are small time extremists, but it wouldn't do to underestimate Bald."
Ezio tucked the name away and climbed onto the train's roof. He had no time for military men who talked too much and didn't even introduce himself. The force of the wind was even worse on top, but nothing Ezio hadn't dealt with before.
"I'm Maes," the man said, right into Ezio's ear. "You take the right and I'll take the left, we'll take them down as easy as one-two." He'd given Ezio a name and a plan, so maybe he had more intelligence than it seemed.
Climbing down the side of the moving train to hang under the window burned in his already sore muscles, but he gritted his teeth and kept going. It was too late to turn back now.
When he reached through the window to grab his extremist by the lapels, pull him to hang half out of the engine car and hold him there, his recently dislocated shoulder upped its protest. Enough for him to want to just toss the guy.
Then a shovel came out of nowhere down onto his head and he went limp enough for Ezio to feel safe letting go.
He was dragged back inside the engine bay and Ezio gingerly climbed in after him. Both extremists were unconscious, the engineers were looking very smug, and Maes was cleaning a small, serrated knife.
"Only two left," Ezio said, "in the first-class car."
"Bald and his second," Maes confirmed, but Ezio was moving before he finished. It was already hard to move his right arm. He needed to finish this quick.
When Ezio finally made it into the car and let his vision fade back to human normal, he was surprised to find he recognised one of the occupants even with the eyepatch.
"You!" Bald hissed, clearly recognising Ezio in return.
And why shouldn't he, when Ezio was the reason he needed the eyepatch to begin with.
"What luck," Ezio greeted maliciously, "to meet you here."
"You should have died with the rest of your treasonous family," Bald declared, waving off his man. "But since you're here, join us. In the end, the military betrayed us both. Join us and make them pay for their atrocities."
"Petruccio was thirteen when you killed him, and sickly. And I watched you laugh when it was done. Do not pretend to be the victim here."
"If you're not with us, you're against us," Bald howled, raising his arm. It was automail, which it hadn't been the last Ezio had seen.
Ezio's own right arm could barely twitch without agonising pain, but that was no issue. He still had his left, after all. He channelled energy to the array pressed into his bracer, caught Bald's arm in his hand, and allowed the hidden blade there to spring out even as the transmutation was dying down.
The automail shattered, right up to the port.
It could almost be called a slip, that Ezio's strike kept going to skewer Bald through the heart. But it wasn't.
As the body slumped to the ground, Ezio saw that Maes had somehow managed to subdue the other guy while he wasn't looking.
"That was so cool!" One of the child hostages yelled in the sudden relative silence. "How did you do that?"
"Alchemical Embrittlement," Ezio said. He wasn't actually much suited to alchemy, but Leonardo had made sure he could use two particular arrays in his sleep. 'So that you may always have more weapons than your enemies,' he had said.
"Hey listen," Maes said. His face was the very picture of contrite and Ezio knew he wasn't going to like what he said next.
The noise from the train changed while he waited, stopped bouncing off the railbed and the side of the cliff.
"Your help today is appreciated, really," Maes tried. He almost seemed to be fiddling with one of his hidden knives. "But you're still a criminal, so I have to take you in, too."
The noise from the train engine bounced up in that one particular way Ezio had trained himself to recognise in his sleep and he leapt out of the open window while he had this chance. Two seconds either side and he'd have landed painfully on thorny bushes and sharp rocks, instead of a clean dive into the middle of the river.
Morosely, he watched the train speed away high above him. Looked like it would be a while before he made it home to Leonardo and Claudia.