Masks of Anarchy, A Dishonored Fiction Options

[Colonel Mustard]

Yep, this is a Dishonored story. For those of you unfamiliar with Dishonored, I'll do my best to provide enough background for it as I write (also, seriously, play this game), but it'll also be departing from the main storyline at points. We'll see how it goes.

Finally, Liz, I just want you to know that this story is all your fault.


Masks of Anarchy

Chapter 1

One of the most fascinating things about life is, I find, beginnings. The 'what' may be the meat of the matter, but every what is preceded by a 'why'. Why is this so, and not that? Why did such events proceed in such a way?

The what that I speak of is an interesting one. Fascinating, in fact, a few short weeks of anarchy and revolution when an empire hung in the balance, when the fate of millions was held in the hands of just a few. But why this happened, where it started, is a question that is difficult to answer.

Perhaps, you might say, it began with the whales and with Esmond Roseburrow, with the oil that which made Dunwall's fortune and poisoned the city. Perhaps it started with Hiram Burrows' plot against the poor. Perhaps it started when a man outside Dunwall's designated infection zone grew sick with a fever, on the day that it passed when he wept blood and stumbled from his home without a mind. Maybe it was the day Jenny Aching first put on her mask and ran through the night streets of Dunwall with a smoking pistol in her hand and blade soaked in a watchman's blood. Or perhaps it began with a shot fired by Lucas Cornell, a shot that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

These are all small reasons why the momentous events of Dunwall's most tumultuous weeks began. Why the major players took to the stage. There was one moment when the alchemical formula of these events were poured into a catalyst, a day when it all came to a head, when the blood of an empress was spilled, when an oath of vengeance was taken, when conspiracy came to a head, that all of these small whys came together in that one moment where the lever tipped on the fulcrum and everything changed.

Sit back, dear reader, and let me tell you a tale.

The whaling ship was a predator just like its prey. Huge, unwieldy, slow, lumbering, yet dignified and majestic in spite of this. Coasting along the Wrenhaven Estuary, a dying leviathan trussed up in its slaughter-harness, butchers scurrying across its body like flies.

For Corvo Attano, there was no stronger reminder that he was back in Dunwall.

The engine of the small boat he was in puttered as it made its way towards Dunwall Tower, hull cutting through the water and the technicolour membrane of industrial scum that smothered the river. He ignored the chatter of the driver and ship's officer who shared the boat with him, focussing his gaze on the city on the far bank, the squalid sprawl of brick houses and factories, grubby and tight-packed as a rat's nest. Behind him, on the near shore, the fortification of white stone that was Dunwall Tower rose up high, gleaming in the weak morning sun and stark contrast to the rest of the city.

"Mind if I ask if you brought back any good news on the plague, Lord?" the driver asked. "Been all we've been talking about back here in Dunwall."

"Classified," Corvo replied, his hand touching the left side of his breast where the letter lay in the inner pocket of the indigo coat he wore. "Empress' eyes only."

"Yeah, thought so," the man shrugged, the epaulettes of his City Watch uniform rising and falling with the movement. "Can't blame a man for asking."

He cut the engine as the boat drew towards a tower in the side of fortress-palace, drifting through the doorway in its side, leading out to the water. As the boat came through, prow bumping against the far wall, Corvo scanned the waterline on instinct, looking for places where potential intruders might climb up and into the palace.

"Ho there!" the officer called up. "Bring us up!"

"Getting her ready!" someone else replied, hidden from view by the long square pit between the entrance and the rest of the building. "Turning on the pipes...and she's rising."

Water gushed from pipes and faucets in the walls, spray splashing up from other side and causing the boat's three occupants to raise their arms to protect themselves.

"I hate this damn system," the driver grumbled as they rose. "Couldn't they just use a winch or something? Gonna stink of riverwater for the rest of the day."

Corvo remained silent, blinking away the spray that had collected on his lashes as the water elevator came to a halt. The room he had entered into was one he did not recognise, nor indeed did he recognise the tower that they had scaled in scant moments, something between a boathouse and a pumping room. With disapproval, he noted the lack of spotlights on the water around the building's base, the absence of armed guards and the fact that no challenge had been given; laxity had grown in his absence. He would take it up with Jessamine later; he knew that her response would most likely be to laugh and tell him that he hadn't changed a bit, but she would implement his recommendations nonetheless.

The guards on duty, clad in their distinctive domed helmets and indigo uniforms much like his own, saluted Corvo as he passed them, the Lord Protector returning the gesture with a nod as he stepped onto the white stone bridge that connected the pump house with the rest of Dunwall Tower. He had no time for formality, no time for anything else, simply getting the message to Jessamine as quickly as possible. He knew that today would be a busy day, that there would be much planning for the days and weeks and months ahead and that he would be needed-

The young girl dressed in white who appeared at the far end of the bridge cut off that train of thought in a moment. Although he was not a man who smiled often, Corvo smiled as she ran into his open arms, lifting Emily Kaldwin up as if she weighed nothing, whirling her around him and pulling her close for an embrace. She kissed him on his cheek, ignoring the rough stubble that he had lacked the time to shave off that morning, hugging him close before Corvo finally set her down.

"I can't believe you're back!" Emily declared, smiling and bouncing on her feet. "What was your journey like? Did you see any whales? Were there pirates? What was Morley like, and Serkonos and Tyvia? Was there anyone with an eyepatch and a peg leg? Did you-"

Corvo held up a hand in an attempt to stem the flow of questions.

"Later, Emily," he said. "I promise I will answer all of your questions later."

"Right, right, of course," Emily nodded, enthusiasm barely dented. "I want to hear all about it, though. Can we play hide and seek, then?"

Corvo blinked; he had forgotten how Emily would sometimes jump from subject to subject with the same ease and swiftness as a veteran sailor clambering between ropes.

"Later," he said, the letter in his pocket like an anchor dragging him to duty. Emily's face fell.

"Promise?" she asked.

Corvo's finger traced an 'X' over his heart, and Emily smiled. In her eyes, that was as good a promise as an Overseer's oath taken in Holger Square, and with the reassurance that they could play her favourite game later, she took his hand.

"Come on," she said, hurrying along with Corvo in her wake. "Mother's in the garden, talking to that nasty old spymaster again."

It was a strange sight; a tall, olive-skinned Serkonan in the navy greatcoat of the Lord Protector, sword at his hip and an oil-lock pistol across his belt, being lead by the hand by a ten year-old girl in a white dress, towards the gardens of Dunwall Tower. There were a few guards that saluted him on his way, though they remained carefully expressionless at what they saw. Only one person on their route saw fit to address them.

"Corvo, back two days early, I see. This is certainly a surprise."

The countenance of the man who spoke was cruel, craggy features harsh and merciless as a sea gale, grand and intimidating in the crimson uniform of the High Overseer, leader of the Abbey of the Everyman and holiest man in Gristol. His likeness was taking shape on a canvas before him, formed by the brush of the bearded painter at work, the famed inventor and artist Anton Sokolov.

"Campbell," Corvo nodded. "My work was done ahead of schedule. There was no reason to delay."

"In any case," Campbell said. "Welcome back."

The words were insincere, formalities and nothing else; neither Campbell nor Corvo had any love for each other, and the Lord Protector couldn't help but wonder what the High Overseer was doing at the tower. Having his portrait taken, of course, but that could have been done anywhere.

"Stop moving, Campbell," Sokolov grumbled from his painting. "And Corvo, welcome back from wherever you've been."

"All across the Isles," Campbell said. "Begging the other nations for aid in dealing with Rat Plague."

"My elixir has that problem solved already," Sokolov said dismissively. "Now keep still, High Overseer."

"I'll leave you both to that," Corvo said as a farewell, letting Emily lead him on towards the garden.

"Is it just me?" she asked as they headed up the white steps. "Or does that painting not look much like Campbell?"

Any answer Corvo would have given died on his lips as they entered the small garden of Dunwall Tower. Beneath a domed pavilion supported by pillars of white stone, Empress Jessamine Kaldwin stood in argument with Hiram Burrows. As always, her attire was businesslike, a black jacket and white shirt, a high, ruffed-collar surrounding her neck, laced edges brushing the bun that her black hair was pulled into.

"They are sick people, not criminals," she was saying to her spymaster, a look of anger on her face.

"We have been over this before, your Majesty," Hiram said. "It moved past that point long ago."

"And what do you suggest?" Jessamine asked. "Besides, of course, mass murder of my people? That is not happening, Hiram; they are my citizens, and while there's hope of saving them there shall be no killing."

"Mother!" Emily called, hurrying to Jessamine's side. "Corvo is back!"

Jessamine glanced over her shoulder, and her face lit up as she saw Corvo, the Lord Protector bowing his head in acknowledgement.

"Spymaster, please leave us," she said. "And we shall not talk of this matter again."

"Of course, your Majesty, I suspect that we shall not," Hiram said, bowing low and stepping away. As he passed Corvo, he added; "Lord Protector."

"Spymaster."

With Hiram gone, Jessamine turned to the Lord Protector. There was eagerness in her eyes, tempered with a quiet, carefully concealed desperation, hope for a solution to the problem that was threatening to swallow Dunwall like a whale gulping down a shoal of hagfish. The look on Corvo's face as he handed her the letter quashed that hope even before she broke the seal.

Her expression darkened as she read, and after a moment, she let it drop on the floor.

"They're blockading us," she said. "They'll take no Gristol ships into their ports. They'll wait to see if we die of the plague or not, and they'll hasten the job by starving trade. I knew that this mission was a fool's hope."

She sighed a sigh that bubbled with frustration.

"Void take them," she said. "Every last one of the cowards."

"Mother, what's wrong?" Emily asked, tugging at the tail of Jessamine's jacket in worry. "Why are you sad?"

"I'm not, dear," Jessamine said. "I'm just...just tired after a busy morning, that's all."

The look on Emily's face showed that she believe that lie no more than she believed the sky to be pink, but she remained silent, resolved. Over the head of her daughter, Jessamine shot Corvo a despairing look, and the Lord Protector shrugged as if to say; "We'll work something out."

"Mother," Emily suddenly spoke, breaking out of her embrace with Jessamine and pointing to a rooftop. "Who's that, over there?"

In the distance, dark figures figures flitted over the tiles of Dunwall Tower's rooftops, moving from one place to another with unnatural speed. Every movement seemed swift and certain, potent with an undeniable malice, and Corvo's expression darkened as he saw the darting figures.

"Get behind me," he ordered, drawing blade and oil-lock. "Who in the Void are these-"

He was cut off when one of the figures appeared before him. Somehow the trespasser materialised from empty air, a figure in a gas mask and dark rain slicks arriving as if from the Void itself. Some men may have stopped at that moment, shocked by the impossible sight, but Corvo raised his pistol and fired the moment the attacker came into view. They reeled back in a cloud of black ash and from the side of his vision Corvo saw another enemy lunging for him.

Wheeling around, flipping the grip of his pistol in his hand so that he held the barrel, Corvo dodged the stab and smashed the firearm's butt into the throat of the assailant. They toppled to the floor, choking and wheezing, and Corvo ignored them as he turned to face a third, dodging a slash that would have taken his head from his shoulder. The Lord Protector grunted in pain as it scored a red line across his arm, parried the assassin's backswing and slammed his own blade into the man's gut.

Another stab sliced towards him from nowhere, Corvo whirling out of the way of the blade even as it sliced a red line across his side. His response was to slash across the attacker's throat, head flopping back with a spray of viscera as windpipe and tendons were severed.

No mortal force could have stopped Corvo Attano that day; even as fresh attackers appeared around the Lord Protector, he fought, blade weaving around him in an arc of graceful lethality. He was like a machine, a machine of terrifying precision and grace and fuelled a terrible determination to protect Emily and Jessamine with his life.

What stopped Corvo Attano was no mortal force.

Something grabbed him, an invisible hand that picked him up and pinned him to a pillar. He couldn't move, vainly attempting to struggle against the eldritch power humming in the hands of an assassin in a red coat. He couldn't even open his mouth as another figure, a killer without a gas mask, ripped out of thin air, blade in hand.

"Get back," Jessamine yelled, pushing Emily behind her. The assassin reached for Jessamine, and she slapped him away. The killer's free hand, encased in a glove of black leather, grabbed her wrist.

Blood spattered on the white stone floor of the gazebo as his blade stabbed into her midriff. Emily tried to break free but the killer who had Corvo pinned grabbed her around the waist, hoisting her up as the girl kicked and struggled.

"I've got her Daud, let's go!" the assailant said, a woman's voice audible even beneath the mask.

The man who had killed Jessamine glanced up at Corvo, and the Serkonan made a vow that the next time he looked upon that man's hard features, he would bury his blade in his heart. "Leave him."

The power holding Corvo in place abated, and he collapsed to the ground as the killers disappeared. Scrambling on his hands and knees, he hurried to where Jessamine was fallen, scooping her up in his arms, fingers scrabbling for a pulse as he muttered barely-audible denials. There, a beat, faint and feeling transient as a summer snowflake. She lived, she breathed. There was hope.

"Corvo," she managed to breathe, eyelids fluttering open. "Corvo, you need to...need to find Emily. Keep her safe. You're the only one who can...help her. Please."

Her eyes closed, the final beats of her pulse fading. Corvo tried to speak. He tried to form words, tried to say something, anything, make some final farewell.

The man who had been duelling with the skill and lethality of something born of the Void mere moments before, hadn't a single word to say.

When he looked up, he stared down the barrel of a musket. He blinked in surprise, at the Watchman who held the weapon and the platoon of his comrades who had fanned out around him, the maws of their pistols and muskets all gaping at Corvo like hungry predators. There were two more officers of the watch behind him, pistols in one hand, swords in the other, and behind them, Thaddeus Campbell and Hiram Burrows.

"He...he killed the Empress!" Burrows exclaimed, the tone on the Spymaster's voice so shocked that it could have been genuine.

"Her own bodyguard as well," Campbell added. "Ironic."

"Arrest him! Arrest him at once!" Hiram ordered. "Take him to Coldridge, immediately!"

Perhaps Corvo could have made it out of that situation. He was a seasoned killer, a veteran of combat, swift and lethal as an elyctric bolt from an arc pylon. Perhaps he could have fought his way free, dodged and rolled and evaded the bullets and blades, made his escape into the intestinal tangle of Dunwall's streets. A Corvo Attano who was not numb with shock, who had not seen his world crashing down around him in a single cataclysmic moment, might have achieved this. The Corvo Attano who lay on his knees, steeped in the blood of himself, assassins and the Empress, was not this man.

The hilt of a sword crashed against his temple, and darkness swallowed him like the Void.

[Colonel Mustard]

Thanks for the reviews, everyone!

Liz: Well, I hope it'll be a good introduction to the realm of Dishonored fanfic (if you want more, check out Diplomatic Gestures over on FF.net. Quality story).

Rohirrim: ALL THE THINGS ARE BEING WRITTEN RIGHT NAO!

Zalph: Thanks very much!

HER: Dishonored is a first-person supernatural/steampunk RPG vidja game which can basically be described as the result of Deus Ex and Thief having a baby and asking Bioshock and Half Life 2 to be the godparents. It's hella good.

Yay, you could follow it! I'm trying to write this to be accessible to both those who've played the game and those who haven't, so I'm pleased to hear you weren't lost.

Though I must ask: SGM?

M.C. Badgere: Dishonored is an awesome game, but it can be pretty damn hard (unless you're me, as I am Steampunk Batman and an unstoppable, unseeable entity of great power and great mercy ). Thanks for the kind words, and I hope you enjoy the rest, though it's going to be diverging wildly from Dishonored's storyline.

KC: Aw, you missed it just as it started to get really good Thanks for reading, though!

Chapter 2

Two Months Later

"You really are too kind, my dear," the old woman said as Jenny Aching handed her the basket, filled with enough food to last her the next few days. "Sometimes I simply don't know what I would do without you."

"That's me, Granny Rags," Jenny replied with a smile. "Looking out for people, that's all."

The old woman nodded, only half hearing what Jenny said. She clutched the basket in her hands like it was something sacred, a claw of brittle bone and pale skin closed around the handle.

"I have no idea how much it means to me, Delilah," she said. "You staying on with the household after all of the other servants left us, and all so suddenly. I must give you a raise some day; it's so hard to find servants as loyal and hardworking as yourself. I don't know how I'd manage in a house this size without your help."

Jenny looked up at the crumbling three-storey house that Granny Rags called home, a dying edifice of peeling plaster and rotting masonry. The third floor, she knew, was inaccessible since the staircase had collapsed under the weight of time, a combined effort of entropy and gravity bringing them down. Once again, she found she lacked the heart to correct the old woman.

"It's what I'm here for," Jenny said. "Do you need anything else, Granny Rags?"

"No, no, my dear, I'm quite alright," Granny rags shook her head. "Since you've been working so hard lately, why don't you have the night off? Here." She fished into her pocket and brought out a slightly bent bottlecap from a bottle of Thirsty Greg's beer. "Just a little tip for all of the hard work you've been doing."

"Thanks, Granny Rags," Jenny said, giving as gracious a smile as she could as she pocketed the small disc of metal. "Let me know if you need anything else."

"Of course, Delilah" Granny Rags said with a wrinkled, faded smile. Jenny had never worked out why the old woman called her that, but guessed that Delilah must have been a maidservant of hers from when she had once been rich. "Off you go now, and have a nice night."

Jenny gave the old woman a smile and a wave as she stepped away onto the street, heading away from the old distillery, towards Clavering Boulevard. She got one or two odd looks as parted from the old house, from locals who knew about the old woman and street kids who thought she was a witch. Most people knew her as the girl who lived nearby, who helped the sad, senile old lady who lived alone in that crumbling house, a respectable local girl, one of their own lot. Even the Bottle Street gangers who loitered around the area gave her a nod as she passed; the last one who had given her trouble had ended up with a knife at his throat and a threat that his balls would be cut off. That had earned her the sort of don't-[censored]-with-me reputation that violent men like them could respect.

Down the street went Jenny Aching, hard working girl and respected local lass. The sun was creeping towards the horizon and curfew approaching, but Jenny wasn't heading home. Chances were, she would be up all night.

She traversed a few more streets of the Distillery District, tall and thin houses of crumbling brick looming over her on one side, setting sun casting triangular rooftop patterns of grey and orange across the cobbles as if the shade had teeth. On the other side was the banks of the Wrenhaven, the breeze carrying the faint scent of sewage and whale blood.

She stopped at where a barrier of indigo steel was raised, cutting across the street like a cleaver. The houses on its side of the street had doors and windows blocked by the same metal, and the barrier extended out a little to the river, making sure that none could climb across. On the wall, someone had posted a notice; "Danger. Plague zone. No trespassing. By order of the City Watch, those seen entering or leaving this area will be shot."

Jenny simply checked that there was nobody about, but aside from a vagrant huddled sleeping in a bundle of rags in a nearby doorway there was nobody. No one wanted to live on the border of a condemned zone.

With a slight thump, she slid onto the rocks below, careful to keep her footing on the algae-slicked stone. She had done this a hundred times now, reaching for a chain that dangled on the far end of the wall with a strategically hooked stick. She hooked it on her first attempt, pulling it close to her, and hoisted herself up. Kicking off the wall, she swung around its far edge, swooping over the water where patches of rubbish floated like scabs,

Her boots scudded against the bank, onto cobbles much like the ones on the other side, these ones slick with algae. Once she was sure she was steady, she released the chain, pushing it to give it a little help in swinging back around to its original resting place. Reaching into her satchel, Jenny drew forth her pistol. Carrying it in her day to day life was risky, and if a Watchman found it on her such a thing would get her imprisoned, but out here in a condemned zone, where weepers and feral hounds prowled, going unarmed was even riskier.

Dunwall had always been a grubby city since the days of industrialisation, dirt and soot becoming ingrained into people and buildings alike, never washed out by the dampness of Gristol's clime. Three month of abandonment had done nothing to help this area, dereliction and rot gutting the district with the same brutal efficiency a butcher's cleaver. Smashed windows stared out onto the street, boarded up doorways screaming mouths that had been stitched shut by wooden thread. Weeds poked up between cobbles and paving stones, and rubbish and litter skittered about, man-made leaves in the breeze. The silence was oppressive and frightening.

Her progress was slow, creeping towards the centre of the district, ducking low and out of sight whenever she saw shambling figures congregating in the streets. The weepers were like protestors gathered in a pathetic rally against their affliction, stumbling and milling about in one spot, uncertain and helpless. More than anything else, Jenny pitied them.

As she drew closer and closer to the centre of the district, a faint thumping began to become audible, as if some great heart were still beating in this condemned, forgotten place. She followed the noise, tracked the beat as it crept up in volume, until she finally came across a warehouse, a brick building with a slanting roof of corrugated iron.

Making sure no weepers were in sight, she darted across the street, boots scuffing the weeds that poked through the cobbles. She reached a wheel in the wall, below a balcony, and span it once, a ladder clattering down to meet her. Quickly, before the noise could attract any attention, Jenny clambered up, and once she was atop the balcony span the accompanying wheel, drawing the latter back up. It was not a particularly subtle disguise for the warehouse's entrance, but it was enough to stop the blunted intellect of a curious weeper.

Pushing open the door on the far end of the balcony, Jenny stepped inside the warehouse. Once, it had been a storage place for canisters of whale oil. After the plague had moved in, condemning the area to abandonment, the warehouse had been taken over by new tenants and repurposed. Hunched over like a mechanical worshipper to some obscure god of words, sheets of paper rolling over, under and through it, thumping a drumbeat of upheaval and protest, the printing press of Dunwall's Voice worked away.

Jenny's boots clanged against the staircase that lead down into the main floor of the building as she descended. Stopping by a box already filled with pamphlets, Jenny read the headline emblazoned across the rough paper in cheap ink; "OUR BELLIES EMPTY AS THEIR PURSES FILL!" Beneath, an angry article talking of a rise in the price of bread, the third in as many weeks.

"So, what do you think?"

Jenny started, casting around her until she saw the young man with a crutch standing nearby her. He grinned at her, nodding at the headline and then poking his glasses back into place as the movement dislodged them.

"Pretty good headline, isn't it?" he said. "Came up with it all by myself."

"It's a good one," Jenny nodded. "Memorable."

"Thought so too," Delman Capson said, sole writer and editor of Dunwall's Voice. "Figured we could use something nice and rabble-rousing after a piece of news like this."

"It'll piss all the right people off, that's for certain," Jenny said.

"Who're the right people in this case? The toffs or the common people?"

Jenny snorted at that comment, shaking her head.

"Both, hopefully," she said. "Are the others ready to deliver it?"

"They're coming soon," Delman said. "Via the sewer route."

There was an uncomfortable look to him, Jenny realised, something nagging at him.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I..." Delman sighed. "Can we sit down first, please?"

"Of course," Jenny said. With the aid of his crutch, Delman limped away from the press on his clubbed foot, to the small lamp-lit room that served as the main office of Dunwall's Voice. It was scattered with pens, papers, daguerreotypes and the other detritus of journalism, and at the centre of its main desk was a typewriter, a half-written article for the next edition already in place halfway through its rollers. Delman took a seat with a grunt, resting his crutch against the desk.

"it's Hollison," he said. "They got him. Just today, I heard about."

Jenny was silent. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and the slowly, carefully exhaled.

"[censored]," she said eventually. "How?"

"Georgina saw a couple of Watchmen stop him," Delman said. "He still had a whole load of copies of the Voice on him. It'll be charges of distributing seditious material, no doubt."

"Do you think they'll link him to the rest of us?" Jenny asked.

"No way of knowing," Delman said. "But Hollison's a stubborn son of a bitch; chances are he won't say anything."

"We can't take that risk," Jenny said. "Delman, can you take charge of the meeting tonight? I don't have anything I need to put out on the agenda, and you know the drill well enough by now."

"I...no," Delman said. He scrambled for his crutch and pushed himself to his feet as Jenny swept out of the room, limping in her wake. "No, no, no! Jenny, come back here, for the Outsider's sake!"

Jenny ignored him as she swept through the main hall of the warehouse, past the press, to a small, ignored cupboard on the far side of the room. She slid back the bolt and pulled the door back, and admired at its contents.

"Jenny, please," Delman begged from behind her. "You can't go out again. You're taking an insane risk doing this."

"Where did they take him?" Jenny asked.

"The Watch Station on the west bank of Kaldwin's Bridge," Delman said, then shook his head as he realised his mistake. "And I can't let you go there!"

"Delman," Jenny said, turning on her co-conspirator. "Which one of us is in charge of this operation?"

"You are," Delman mumbled, cowed by the sudden anger in her voice.

"I am," Jenny said. She took the contents of the draw and tucked them under one arm. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking the meeting room for a few moments. A lady needs her privacy."

Sweeping from the room, Jenny closed the door of the warehouse's improvised meeting room behind her. As he heard cloth rustling on the other side, Delman shook his head in despair. He shouldn't have aid anything, but then again, Jenny would have heard from the others in their small band of malcontents. They might have been enough to talk her out of doing anything reckless, though.

Inside, Jenny rolled her eyes in exasperation at Delman's timidness as she changed. He was a good writer, and she couldn't hope for a better person to pen the articles in Dunwall's Voice, but he was over-cautious in her eyes. Nobody was going to overthrow the increasingly tyrannical regime of the Lord Regent without steel in their spine and a willingness to die for the cause.

She strapped on the moth-eaten bodice of blood crimson that had become part of her signature attire, pulled on the deep red boots and trousers that made up the lower half of her costume. She slung the bandolier for a pistol and ammunition across her shoulder and strapped a belt around her waist, a sword strapped to it. A grappling hook and rope were wrapped crosswise to the bandolier, carefully placed so as not to slow her access to her weapon, and a lockpicking kit was placed in a satchel on her belt. For remaining incognito, a cloak was slung over her shoulders, covering the costume while she made her way through Dunwall's streets; when she arrived at her destination she would remove it and let the city know that Red Jenny had the guts to go after a Watch Station, but until then it was wisest to minimise the risk of being caught.

The final part of her attire was the most important. It was a ceramic mask, red like the rest of her costume, a sardonic, confident smile adorning its features and a strange symbol of a stylised circle with a diagonal line bisecting it resting on its forehead. There was nothing to cover the rest of her head, and instead Jenny kept her brown tied back in a ponytail so it wouldn't get in the way, but nobody noticed the hair. All people saw was the mask.

It was a special thing. One day, when she had been doing her best to keep the crumbling ruin of Granny Rags' house clean, she had found it in a cupboard, atop a moth-eaten crimson bodice, evidently the surviving remnants of a once fine ball gown. There was something about the mask that attracted her, something that whispered and promised with words she couldn't quite hear or understand. She had taken them down to Granny Rags, too overcome with curiosity to not ask.

"Oh, those old things?" the old woman had said. "Why, they were for the masquerade my husband and I threw for the Fugue Feast. I was the envy of every woman there that night. Why don't you take them, dear; I don't think I'm young enough to get away with wearing their like any more, but it would be something nice for you to have, wouldn't it?"

So perhaps Granny Rags was a sad, senile old lady who had a powerful artefact associated with the Outsider. So what? Everyone in Gristol carried charms of carven whalebone with them, for luck or protection or some more obtuse blessing.

Later that night, too curious to resist the temptation any longer, she had put on the mask, and for Jenny Aching, everything changed. Her steps were swifter and quieter, her leaps carried her farther, her eyes could cut through the darkness as if it were daylight. A costume had been assembled, a persona that took to Dunwall's streets at night, an anarchist imbued with the power of the occult. The first time she had been out, when she had killed a watchman who was marching a man to the local station for interrogation, nothing more than pretence for a beating and a robbing, she realised that this was what she truly was, that this was where she truly belonged.

The news she heard the next morning, of the Empress' assassination by the traitor Corvo Attano and Hiram Burrows assuming power 'for an indefinite period, until stability had returned to Dunwall', had seemed almost irrelevant at the time. In the face of what Jenny had discovered, such things were the embodiment of pettiness and unimportance.

"That thing creeps me out," Delman said as Jenny emerged in full attire apart from her mask, the piece of costume in her hand.

"I know," Jenny said. "You've said plenty of times, trust me."

"Look," Delman said, hobbling after her as Jenny mounted the stairs. "I doubt he'll talk. I know that it's harsh to leave him hanging out to dry, but it's like you said; we've got to make sacrifices. Not everyone's going to live through Burrows being overthrown."

"And if he does talk that'll spell disaster," Jenny retorted.

"What if they catch you?" Delman said. "We're [censored] then, aren't we?"

Jenny paused from where she was about to open the door to the balcony.

"They won't catch me," she said, opening the door. "Trust me on that."

"And what'll you say when you get shot and killed, or clubbed unconscious and wake up in a torturer's chair?" Delman pressed. "Jenny, for the Void's sake, you can't go around risking your life like this all the time. It's one thing to appear at strikes and cause a stir, or maybe rough up some Watchmen who've overstepped their authority and are asking for it, but it's another thing to try and break someone out of a damn Watch station."

"If I don't do it, Delman, nobody will," Jenny said. "Now organise everyone for me while I'm gone. I'll be back by morning."

She closed the door and slipped on the mask. For a moment, she revelled in the exhilaration of her eyes sharpening, of strength flooding her limbs, her heart being filled with a new resolve and font of will. Donning the mask, she felt godlike, invulnerable. Nothing could stop her this night.

Red Jenny spun the wheel, slid down the ladder, and disappeared into the evening, ready to cause chaos.


This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Sep 22 2013, 04:34 PM