Deep Roots

[madimpossibledreamer]

this is not your average Faction Agent for the Agent Mission system. Desmond is not your average Bee.

Main Points:
Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond tests out his new powers and possibly recruits someone.
Word Count: 2108
Rating: Teen

 

         It turns out Desmond has not been a little too cautious when it comes to his new powers. The almost-constant police sirens have been bothering him. He really wants to check out the area in Darkside where the police have been swarming, see if it’s at all related to his own attacker, and he’s pretty sure his tails would be severely unhappy if he just waltzed up and started poking around, so Weird Mysterious Sneaking Power it is. He doesn’t actually want to fight these Templars, not yet anyway. Maybe if he finds evidence that they’re as bad as the world he came from, but—okay, yeah, so he’d run into a reference they’d been involved in the Crusades, but he’s pretty sure they weren’t masterminding it or using it as an excuse to try to find artifacts to enslave humanity. Probably.
         And, like, his worst fears are realized, because he had to have absorbed part of the powers of the Apple, or using the device at the Temple changed him, or something, because he doesn’t actually lose his tails. Not exactly. He’d been thinking something about ‘I don’t want them to panic but I don’t want them to exactly notice what I’m doing’, or something along those lines, and they don’t. They just trail behind, looking a little vacant and lost, but they’re still vaguely within sight. They’re just also obviously not paying attention to what he’s doing.
         The police officers don’t see him either, but it becomes obvious that he hasn’t phased out of reality, or whatever, because they do actually bump into him. The apartment itself is tiny, though, so they just apologize to the next officer within arm’s reach. He basically just has to stand in the doorway and hope none of them need to leave, so he doesn’t get much in the way of glimpses. They’ve probably already removed the body. From the look of it, whoever did it was kinda messy and got blood everywhere, and they don’t even need anything special to see it; it’s sunken deep into the carpet.
         He doesn’t really have to wait around long to figure out this doesn’t have anything to do with the guy. Whoever did this probably used some kind of bladed weapon and went slow. Not exactly the hitman type.
         “Who’s writing the report to our friends in red?” one of them teases, and they turn to a guy who looks pretty young.
         “Not again,” he whines, and they laugh.
         “Only taking the piss. We’ll just put it on the D.I. The promotion’s hers, but so’s the paperwork,” another one snickers.
         “Don’t reckon we’re that lucky. Sonnac’s agents’ll investigate, sure, but magic’s a mite better at covering tracks,” an older officer argues.
         He is able to take a couple of pictures on his phone, flash and all, of anything that remotely feels gold. Looks like there’s a computer open, though it’s an open question if he’ll actually be able to make out what’s on that computer, even if the camera on this phone is a lot better than his had been.
         He also has to vault over the side of the walkway when one of the officers turns around and runs out, apparently to lose his lunch. Fortunately, it’s a little past where Desmond’s hanging on, and ouch they don’t maintain this area at all, he’s got splinters digging into his hand and they’re going to be a bitch to get out.
         So he ends up taking a break to clean up and bandage his hands. His little entourage doesn’t seem to take him suddenly willing himself back into being noticed or having a new injury weird. Fortunately, they don’t seem the worse for wear, but...yeah, he’s going to try not to take advantage of it.
         Too much, anyway. Because he wants to finish his ‘tour’.
         The guarded gold door stays shut; this time if he squints his vision goes kind of black and white, with the faintest hint of what might be gold runes. He touches one, but nothing happens, so it’s not like a combination lock. For one absurd moment he kind of wishes Shaun were here; he’d be able to at least pinpoint what ancient language this is, probably. Then he remembers, and...yeah. Given that the police apparently have Templar connections and he’s technically probably prying in things that would make them mad if they knew, that’d be a bad idea.
         Templar Hall is even more disappointing, though it does confirm a few things. Shaun had gone on at length about ‘renewing wards’ and how he’s trying to find alternatives to the usual; salt makes a mess, water is just asking for mould unless contained properly, chalk is fiddly to work with, doesn’t feel great to try to write, and gets all over your clothes trust him he’d been a professor, and crystals are a little too new age. He doesn’t spot any of that, but feels something a little more than just nervousness that says he shouldn’t be here as soon as he steps past the guards. On the other hand, it doesn’t set off alarms or anything, so it’s like he’s invisible from that, too.
         Second, even though it’s really, really obvious to him that the ones following him are acting really weird, no one else seems to question it. Which reminds him very uncomfortably of the zombie-like results from Al Mualim’s use of the Apple.
         Third, he does overhear a couple of the people standing around mention the attack, and while he hadn’t really doubted Shaun or Rebecca, it’s nice to have confirmation; if it was ordered by the Templars, it sounds like none of these rank-and-file guys know about it, so they weren’t lying to his face, which is nice. Not that Shaun or Rebecca are probably all that much of Novices, to quote Altaïr, but he’s pretty sure they get info about what the other factions are doing, and aren’t making strategic decisions that would involve hiring hitmen or knowing about hiring hitmen, so if it is a higher-up, they probably weren’t told either, rather than just lying to his face.
         The area itself is massive and imposing and practically empty. They’re just as fond of putting crosses everywhere, but there’s something...it’s not cold and lifeless, no matter how empty. It just feels like a memorial to days long past, not soulless cubicles of a corporation more determined than most to turn everyone into happy little robots ready to take orders. They like their braziers, for some reason, but to the right there’s a cozy little office that happens to be empty at the moment, maybe even sort of a welcoming area or check-in desk or something, but it’s mostly got art and comfortable places to sit and a neat carved wooden desk that Desmond would be tempted to steal if he actually had any use for one. As it is, well, kind of not relevant. The paperwork that’s sitting out looks like mostly intake paperwork for new Bees, which, woah Rebecca hadn’t been kidding there’s a lot, but also, the only reason any of this would be relevant is if he really were spying for the Dragon. Which he’s not. More of the same in the drawers. Looks like anything Top Secret isn’t kept out here in the open, which is understandable but a little disappointing anyway. The desk does have a well-worn and obviously old copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which—huh. Ezio had at least heard of this, even though he’d been a bit too busy to track down a copy to read it. Didn’t Machiavelli mention it once, or was it…? Nah, he doesn’t have time for this. Just because one try hadn’t burned out the brains of the friendly Templars trailing him doesn’t mean he wants to push it too long.
         Unfortunately other than a few people standing around, all the doors that would lead anywhere interesting are locked. He still finds gold runes by squinting, and these actually do light up when he touches them. Frustratingly, they rearrange themselves almost immediately and go dull gold again, meaning that, essentially, it’s a combination that keeps changing itself almost instantaneously, and unlike with a keypad, Eagle Vision is giving him no clues. Maybe it’s that he hasn’t figured out how to use this supposedly stronger Eagle Vision; more likely, oddly enough, he gets the feeling that it’s because he’s supposed to transmit the whole key at once, using a spell or artifact rather than actually touching the symbols one by one, so there’s no previous fingerprints to go by.
         Desmond basically just turns the power back off when he’s back by the fountain because while it’s useful it’s really making him uncomfortable, and the tattoo stops glowing. They still seem fine, but it means he’s doing his best to stay casual when he meets up with Shaun and Rebecca at the Horned God later.
         For better or worse, there’s a distraction before long, though; this surfer dude just comes up to him out of the blue and introduces himself as Desmond’s Agent. That doesn’t sound like a handler, or anything, and he’s not technically a Dragon, if the little girl had been telling the truth, and also they’d seemed pretty determined to just leave him to his own devices and just watch what happened, so he’s really confused about what this latest plan means. The Dragon really are masters of chaos. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that they could keep tabs on him somehow. The Dragon looks a little shorter than what Desmond can remember of that red outline peeking around the corner of the building, though, so he’s probably not the guy with the gun. Unless shapeshifters are a thing here, or something, but he can’t imagine a shapeshifter would be too worried about getting caught; just drop the gun, shapeshift out of sight, and without Eagle Vision he should just blend in, so Desmond’s discarding that possibility at least this time.
         “I don’t know that I really need anything, unless you can maybe track down some information,” he finds himself saying, because it’s pretty awkward having the guy just stand there and stare, even if it actually looks like the guy is finding it as hilarious as Rebecca was, really. This is kind of vaguely reminding him of his time as Ezio, but he’s not recruiting and he’s not even sure that he wants to rebuild the Brotherhood yet until he gets a grasp on this world and all the faction stuff. Sure, Shaun gave him the basics, but there has to have been relevant details he was leaving out.
         “Pretty sure I can do that. Maybe even find you stuff,” the guy (who hasn’t even bothered to give his name) responds.
         He really is used to traveling light, but...Rebecca and Shaun are listening, so maybe he should too. “What kind of stuff?”
         The surfer dude just shrugs again, like he’s perfectly okay with just waiting around here and making Desmond pay for his meals (and honestly might have been as briefed about this situation as Desmond was), so he sighs and waves at the guy. “Okay, sure, go get me...stuff, I guess.” He hesitates, but hey, it’s not like this is news, and he really does want to know who was behind it. And may or may not be planning on leaving that asshole alive. “And while you’re out there, see if you can’t find out if anyone’s plotting against me or about that shooting a few days ago.” He’s not sure if he can actually trust the man’s information, but he does show up as blue, and it’s a good test. At one point, wasn’t one of Ezio’s recruits actually working with the Templars? He’ll have to keep an eye out, but this kind of thing could be useful, if he thinks about it.
         Wannabe Agent Guy grins, waves back, and ducks back out of the Horned God. Really weird. What’s maybe even stranger, though, is that he’s starting to get used to all of this weirdness.
         Probably the good old-fashioned non-magic violence. That has a way of grounding things even when there’s a vampire selling fruit and vegetables next to a fighting ring.
         “I told you we were looking into it,” Shaun hisses. Man, his ego’s so fragile, sometimes.
         “Yeah, but we can come at it from different ways. I’m not that good at just sitting around and not thinking about it,” he responds mildly, and apparently the historian doesn’t have an argument against that one because he shifts to a lecture about Renaissance Italy. That’s pleasantly familiar.