It was a regular, busy day at the Carne Den once again. As usual, I found myself in the kitchen, helping with all the cooking. Unlike most days though, the mail was oddly late. There wasn’t anything important in it, but there was a box for me.

During a brief lull, I went outside, opened the box, and saw two bands of blank shells. “These again. I wonder what they’ll be?”

Gavan came out and interrupted my musings. “Ah, good, you’re here. We need more smoked ribs in here, and we’re all busy with other things right now.”

I sprung into action without a word, opening the smoker, setting the box of blanks down, grabbing a few slabs of smoked ribs, closing the smoker, and rushing them inside. “Are we just plain busy or is something else up?”

“There’s a couple griffons out there having a rib eating contest. It’s like they’ve never had the stuff before.” Gavan looked at the ribs I was holding. “If those don’t fill them up, I don’t know what will.”

I took the ribs to a counter and started cutting them down to their individual pieces in preparation for the likelihood of needing more of them. Everyone else was busy doing their own things, whether preparing, cooking, or cleaning.

Eventually, the griffons had their fill, paid, and practically waddled out. After such a show, the orders slowed down, and I realized something. “Where did I set the box down at?”

“What box?” Silver asked, already looking around.

“It’s a small box, has a couple bands of blank shells in it, and I don’t know where I put it.”

“Where do you last remember having it?” Gavan asked.

I started thinking back a bit. “Let’s see, I was outside looking at them, you came out to get my help, and. . .” I went outside, opened the smoker, and pulled out two bands of smokey gray shells. “I’m going to test these.”

“Don’t have too much fun!”

“Ri~ight.” I made my way around to the far side of the shed, loaded the rounds into the Ember Celica, and threw a punch towards the wooded area. At the site of impact, there was a lot of smoke, which also smelled of barbecue. “Huh. Barbecue scented smokescreen.”

“YYAAAAANNNNNG!” Rainbow shouted as she flew over to me. “Huh. You were right about being here.”

“What?”

“Never mind that, there’s a big pack of diamond dogs attacking Ponyville right now, and we need you now!”

I went around and saw smoke rising from the middle of town. “I’ll be over there as fast as possible. Go ahead of me.”

“If you say so.” Rainbow dashed off to go back into the fray.

I stuck my head in the kitchen for a moment. “Diamond dogs are attacking town, I’m heading out to stop them, bye!” Once the moment was over, I jumped up to my window, went in, found the buckle, switched from my work clothes to my combat clothes, jumped back out, and started running towards town, not eager to fight, but ready to do so if I had to.

I caught a whiff of the smoke, which smelled like barbecue, but barely had enough time to register that before I fell into a portal. “Ah, here we go again.”

I came out of the portal in the air, above Sweet Apple Acres if the fruit bearing trees and barn were any indication, and was falling fast. “Ah Gravity, my friend and nemesis.” I did nothing as I continued falling.

Moments before impact, I saw two cloaked people talking to each other over a small object one of them, who was decked out in Egyptian looking clothes, was holding. There was also a humanoid-looking Twilight Sparkle with them, horn glowing, and she seemed to be watching my fall.

I had barely registered all that when I made impact in a cart of hay hard enough that it broke and I landed face first on the ground under it, scattering the stack. As I had done before, I thanked my aura for protecting me from what would have been a fatal landing. It still hurt quite a bit though.

Someone gently grasped my arm and helped me get out of the mess and to my feet. “You okay, ma’am?” a male voice asked.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” I said between a few calming breaths before looking at the gold masked man who helped me. “Who are you?”

“I am Bayek, Servant of Amun,” he answered as he started brushing me off. “The other man is John. We both are Assassins, but we’ve come upon a slight problem here.”

I spent a teeny tiny fraction of a second thinking it over. “What kind of problem?”

“One that involves a missing person. We have, unfortunately, no leads, other than the culprit took her to or through the Everfree.” He paused in his speech and brushing me off. “Brace yourself, you’ve got a few stubborn pieces of hay up here.” In spite of the warning, he did his best to gently remove the hay. “Nek! I hate static attraction or whatever it’s called!”

“Hm?” I looked over to Bayek and saw him shaking his hand, trying to get something golden off. “Oh no.” My temper flared up, and I promptly swung at his face, landing a solid blow on a shield he brought up, sending him skidding backwards. When he stopped, he pulled out a spear and pointed it at me from behind his shield.

I charged forward, activated the Ember Celica, grabbed the shaft of the spear with one hand, and threw another punch at the shield.

I heard the other guy ask “Should we stop them?” as my fist connected and the Ember Celica fired, sending out a blast of smoke and making Bayek recoil.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll be fine,” Twilight answered before sniffing the air. “Something smells good.”

I kept punching the shield and sending Bayek back until he was against the wall. I aimed another punch at his head, but wound up breaking the wall behind him instead. A shield bash knocked me back and I lost my grip on the spear.

Before I could launch another attack, he swept my legs out from under me with the long weapon and sent me to the ground. Right after I landed on my back, the spear pierced the ground next to my neck. A sword followed suit on the opposite side of my neck, then both were crossed over me.

“I’m not sure what happened, but I wasn’t expecting that reaction,” Bayek said as he fell next to me. “And why do I smell like I was at a barbecue?”

I looked between the weapons pinning my neck and Bayek, and came up with an idea. I grabbed the sword handle, and swung it right at Bayek, the blade going through his arm and spilling sand on the ground. I rolled out from under the spear, got next to Bayek’s head, and slammed one last punch down on his masked face, sending out more sand and smoke.

After I took my fist off, I got control of myself again and looked at the body. My horror at what I’d done was partially offset by the confusion of the sand coming off of him. The confusion took over when I heard him groan out an “Ow. . .” and use his good arm to pull off his mask. The face underneath looked almost dead and lightly covered in sand. “Dead or alive, pain is the same.”

“Wait, you’re dead?” I asked. “That’s. . . different.”

“Well, technically, I’m undead, but that’s semantics,” he casually said. “By the way, why can’t I feel my arm?” He looked over to where I’d cut his arm, I followed his gaze, and saw the severed arm waving at him. “Oh.”

“That’s. . . different,” I thought again as I helped Bayek up by his attached arm. At the same time, I saw the severed limb dissolve into sand and swirl up and around him in a whirlwind I couldn’t feel, settling back into place and reforming into his arm.

“Remind me to not think or be arrogant like Deadpool,” he said in a serious voice.

“There’s nobody that can think like Deadpool.” A moment later, I amended my statement. “Except Pinkie Pie. Anyways, you called me here, so what do you need now that things have calmed down?”

“Honestly, in this situation, I’d replace things, with you having calmed down,” John suggested as he walked towards us.

I looked over to where I landed and fought Bayek as the smoke cleared up. “Yeeeah, that sounds good.” The cart would be the most difficult thing to replace from everything that was broken.

“Anyway, I’m sorry for the less than great meeting, I can only hope that the crash landing isn’t a standard occurrence for you,” John admitted with a kind smile.

“Apology accepted. Crash landings aren’t new for me. And for some reason, the universe has it out for my face. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times it’s gotten hit.”

“Sounds like a running gag,” Bayek said in a slight monotone. “Much like me and how I’ve been impaled, shot with a shotgun, and just now punched to bits.”

“Yeah, sorry for that. I don’t like that reaction to my hair getting damaged. I really need to work on that.”

“And I need to work on not being a target,” Bayek said with a shrug. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“That’s not the same. . . eh.” I looked between the cloaked guys and remembered a question. “Right. What do you need me for?”

“We called to ask for your help in trying to find a missing pony, one we think may have been kidnapped,” John repeated before adding, “but I have a question for you. How did you land in that haystack safely? I know Bayek and I do it often, but it didn’t appear that you did a Leap of Faith.”

I spared a glance to the wrecked hay cart before answering. “I don’t know what this Leap of Faith is, but I have this nifty thing called Aura. It’s really nice. Not only does it act like armor, but it even does some really nice little things, like working as goggles underwater.”

“You know, I bet that’s a pretty nice thing to have in your back pocket,” John responded, “Kinda wish I had it myself.”

“I can’t turn it off. And I wouldn’t want to anyways. But I don’t think I can. . . Wait, there was that one scene in Volume 1. I don’t know how it worked, but it can be done. Maybe.”

“Would you be willing to give it a try, honestly even if it doesn’t work it can’t cause any harm to try and see the results.”

I mulled the idea over for a bit. “He’s not a RWBY character, but then again, he is right.” I made up my mind and decided to try anyways. “Alright, let’s do it.” I put a hand on John’s shoulder and turned him around so I was facing his back. “This might tickle a bit.” I put a hand between his shoulder blades and tried using my aura to find whatever might do the trick. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Something eventually happened, and a bit of fire magic leaked out, causing a small, forceful explosion between John and me. As I got back up, the music magic kicked in with an upbeat tune, which I found myself clapping along to.

“Help me!” John called out. He was doing the Russian kick dance in time with the music.

Bayek came over, chuckling a bit. “I don’t know about you, Yang, but I’m getting a kick out of this kazachok.”

“Don’t take my pun and only type of joke.”

“Traitors!” John accused as he kept dancing, though the amount of malice in the accusation was a very deep negative. “All two of you!”

Bayek, in response to the mock accusation, pulled out his bow and started shooting arrows around John’s feet, making it look like he was dodging by dancing in time to the music.

The song ended after about a minute, as did John’s dancing and Bayek firing arrows at him. I had a big smile on my face from the antics as well. “So, you might have aura now. I don’t actually know if it worked.”

“How do we tell if it did?” Bayek asked.

I thought for a bit before an idea hit me. “You know, there have been times where I ruined a knife in the kitchen when I swung it at my fingers by accident. And I have survived really long falls before. So, yeah. Dangerous stuff.”

“Fair enough,” Bayek said, pulling out his mace and swinging it down at John’s foot like a sledgehammer.

“Maybe this isn’t the best-” John was cut off as the mace struck his foot, causing a wavy white glow to appear around him, though it was focused more on his foot and lower leg near the site of impact.

As John hopped around, holding his foot in pain, I was oddly more occupied with something else. “Is that what my aura looks like when I’m hit? Wonder why nobody said anything. . .”

“While I don’t entirely regret what I did, is that what you’re paying attention to?” Bayek asked, snapping me out of my fascination.

“Huh? Oh, sorry. But it looks like he does have aura now, so he should be fine.” I mentally smacked myself for the skewed priorities.

After a few more moments, John stopped hopping around before he knelt down slightly to check the foot that had been hit before he looked to Bayek. “You know, I’m going to get you back for that one someday.”

I decided to take the topic back to more important things with a single clap to catch their attention. “So, someone was kidnapped and you need my help to unkidnap them or something?”

“Is ‘unkidnap’ even a word?” Bayek asked.

“You know what I mean. Who’s been kidnapped, and what do we know?”

“Well from what we know, at least Apple Bloom’s gone missing and disappeared near the Everfree and apart from that… absolutely nothing,” John responded sadly with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Apple Bloom.” A corona of flames appeared around my eyes. Aside from that, I managed to keep my cool. “Continue.”

“If speculation is something, the only ideas we have on who could have taken her is the Order of Ancients,” Bayek said as he flinched away from me a bit.

“Do we know where they are?”

“We don’t even know who they are,” John added. “Just that their trail vanished around the Everfree forest.”

I cut the flames and took a breath to calm myself. “Okay. So, are we going to investigate, or. . .”

“That can be a start,” Bayek said. “If we can find some clues or even a trail to work with...and now I’m wondering if me being made undead also made me more brainless.”

“I guess that makes me the brains here,” John snarked. Before I could retort, he continued. “Bayek, you go tell Applejack and the rest of her family about Yang. We don’t want her to get shot by a blunderbuss.”

“Because that’s my job,” Bayek muttered.

“Yang, come with me and we can investigate the scene, see what’s around the trail. You might have some kind of insight we haven’t had yet.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I concurred.

“Well, if we search for about an hour or two, then meet back here, we should be able to see if we found any new information out about what happened,” John admitted as he looked between both Bayek and me.

With a consensus reached, we split up and went our separate ways to do what we planned. One way or another, I knew we would be able to solve this. “May as well as ‘detective’ to the list of things I’ve done.”

Author's Notes:

Part one of a crossover with Assassin's Creed: Displaced in Life and Death. More to come soon.