…and so there I am just watching it go down, right? This guy just had his ass handed to him publicly, knows she let him off the hook easy, and still decides to start shit in the middle of downtown. And I’m like, well clearly, she can handle herself. But, she’s also new to the big city. Really testy village type, like a dog that secretly likes to be petted but doesn’t want you to pet her, yeah?

That, dear reader, is the handful that I’m shacked up with right now.

If you’ve been around the capital in the last few years, you’ve probably heard tell of the legendary killer known as Feint: slayer of league fighters, undercity criminals, and everything in between. Immune to JOYs, never leaves a trace, devilishly handsome… or so the news streams say, at least. They haven’t gotten a picture of me yet.

If they knew I was a five-foot-nothing girl in my first year of university, they’d probably have a heart attack. I’m not exactly what most people assume an infamous assassin looks like. But that’s not a downside in my line of work.

Let’s get one thing straight- I’m not a sucker for Tay. I’m a sucker for rustic charm. She just happens to have a very large supply of said charm squirreled away behind her abrasive personality. You’ll have to take it on faith that it’s back there, because heaven knows she wouldn’t show it if she had a choice in the matter. I only learned she has more modes than moody after she beat the absolute shit out of me. And almost killed me. Twice.

Ever been shot at by a ki fighter who makes people like the Showmaker look like they belong in the minor league? Not fun. Very spicy.

I’ll be totally honest. When I cracked open her datapad- she left it just sitting on the couch, what was I supposed to do?- I was expecting to see some prime joke material. What’s she really up searching on the ‘Net at two in the morning while I’m trying to sleep? It can’t really be more fight tapes and class discussion-slash-theorycrafting boards, right?

Turns out, someone can actually be that normal. I mean, she is pretty simple on the outside. It’s kinda cute. But all she does is study. This journal is the most interesting thing in her files.

Don’t get me wrong, more research is good. Saying we’re in dire straits would be putting our situation in the most optimistic light possible. But come on, girl. Give me something.

Anyways. Seeing as Tay hasn’t covered the Assassin class yet, I figure the least I could do is give her a little help. Not like there’s much more to do while I’m stuck here. She gets to go off gallivanting in the undercity while poor Cal Kyriaku is stuck moping around while her arm heals. Woe is me. I deserve a little fun.

For starters, the way that she organizes the classes by the groups they teach in elementary school is so, so out of date. Modern theorycrafting puts the eighteen classes into some better defined categories:

ARMORY ENERGY SHAPING POINT-BUY INFLUENCE ENHANCEMENT Duelist Ki Fighter Mecha Psi Martial Artist Gunslinger Elemental Modd Biohancer Assassin* Guardian Magus Tamer Mytho Hunter Saboteur Shifter Innovator*

Armory and Shaping classes are pretty self-explanatory at this point, although Innovator alone could have an entire book written about the benefits it brings to society. Unless you’re aiming for a really specific combination of classes, you shouldn’t be picking more than one from each of the five pillars, otherwise you run the risk of overspecializing and becoming extra-vulnerable to someone that’s a hard counter to you. That’s part of what makes someone with classes like Tay’s so good on and off the square, even if she only uses two. Martial Artist and Ki Fighter are absolute fundamental classes that don’t specialize whatsoever, meaning she can take that raw power and apply it to almost any situation she comes across.

Assassin is the polar opposite of that.

It’s in the running with Psi for the “Worst Reputation” superlative in the JOY class yearbook.

It’s nearly useless in a regulation fighting match.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It’s a homunculus hybrid of an Armory-type and Enhancement-type class, with the most niche parts of both.

But what it is good at, is enabling you to do what’s right there in the name. Assassinate. Infiltrate. Exploit.

In a way, Assassin isn’t so much a class as it is a job description. It’s the perfect class for corporate espionage, spycraft, or wet work. The bundle of passive enhancements are perfectly suited for stealth: heightened agility and gracefulness, quieter steps, smoother talking, less injury from falls, and when Psis try to read your mind, there’s a passive foil that adds intentional misdirections in what they’re able to read from you. And from the armory side, you’re allowed to select from a limited portion of the Duelist class; specifically thrown weapons. Daggers, darts, stiletto blades, et cetera.

All of which are, as mentioned prior, pretty damn useless on a fighting square. Which is why most Assassins you’ll see in the wild won’t be league fighters at all. They’re best as the mercenaries and covert operatives of the gladiocracy- fighters who do their best work away from the spotlight in places where no one else can. The setup to our engagements is more important than the combat itself. My teacher put it best: the outcome of an Assassin’s fight is never in question. By the time they decide to make the first strike, they’ve already won. Because once combat starts for real and initiative is lost, we’re inherently at a disadvantage. So we win outright or we don’t win at all.

For most Assassins, at least.

Part of the whole ‘being successful in a gladiocracy’ gig means learning to overcome the detriments of your classes, whether that means finding ways to survive in a real fight or extend the initiative from your opening strike. When you pick up the Assassin class, it naturally orients your classes towards creating opportunities to disengage and restart fights on a micro level while in the middle of combat. Some Elemental classes are good for that- Shadow is a prime pick, and Shadow Assassin is the archetypical combination for a reason- but even Psi can work by throwing out a mental jolt to destabilize someone right before you reengage. For real world utility, Gunslinger enables you to leverage your stealth enhancements from a far greater range, and the tracking capabilities of Hunter are a natural complement to the typical work an Assassin will be hired for. The only classes you’d really want to stray away from are heavyweights like Mecha. Stealth and a couple hundred pounds of walking tank aren’t exactly a natural fit.

What’s not popularized about the class is the perks that come outside of your JOY classes. Assassins have a… let’s call it a club, that you can only get into with an invite from another assassin who’s already in the club. The club doesn’t have a name or a roster- really, it’s just a link to the Assassin-only networks that run out of a blacksite ‘Net server in Section X- but what it does have is our private boards where all the real job opportunities get posted. It’s called the Web.

Anyone who’s a major player in the Sections knows how and why to find it. If you’re a corporation who needs a spy to infiltrate their competition, you go to the Web. If you’re a criminal syndicate who needs a nosy bureaucrat removed, you go to the Web. If you have any sort of job that’s questionable enough to not be posting on a public board in your local ‘Net, you go, yes, to the Web.

I was first introduced to the Web by my teacher, which is also around the time that I started working under the pseudonym Feint. Teachers themselves are something of a taboo in Assassin culture. It’s seen as a massive risk, as both student and teacher will have intimate knowledge of who each other are behind their personas. She could only teach me so much about the class itself, though. Because the biggest secret of yours truly is that I’m not an Assassin by class- only by trade.

I’ve worked with a few JOY classes in case I need them, of course. I just don’t keep them selected. If someone checks out my public profile, all they’ll see is Cal Kyriaku, classless. In everyday life, I’m one of the most unassuming people you’d meet on the street. I’m the opposite of a threat. Even if people are suspicious of my lack of classes, it’s not like they’d think I’m a threat. I’m just a cool girl who’s a real smooth talker and easy to make friends with. Got an internship in the Metro Blockhouse’s counterespionage division, a normal life as a university student, and a bigwig brother who’s the most popular bachelor on the capital news streams. Boring stuff. Which is usually what my targets are thinking in the moments before my Relic cuts on, their JOYs shut off, and I’m finishing a job in one smooth strike.

The Relic is my real class.

Relics themselves are one of the biggest remaining question marks in the world. They all share a few commonalities: they’re shaped like jewelry, they’re made of damascene, and they’re usually broken. Damascene is the loanword that historians use to describe the material that Relics are made from, but technically, the material itself doesn’t even have a name. Similar in looks, it’s a kind of rock-metal hybrid, black with silvery wavelike patterns. Damascene is an entirely unique genre of material that’s obscenely resistant to outside forces. It doesn’t register as interactable for any of the Elemental JOY classes, nor is it organic. It’s almost unshapeable by heat, pressure, or gravity. There’s few things besides more damascene that can even leave a scratch on it. The material would make for incredible armor if it weren’t as rare as stardust.

The only damascene that’s ever been found in the Sections is the Relics themselves, and Relics have only ever been found on Olympus, the ancestral home of the JOYs. The one I wear around my wrist was recovered when Olympus’ upper half opened two decades ago. It’d been sitting around in the Metro Blockhouse’s vaults until I was given it to play around with, and a year later, I was in possession of the only recorded Relic to have ever been activated.

Forcing the thing to give up its power was a nightmare of a task. No one else has ever done it before. I’m pretty sure I just got lucky, if I’m being totally honest. But it’s one-hundred percent mine now. I’m the one and only Relic user in the Section; probably in all Sections. Its power is pretty straightforward: it shuts down anything powered by JOY-based tech in a limited radius, and it can dispel incoming energies that are created by JOYs. Like Tay’s ki. That means it erases all classes and all passive enhancements.

It’s the perfect tool for an assassin. A wholly unique ability that I’ve never seen or heard of before, almost like a portable version of the electromagnetic device that the Shimanos used near the end of their war. But that device was entirely oldTech, an ancient analog machine that they dredged out of Crucible Station and dropped from low orbit. Ancient, but understandable. My Relic is almost alien in nature. It’s nothing like a JOY, and it only shuts down JOY tech- it doesn’t indiscriminately target analog equipment too like an electromagnet would. And the damascene is… well. The fact that no Elemental can interact with it is something I’m still trying to figure out.

Maybe it was just one of the Creator’s trinkets that they were experimenting with before they disappeared. But I have a feeling there’s more to it than that. I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that no one’s been able to activate a Relic on besides me. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this thing lights up rosé when I do.