tushanshu_logs | Let me belong here, break my fall [AUGUST CATCH-ALL]

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Let me belong here, break my fall [AUGUST CATCH-ALL]

Characters: Desmond Miles, Tony Stark, and YOU!
Date: Throughout the month of August
Location: The Midnight Hotel Lobby, different markets in Keelai, the Golden Koi, and the College
Situation: Desmond's working on becoming a more effective Assassin, and step one is to gear up
Warnings/Rating: Some swearing, possibly some violence?

The Midnight Hotel (Lobby)

Desmond can be found sitting at a table, his Hidden Blade sitting in front of him, blade-up, a notebook open nearby, with Desmond tapping a pen against it's surface, only occasionally writing or drawing something, and the Apple of Eden sitting nearby, faintly glowing a golden color. Anyone who tries to touch either will get their hand slapped, as Desmond is concentrating on making what improvements he can to the design of his weapon. His complete and utter lack of knowledge of engineering is pretty obvious, as he pokes at the spring-loaded mechanism that launches the blade forward, which happens several times as Desmond works on it.

The College

Desmond had heard from Valdis that if he wanted better equipment, now that he was unofficially official with the Police Force, that he was best off talking to Tony Stark for what he needed. He'd been doing some sketching, partially using rumors he'd heard from his father regarding upgrades to the Hidden Blade (inspired, in part, by Desmond's own use of the weapon since he fled the Rome safehouse), and partially using inspiration from the Apple of Eden he carried. The way he figured it, if Altaïr could do it, so could he.

It doesn't take him long to find Tony's lab in the college, as all he has to do is namedrop "Tony Stark", and he practically gets a guided tour of the nicer parts of the college. When he finally does arrive, he's holding his Rennaissance Hidden Blade in one hand, and a notebook in the other, and he raps on the door with a knuckle, peeking in at the lab.

"Hey, is Tony around?"

The Markets

True to his word, Desmond is looking for the ingredients he needs to make a variety of small distraction bombs, in the style of the Turkish Assassins (thank you, Ezio). Though everything here was named differently, it didn't take Desmond long to identify the basic elements he needed to mix some homemade gunpowder, as well as the Keelai equivalent of pyrite, which would allow him to fashion some fake juulan for distraction bombs. Now he just needed the proper casings, whether it was an aluminum equivalent or terra cotta.

The Golden Koi

Desmond had a love-hate relationship with his bartending job. It allowed him to eavesdrop on customers while more or less on autopilot, polishing glasses or mixing simple drinks, but it also caused his memories of Connor to pop up with more frequency than he liked. Connor never drank, but he spent a lot of time in pubs around Boston and New York, recruiting for his fledgling Assassin Order, and doing his behind-the-scenes work for the Patriots. It's (thankfully) during one of his quieter shifts that he started hallucinating Sam Adams and Paul Revere. Both were rather jovial men, which makes it that much harder to resist the memories taking hold, causing Desmond to walk out from behind the bar, and sit at an empty table, conversing with empty air.

"I'm not a part of your revolution, gentlemen. My reasons for opposing the British are my own."

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By this point, Desmond is full-on channeling Connor, though he hears a voice. A familiar voice. Something tugging him back to reality. "Mr. Adams, I can't get involved any...Pepper?" Desmond clutches at his head, trying to shake away the memories. "I'm...sorry you had to see that. It's not something I like to bring up, if I can help it. I was hallucinating a conversation between Sam Adams, Paul Revere, and...Ratonhnhaké:ton. The Bleeding Effect's nasty side-effect."

Desmond laughs, somewhat ironically. The Bleeding Effect gave him the wisdom of Altaïr, and the skills of Ezio, and the strategic prowess of Connor, but it also was driving him slowly insane.

"Uh."

Well. That sure was a thing. But it's not the strangest thing that Pepper has run into, and she mostly just looks concerned for all that she's shocked.

"That doesn't sound like much fun. I mean, kinda cool to see history come alive, but... Pretty big tradeoff," she says, making a stab at sounding neutral. Now that he's more lucid, Pepper approaches the table. "The Bleeding Effect is how you learned all those scary rooftop skills, right?"

Desmond's still blinking away the vision, and he nods. "Yup. I don't have it as bad as some did, but that's not saying a lot. Guy before me in the Animus Project went completely nuts, drew all over the walls of the room he was kept in, in his own blood, before he killed himself. Clay was his name. Clay Kaczmarek."

Desmond walks to the bar, and pours himself a rather tall glass of something that looks very flammable, before taking a drink.

"But yeah, the Bleeding Effect is part of it. I got a lot of training as a kid, but the Bleeding Effect gave me something like sixty years of experience as an Assassin over the course of a few months."

There is suddenly a lot of blinking from Pepper while she processes the many different things Desmond has just said.

"Well, that's kind of horrible. Don't do that," she says, not quite scolding. Pepper follows Desmond with her eyes as he crosses to the bar. "You were... trained to be an assassin? You and your ancestors? What is that, some kind of family business? Did they seriously train you as a kid to kill people?"

Question mode: on.

[Desmond laughs, but shakes his head.]

I can keep it together most of the time. It's just moments like these when I slip. But...uhh...to answer your question, it is kind of a family business, in that both my mom and dad are Assassins, but some people get recruited if they work out the truth on their own. And kids aren't taught to kill.

[He pauses.]

Our training's in stages. First we learn how to move quietly, blending in and approaching a target silently and stuff, then we learn climbing and free running and stuff, covering as much distance on foot in as little time as possible. Then we learn fighting, defending ourselves. Killing doesn't come until we're old enough to accept the responsibility. My training got cut kinda short, so my knowledge of killing all comes from Ezio, my ancestor from the Italian Renaissance.

"Uh huh." That does not seem like the recipe for well-adjusted people. "That explains your skillset, I guess. Was bartending part of the gig or is that just a cover? You know, act like a normal person who doesn't come from a family of people who kill other people."

All of this is said entirely too cheerfully, since Pepper is trying to wrap her head around it and not freak out. Desmond is nice, though, and it's not like she doesn't already have a large number of friends with dark pasts.

"And what do you mean by 'work out the truth'?" she tacks on.

Desmond shakes his head. "Nah. Bartending I picked up after I ran away. It's tough training to be an Assassin to begin with, it's worse when your dad's the Mentor of the Order, so I ran away when I was 16. I thought all of the "Assassin-Templar War" stuff was bullshit, you know? Didn't think it had anything to do with me."

Desmond sighs, preparing himself for another infodump.

"Basically, the "Earth" I come from's more or less ruled by a modern version of the Order of the Knights Templar, called "Abstergo Industries". They literally control everything, because they don't think that people deserve their free will. The Assassins and Templars have been fighting for thousands of years...mostly over ideology, because the Assassins think that people should be able to make their own choices, and live with the consequences, but also over relics left by the First Civilization, called "Pieces of Eden"." He pauses, letting Pepper absorb the whole concept of a secret war that's been fought since ancient times. He also pulls the Apple of Eden out of his backpack, and sets it on the bar for Pepper to look at. It's glowing slightly golden, and pulsing like a heartbeat.

"Any time a non-Assasssin starts to figure out the truth, either through research or by accident, Abstergo sends someone to kill them. We try to recruit people with the skills we need, like computer hacking or whatever, before Abstergo can get their hands on them. My friends Shaun and Rebecca ended up in the Order that way."

Pepper stares at Desmond for a little while, shocked. And also very, very curious. Obviously his world is different from Pepper's, but that was a seriously expansive conflict, both in time and geography.

"...Wow." She approaches the bar and examines the Apple more closely, fascinated. "What does it do? I mean, something powerful. The Apple in the Bible was bad business - totally fiction, but hey. It looks like a serious piece of tech. People are fighting wars over this kind of thing? What's the First Civilization?"

She has a lot of questions, and then Pepper remembers something and Pepper looks somehow more shocked than before.

"...Did you say the Knights Templar? As in, the Crusades, cross-shaped symbol, religious fighting force Knights Templar?"

Because she's seen a Templar ring here before, and she doesn't like what she's hearing now.

Desmond picks up the Apple, and it shines even brighter in his hand. "A lot of things. Mind control, some kind of holographic projection, and...it can let people see into the future. Only problem is that it was only designed to work for people with First Civ DNA. If you don't have it, at best it'll control your mind, and at worst it'll kill you."

Desmond sets the Apple back down, and it's glow immediately dulls again. "The First Civilization's pretty much what it sounds like. An ancient race of super-beings that preceded humans by a few thousand years. On my Earth, they bred humans as a slave labor force, and used them for breeding stock to like...preserve their bloodlines an stuff. Some of the hybrid humans figured out they were immune to the Apple's powers, and rebelled, becoming the first Assassins." Desmond pulls his old cellphone out of his pocket, and plays a video he'd saved from his Animus sessions.

At Pepper's question, he nods. "Yup, the very same. During the Crusades, the Grandmaster of the Order'd managed to convince the ruling Pope to let the Templars organize with the Church's backing. Probably the closest our war ever got to being public knowledge."

"That is both kind of awesome and totally terrifying," Pepper says of the Apple, voice edged with uneasiness. "Wow, so the Assassins are pretty ancient then." Her eyebrows make a concerted attempt to disappear into her hair as she watches the video. "Holy wow. That's-- I mean, freaky and cool and doesn't seem like literally anything good came out of this. Except maybe getting rid of them. Slavery is completely not okay."

At the last, Pepper's expression turns unhappy. She really, really, really hopes this is just some kind of coincidence. There was no concrete proof that Shay had anything to do with this whole thing, but his skills are so similar to Desmond's...

"Do the Templars fight with... hidden gauntlet blade things? Out of curiousity?"

Desmond nods. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean...I'd love to be idealistic and pretend that not killing anyone's the way to peace or whatever, but that's never been the world we live in. Between the Templars and the First Civ, Assassins have always been a necessary evil."

At Pepper's question, Desmond nods. He has a feeling he knows who she's talking about. "Sometimes, yeah. Haytham Kenway did, and his dad was an Assassin. I know Shay does too, and he used to be an Assassin. Don't know what happened to him that made him switch sides. Whatever it was must've been a pretty big deal."

The only other person Desmond knew personally who'd switched sides had been Daniel Cross, and from what Rebecca had told him, Daniel had been brainwashed by the Templars from a pretty young age, using an early prototype of the Animus. Considering the trauma that Daniel had been through, Desmond can only imagine what Shay had experienced.

Pepper is, briefly, speechless. She sits heavily on one of the stools at the bar, staring at her hands. Shay.

So that's the truth of it then. Shay was an Assassin, and now he's a Templar. She's shocked and upset and suddenly understands a great deal more than she did five minutes ago.

"I think I know what happened to him," she says quietly. He leveled a city, and killed people to prevent it from happening again. Pepper doesn't say it aloud, because it wasn't her secret to share. "If it's what I think it is, and I'm pretty sure I'm right... it was more of a city-sized deal. He's been bent out of shape because of it for a while. Are you guys, like, enemies, then? Have you tried talking to him?"

Desmond shakes his head. "We've met, and didn't kill each other on sight, so that's something." He laughs "No, we decided on sort of a truce. No sense in dragging our war here. He doesn't know that I have this, though." Desmond gestures at the Apple "Not sure if I wanna tell him. I've got...weird vague memories of him, stuff I got from Haytham's memories, about him confronting his old Mentor, Achilles. Something about keeping the Assassins from finding what Shay found. Whatever that was...must've been the city-sized something that made him switch sides."

Desmond shakes his head again. "We're not exactly enemies, but we've both seen too much of the war to be friends. The Assassins and Templars've tried to work together in the past, but there's like...something deep down in our philosophy or whatever that makes it so it doesn't last long. Maybe if I stick around long enough without going completely nuts, maybe he and I can try being friends, or at least comrades."

"He's never told me all the details, but if you get him drunk enough he might spill. You probably know enough that he wouldn't see the point in trying to keep it from you," Pepper ventures, and she doesn't sound particularly happy. "Or maybe I can finally get it out of him."

That might put Desmond on Shay's bad side, though, which isn't something she wants to spark.

"He really hates himself for what he did," Pepper adds, a little distantly. There was more of the puzzle that she was missing, but a huge piece just slotted into place. "Is there anything you can do to keep the hallucinations from happening?" she asks, returning to the original topic since it's actually a bit less unsettling.

Desmond shakes his head "I wouldn't push too hard. Assassins and Templars kill each other on the regular, so whatever happened hurt Shay down to his core, for him to switch sides. Maybe I could tell him about Lucy..."

Desmond trails off, thinking about Lucy. He could never forgive himself for killing her, but he did what he had to do.

"I try to....compartmentalize, I guess. Remind myself that the memories from my ancestors aren't really mine. I could use reminders, too. If you catch me talking about Rome or Boston, or chatting with people who aren't there, speak up. Remind me that I'm talking crazy talk. As far as I know, there's no way to reverse the Bleeding effect."

Pepper nods; it was a painful topic for Shay, and her attempts to confront him on it had gone all right mostly because she's young and he didn't want to hurt her in turn, as far as she could tell. But there was a lot of anger in him, and Desmond shouldn't have to bear the brunt of it just because she wants to know what happened.

"I'll let you know if I see you doing it again," Pepper promises. "There's a lot of different kinds of scientists and magic here; maybe one of the other Foreigners can help somehow. Could be worth asking about," she suggests, and then hesitates briefly. "I'm guessing Lucy was someone you lost because of this whole Assassin/Templar problem."

It's not a request for more information, exactly, just a statement of interest and curiosity. Pepper likes Desmond, and if he's been hurt and needs someone to help him, she'll make an effort to do what she can.

Desmond shrugs. He didn't have high hopes, considering how long he'd been suffering. "I appreciate that."

At Pepper's question, Desmond nods, and then pulls out his phone again, pulling up a picture, before handing it to Pepper.

"That's...uhh...Lucy and me, when we were hiding out in Monteriggioni. Pretty sure Rebecca snapped that when we weren't looking, heh. She was my..." Desmond trails off, trying to figure out the best way to describe Lucy Stillman "She rescued me from the Templars, was trained by my dad. She...she changed sides too."

Almost as if on cue, the Apple activates itself, and projects a recording into the air. Desmond is silent as it plays. Ashamed. He tried to forget it had ever happened.

Pepper holds the phone carefully, particularly when the Apple starts playing a recording of what Desmond was forced to do, as though the relatively resilient piece of technology were made of glass. She can guess what's about to happen, but Pepper still inhales sharply when Lucy falls.

"Oh, Desmond." Pepper's voice is soft, sympathetic. There is not the remotest trace if fear in her expression. Cautiously, she takes Desmond's hand and puts the phone on his upturned palm. "It wasn't your fault," she insists gently. From the way Desmond hesitated, she can guess that Lucy was special in some way, even if they hadn't been in a relationship.

Desmond flips the phone shut, and pockets it. When Pepper speaks, he shakes his head. "Wasn't it? Juno...showed me things, when she took control. If I hadn't killed Lucy, she would've stolen the Apple, and given it to the Templars. They had some grand plan where they were gonna put the Apple on a satellite, and use it to control everyone on the planet, and it wouldn't have made one damn bit of difference." he sighs "The Solar Maximum would've still happened, and I wouldn't have the Apple to get into the one place on Earth where I could've stopped it."

Desmond takes a deep breath, and picks up the Apple, putting it back in his backpack. "I don't regret killing her, but I'll never forgive myself for it, either. God help me if Lucy ever comes here. We'll have a lot to talk about"

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Let me belong here, break my fall [AUGUST CATCH-ALL]

It's pronounced "Ra-doon-HA-ge-doon"

Many thanks :D

It's a very odd, very Mohawk name, lol

No kidding. Also I love that you have an icon of him doing shots.

AC3's intro was awesome for that, lol

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