The Purple Patch

[madimpossibledreamer]

Hugs.  This is gonna get rough.

Main Points:
Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond and his recruits find out the allegiance of the man at the airport.
Word Count: 1368
Rating: Teen

 

         They do decide that, ultimately, it’s worth the risk, but Desmond gives Nate and Chelsea a quick heads-up. Because if they do end up getting the mast working again? The fake mechanic is definitely going to figure it out, and they probably all have to be prepared if that provokes the guy. Desmond’s expecting ‘Ellis’ himself to stay out of it but send representatives of whoever he’s working for to try to kill them.
         He laughs when Rukh returns hopefully with a wire hangar he’d found from somewhere. It turns out Lydia is pretty good with electronics, and Desmond dredges up the little he can remember from when he was a kid (they’d had radios at least), and together they manage to cobble together something. It doesn’t take long before they’re listening to Morse Code. Again.
         “Ugggh and here I thought I’d be done with learning when I got out of school,” Lydia complains, cheerful mood gone, and Desmond just shakes his head.
         “You’re never done learning. It’s just more useful stuff most of the time.” Not that he actually knows too much about school, but that much he does know. Neither Shaun nor Rebecca are picking up, so he calls Nate again instead.
         “Your timing’s pretty good. Found the body buried over by the skate park, alongside the ghost who confirmed he’s the real Ellis Hill and was trying to warn anyone who would listen to beware of the imposter. Danny went back over the footage on his drone and he’s pretty sure it happened the first day he tried to get into the Orochi base at the airport, because there’s the footage of the truck driving into town and after that when he wasn’t around would’ve been the only window of opportunity. Ellis’s ghost isn’t quite aware of the passage of time—it just happened after the fog rolled in and he doesn’t know much more. How are things going on your end?”
         He gets to explain and then transcribe the message as best he can. They work out it’s a drop location, alongside a set of coordinates. Nate’s best guess is that they correspond to a spot on the Council-distributed location-slash-tracker app on his phone, and the spot kinda maybe looks a little yellow when Desmond squints, so it’s as good a start as any. And proves the whole ‘there’s an app for everything’ statement—just the tracking part was redundant when you’ve got Eagle Vision, but local maps and standardized coordinates for communication seem a whole lot more useful. Though depending on whether it’s also being used to track the agents, maybe it’s a good thing he doesn’t have one. Aside from whatever Rebecca did, but he generally trusts her.
         They spot a giant tech crate, probably locked somehow, near the spot Nate marked, as they get into rockier terrain, and start making their way over.
         And he hadn’t been wrong about the fake Ellis figuring it out, or the ambush. The ear-piercing eagle screech is the only thing that keeps him and Lydia from being perforated. He’d known it was coming and had been keeping an eye out but even he’s barely ready for the two armed figures to melt out of the rocks when they get close and start spraying the entire area with bullets. It’s just luck that they’re in the rocks, too, which means easy cover as he hastily shoves himself and Lydia down as hard as he can, hitting one rock so hard it’s definitely going to bruise. Rukh barely manages to hang on with a cry, talons digging in hard enough to draw blood. The world fades back into normal colors, and he hadn’t meant to do that. Which gives him the extremely uncomfortable feeling that somehow they’re using something that can actually block Isu senses, which could be a really big problem.
         The purple of their uniforms brightens to a vivid red as he goes into Eagle Vision and they just as smoothly move back behind rocks on their side. Unfortunately, he’s impressed. Not like with the wannabe hitman. Because they’ve been trained well. Better than the Revenants, and those undead had supernatural powers on their side. Their stealth was practiced enough he didn’t spot them even when he was looking for them. Even if they’ve got a stealth artifact, most people wouldn’t have been able to blend in without making a sound or kicking a single rock. Their aim was incredibly good, they were confident in their skills without the overconfidence to think that they’d never fail, they’re professional about smoothly moving into gestures and the occasional spray of bullets to keep them pinned, and they’re carrying what looks like the standard issue fist weapons Shaun had tried to get Desmond to use back when they were training, as a backup. In case they, say, run out of bullets.
         They’re taking turns advancing a little, one using suppressing fire while the other ducks between rocks, advancing on him, and Desmond really, really doesn’t like this. His heart nearly stops when Rukh takes off right during the middle of another hail of fire, but luckily it seems Rukh is pretty adept at dodging bullets, too, though he can’t advance either and seems more annoyed about that than nearly getting shot, making the car alarm noises as loudly as he can to the point it sounds like he’s screaming. Desmond occasionally gets off a few shots, but it’s not enough, especially when he’s trying not to make it harder on his raven to avoid getting hit. He’s gritting his teeth and trying to work out what he could possibly do with the Calculations that won’t half kill him and will get them through this fight in one piece.
         And then the bullets abruptly silence.
         “You mentioned hexes, so…” Lydia’s grinning, lopsided through the bloody split on her lip (he feels a twinge of guilt, but then he didn’t really have that much time to consider a soft landing when trying to save their lives).
         “Well done,” he tells her softly, not quite expecting her to suddenly look like she wants to cry, but he’s interrupted before he can figure that out, because the closer one stands up, hands held in surrender.
         “Good luck,” she tells him, slightly muffled behind the mask.
         Rukh does not agree with the sentiment, because he is repeatedly dive-bombing the other ambusher, continuing to scream, which draws Desmond’s attention to the other one’s gloved hand pushing a button on some sort of remote before both ambushers vanish.
         “Desmond!” Lydia yells in warning.
         And then the—he’s just calling it a giant oil zombie, he refuses to call it by the Orochi name—bursts out of the crate which doesn’t have any of the lights glowing anymore, and then they have to fight that. Rukh is just insulted by everything, because he’s downright vicious, going straight for the thing’s eyes.
         Once they’re done, it takes quite a bit of petting to calm the raven down and get him to stop trying to fluff up to twice his size, particularly around his head. Lydia actually bothers to at least call Nate and fill him in, so she is improving, a little bit. Between the purple uniforms and the training, he’s pretty sure Desmond knows what faction Ellis is working for, now. Which gets all but confirmed by the next text from an unknown number he gets.

We hate to stand in line, but all the cool kids are doing it. Thought we’d introduce ourselves, since we’re pretty sure you’re not going to rat us out, not in a way that’ll matter, anyway. If you had somebody else’s tramp stamp we wouldn’t bother, but you don’t, do you? You’re your own free agent, and none of the Big Three can even see past their little squabbles to see the big picture, but you’ve got your eyes on the prize. As a Dragon, you’re all of the attitude and none of the allegiance. We like that in a guy. You ever want to know more, ask around. The sailors might tell you about the floating city. Say hi to your hacking friend and the historian from the Purple.