The Scent of Blood
Dec. 26th, 2024 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamerMain Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond goes to investigate the commotion.
Word Count: 2307
Rating: Teen
“We can’t tell you what we don’t know,” one of the Council members (Márton, maybe?) protests even as another one he hadn’t seen before edges back in past Desmond, probably to go get a superior to maybe try to talk some sense into the bastard. As unlikely as that is.
“Need any help?” he asks quietly, trying not to draw attention to himself. Of course, that doesn’t work at all.
The malicious look of glee pretty much proves Desmond’s suspicions. This asshole is a bully who’s looking for a fight, and he’s been shown a picture of Desmond, because now that Javier knows he’s here, the Templar thinks he’s got that fight. “Desmond Miles.” The last person who said his name that smarmily was Vidic. “First London, now a Council encampment. What kind of eldritch wizardry did you work to weasel your way in, you worm?”
This is actually weirdly nostalgic, in that dealing with this is a whole lot like dealing with a drunk patron. If you look at the Council members, technically he even kinda has bouncers. Or maybe for the stuff in the Animus, because that’s an old-fashioned insult. “I asked nicely for help. Which is a damn sight more than you’ve done so far.” Rukh puffs up on his shoulder, still slightly damp, as if trying to emphasize the point.
Javier kinda screams in rage (that’s, uh...he’s got Cesare’s temper, which is, for better and for worse, easy to provoke) and pulls his sword from his back (also nostalgic in the weirdest of ways). Which looks like a crusader sword, not Cesare’s sword. “Draw your weapon,” he hisses, and Desmond purposefully glances at Márton and Taisa, kinda incredulous.
“You’re, uh. Just to clear this up, you’re picking a fight with me in one of the not-authorized Council battlefields on Council turf.” Maybe it’s a really good thing he’d stuck around in London to pick up some of this stuff. Even if he gets away with that once, that’s temporary. He’d be painting a target on his back and on the rest of the Templars for not following the rules.
If anything, that ticks Javier off even more, which is actually vaguely impressive. “I would watch your back, if I were you. It would be a pity if, perchance, a wendigo ate your organs for days.” Because the idea is, he’d come back to life in the middle, yeah. And confirms some of Desmond’s ideas about torture being a bigger deal for Bees in this world, even if some of them don’t act like it. His followers immediately fall in line behind him as he turns on his heel and storms off.
“That,” Lydia whispers, “...is really cool.”
“Thank you,” Márton tells him, shaken.
“We’re probably going to go check out the old treehouse, but if you run into any more trouble, feel free to call.” It doesn’t hurt to be on the good side of the Council. At least, until he’s got a better idea of who they are and what they’re trying to do.
“We’ll need your number for that,” he’s informed by Taisa, which is...honestly a bit of a surprise, considering everyone else has managed to get ahold of it somehow. Still, that’s easy enough.
And then, they get to stare at the dark and slightly forbidding forest. No sign of where Javier stalked off to, but Desmond’s already bracing for the next encounter. Here and there he spots one of the ak’ab moths scuttling through the shadows of the trees, and they’ve got the exact location of the treehouse, courtesy of the Council’s maps, but according to them the situation had also escalated quickly and they wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had gotten more dangerous since. What would make sense is a quick scout of the route, but—
Hmm. Actually, he hadn’t gotten a chance to try that out, and yeah, sure, he might be a little rusty, but honestly, Desmond’s kind of curious if he can pull it off. Besides, if he can get a clue of where Javier is from a vantage point, maybe they can avoid the bastard. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he informs them. Rukh takes off as he starts climbing, and yep. Muscle memory’s still going strong, even if he doesn’t remember off the top of his head exactly how this is supposed to go. Occasionally Rukh will hover in closer with his beak as if trying to point out a foothold, even though as far as Desmond would guess a raven, specifically, probably would have very little experience in climbing trees, but apparently his instincts are pretty good. An approximate ton of ak’ab lie between them and the treehouse, and there are even mud nest-things slathered against the trees with an occasional tiny and wobbly ak’ab emerging from them. It’d be nice to nab one of them for training (and slightly to tease Shaun), but they’re being carefully watched by bigger ones, so it’d be difficult to pull it off. All in all, he’s feeling pretty good about pulling this off and the nice stretch of his muscles, which was probably tempting fate, since everything almost immediately goes wrong.
One moment Desmond’s running; the next he’s basically tossing himself off the branch, grabbing one further down because the eagles are suddenly screeching in his ears. And then he hears the shot, which would have gone straight through him if he’d still been standing there. He crouches down, using the Calculations to camouflage himself against the bark. Rukh lands softly, almost silently, next to him, and then stops moving altogether aside from a breath in here and there.
As he glances back, a figure in red probably in one of the second floor windows of one of the houses facing the woods catches his eye. Packing up. Worried about getting caught, and there’s absolutely no way he makes it back in time to catch them, either. They’re probably going to be long gone by the time he gets there. Given the distance, that had to be a sniper, so different weapon, but it could still be the same would-be killer, maybe. But the shot is also...he doesn’t want to say impossible, since obviously it happened, but he’s really starting to wonder if this guy doesn’t have magic or something to try to back him up, because while the woods aren’t dense enough to completely block a shot, it’d be difficult for Desmond, and he’s got a whole lot of training and the Calculations if he messes up. But maybe self-taught or something. Probably not a Bee. He might be worried about getting caught for other reasons, like maybe faction politics where it absolutely can’t be traced back to someone, but the haste doesn’t make it seem like that’s the case. It could be Javier or one of his two cronies, but from what little he saw of the Templar jackass, it’s not his style, and he hadn’t had a gun anyway. In fact, between the three of them they’d only had pistols, though he supposes maybe they hadn’t actually had the weapon on them at that time.
He waits another moment. It’s quiet. No panicked yells, no worried calls or text messages—but oh yeah, thinking about it, it wouldn’t be too surprising to hear a gunshot. If they heard it, they probably thought it was being used on a zombie or ak’ab or wendigo. Not some hitman (multiple hitmen?) who can’t even competently take out their target.
Seriously, whoever these bastards are, they’re really good at getting out before they get caught, and absolutely suck at the whole killing Desmond thing.
Okay, there’s a new thought, maybe they’re failing on purpose? Like, trying to start the equivalent of a war between the Dragon and...somebody else? Though if they were trying to blame somebody, they’d do a much better job of leaving fake clues, wouldn’t they? Although—actually.
If they’re not trying to blame anyone in particular...the factions seem like neurotic bundles of paranoia. The Templars are out for blood, trying to find the culprit. Between that and Beaumont, they deployed Javier, who’s probably one of the most provocative people Desmond’s personally met, and pretty similar to throwing dynamite into a cave already wired with explosives. If this particular theory is right, that means the Templar are predictable enough to fall right into the enemy’s hands. The Illuminati are pretty much just waiting for an excuse to throw down, and the Dragon—well, nobody can predict them, which can be difficult to deal with, particularly in situations where you’re trying to go for diplomacy. It feels a lot like the kind of place that would produce a Machiavelli.
Which, thinking along those lines—maybe it’s a third party. Not one of the major factions. Somebody who would benefit from watching the Big Three get into a knock-down drag-out fight. Unless it’s the Dragon going for maximum chaos. He can’t rule that out; they might go for it even if it’d seriously hurt them, too. But maybe they’re trying to weaken them, maybe even take down the whole alliance and the Council. Maybe it’s a distraction, something to keep them busy and out of the way. He’d floated the idea that maybe it was a message, something like ‘keep out of this if you value your life’, or maybe more likely ‘stop making friends with Templars’. Given how ineffective that’d been so far, though, he wouldn’t think they’d keep trying.
Could be Beaumont, but...it doesn’t seem like his style. He might’ve been giving orders to his fellow Morninglight early on, but at this point it seems like he’s acting—he’s acting like he doesn’t need them anymore. Until Desmond drew blood, it seemed like he wasn’t even really taking Desmond seriously. More likely, if it’s them at all, it’s somebody else within the Morninglight serving as backup without being told he should—from Beaumont, at least. One of the others, Che maybe, might still be lending a hand even without request. From what Shaun had been saying, cults asking members to do suicide attacks isn’t unheard of, and just because you’re willing to die if you have to for the cause doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t avoid it if they could, or have second thoughts in the face of death, particularly if they didn’t actually pull the hit off. It could definitely get in the way of stopping Beaumont. Could be Orochi. He hasn’t seen enough of them to have too much of an idea of how they operate or what exactly they’re after, but he still can’t shake the aura of ‘enemy red’ hanging over them like a cloud. The Phoenicians said there was a truce, but they could’ve been lying. He still doesn’t know what the unknown-number text was about, and Rebecca hadn’t managed to find anything. That she was telling him, anyway.
And there’s probably other groups he doesn’t know about yet, because this world is so much more complicated. No wonder the Templars need experts like Rebecca and Shaun to keep track of this stuff—it was bad enough trying to keep track of all the moves Abstergo was making.
He reaches out and pets Rukh. He’s surprised to learn that he’s still a little shaky, but then, now that the raven’s not staying perfectly still, he is, too. It’s not the first time Desmond’s been shot at, and it definitely won’t be the last, but...thinking about it, if Rukh had been in the way...there’s been too many close calls, lately. “You okay, buddy?” He probably doesn’t have to lower his voice; it’s not like there’s anything other than ak’ab nearby showing up red in Eagle Vision, but he does it anyway. Rukh snuggles up closer, clacking his beak a bit and blinking rapidly.
From a glance at the map on his phone, it looks like they’re not far. He’ll get at least close enough to see the treehouse—that might be it, peeking behind one of the trees, but he can’t quite be sure.
So far, it’s mostly what he expected, but he’s glad he went ahead to check it out anyway. Lots of ak’ab, the nests, a few big ones glowing target gold. And even if ak’ab are normally mean and aggressive or even supernaturally sentient and evil, the presence of the nests probably means that they’re even more so. It’s going to be a pain to fight all the way out there, but, he gets the feeling, worth it. Time to report back.
Summary: Desmond goes to investigate the commotion.
Word Count: 2307
Rating: Teen
It doesn’t take long after he gets to within sight of the doorway to identify what, exactly, is going on. That has to be Javier, with the fancy uniform and all the insignias. Rebecca had mentioned ‘Rank 8’ like it was supposed to mean something to him (and, uh, honestly maybe if he was a normal Bee, it would), but he doesn’t have to know the exact specifics to get the general idea: this is a Very Important Man and he wants you to know that. The kind of guy who likes throwing his weight around—which, coincidentally, is exactly what he’s doing. Sounds like he’s trying to bully shared intel out of the guys who freely offered it. Bet he’s also the kind of patron to be rude and aggressive to you even when you make their drink exactly as they want it. And it doesn’t help that he’s got a man and a woman flanking him (both with less insignias, which probably means they’re lower rank) who have bought into the whole idea that he’s a big deal, too. But it’s also not just talk, because he is as red as his uniform in Eagle Vision and would absolutely kill Desmond if he thought he could get away with it.
“We can’t tell you what we don’t know,” one of the Council members (Márton, maybe?) protests even as another one he hadn’t seen before edges back in past Desmond, probably to go get a superior to maybe try to talk some sense into the bastard. As unlikely as that is.
“Need any help?” he asks quietly, trying not to draw attention to himself. Of course, that doesn’t work at all.
The malicious look of glee pretty much proves Desmond’s suspicions. This asshole is a bully who’s looking for a fight, and he’s been shown a picture of Desmond, because now that Javier knows he’s here, the Templar thinks he’s got that fight. “Desmond Miles.” The last person who said his name that smarmily was Vidic. “First London, now a Council encampment. What kind of eldritch wizardry did you work to weasel your way in, you worm?”
This is actually weirdly nostalgic, in that dealing with this is a whole lot like dealing with a drunk patron. If you look at the Council members, technically he even kinda has bouncers. Or maybe for the stuff in the Animus, because that’s an old-fashioned insult. “I asked nicely for help. Which is a damn sight more than you’ve done so far.” Rukh puffs up on his shoulder, still slightly damp, as if trying to emphasize the point.
Javier kinda screams in rage (that’s, uh...he’s got Cesare’s temper, which is, for better and for worse, easy to provoke) and pulls his sword from his back (also nostalgic in the weirdest of ways). Which looks like a crusader sword, not Cesare’s sword. “Draw your weapon,” he hisses, and Desmond purposefully glances at Márton and Taisa, kinda incredulous.
“You’re, uh. Just to clear this up, you’re picking a fight with me in one of the not-authorized Council battlefields on Council turf.” Maybe it’s a really good thing he’d stuck around in London to pick up some of this stuff. Even if he gets away with that once, that’s temporary. He’d be painting a target on his back and on the rest of the Templars for not following the rules.
If anything, that ticks Javier off even more, which is actually vaguely impressive. “I would watch your back, if I were you. It would be a pity if, perchance, a wendigo ate your organs for days.” Because the idea is, he’d come back to life in the middle, yeah. And confirms some of Desmond’s ideas about torture being a bigger deal for Bees in this world, even if some of them don’t act like it. His followers immediately fall in line behind him as he turns on his heel and storms off.
“That,” Lydia whispers, “...is really cool.”
“Thank you,” Márton tells him, shaken.
“We’re probably going to go check out the old treehouse, but if you run into any more trouble, feel free to call.” It doesn’t hurt to be on the good side of the Council. At least, until he’s got a better idea of who they are and what they’re trying to do.
“We’ll need your number for that,” he’s informed by Taisa, which is...honestly a bit of a surprise, considering everyone else has managed to get ahold of it somehow. Still, that’s easy enough.
And then, they get to stare at the dark and slightly forbidding forest. No sign of where Javier stalked off to, but Desmond’s already bracing for the next encounter. Here and there he spots one of the ak’ab moths scuttling through the shadows of the trees, and they’ve got the exact location of the treehouse, courtesy of the Council’s maps, but according to them the situation had also escalated quickly and they wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had gotten more dangerous since. What would make sense is a quick scout of the route, but—
Hmm. Actually, he hadn’t gotten a chance to try that out, and yeah, sure, he might be a little rusty, but honestly, Desmond’s kind of curious if he can pull it off. Besides, if he can get a clue of where Javier is from a vantage point, maybe they can avoid the bastard. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he informs them. Rukh takes off as he starts climbing, and yep. Muscle memory’s still going strong, even if he doesn’t remember off the top of his head exactly how this is supposed to go. Occasionally Rukh will hover in closer with his beak as if trying to point out a foothold, even though as far as Desmond would guess a raven, specifically, probably would have very little experience in climbing trees, but apparently his instincts are pretty good. An approximate ton of ak’ab lie between them and the treehouse, and there are even mud nest-things slathered against the trees with an occasional tiny and wobbly ak’ab emerging from them. It’d be nice to nab one of them for training (and slightly to tease Shaun), but they’re being carefully watched by bigger ones, so it’d be difficult to pull it off. All in all, he’s feeling pretty good about pulling this off and the nice stretch of his muscles, which was probably tempting fate, since everything almost immediately goes wrong.
One moment Desmond’s running; the next he’s basically tossing himself off the branch, grabbing one further down because the eagles are suddenly screeching in his ears. And then he hears the shot, which would have gone straight through him if he’d still been standing there. He crouches down, using the Calculations to camouflage himself against the bark. Rukh lands softly, almost silently, next to him, and then stops moving altogether aside from a breath in here and there.
As he glances back, a figure in red probably in one of the second floor windows of one of the houses facing the woods catches his eye. Packing up. Worried about getting caught, and there’s absolutely no way he makes it back in time to catch them, either. They’re probably going to be long gone by the time he gets there. Given the distance, that had to be a sniper, so different weapon, but it could still be the same would-be killer, maybe. But the shot is also...he doesn’t want to say impossible, since obviously it happened, but he’s really starting to wonder if this guy doesn’t have magic or something to try to back him up, because while the woods aren’t dense enough to completely block a shot, it’d be difficult for Desmond, and he’s got a whole lot of training and the Calculations if he messes up. But maybe self-taught or something. Probably not a Bee. He might be worried about getting caught for other reasons, like maybe faction politics where it absolutely can’t be traced back to someone, but the haste doesn’t make it seem like that’s the case. It could be Javier or one of his two cronies, but from what little he saw of the Templar jackass, it’s not his style, and he hadn’t had a gun anyway. In fact, between the three of them they’d only had pistols, though he supposes maybe they hadn’t actually had the weapon on them at that time.
He waits another moment. It’s quiet. No panicked yells, no worried calls or text messages—but oh yeah, thinking about it, it wouldn’t be too surprising to hear a gunshot. If they heard it, they probably thought it was being used on a zombie or ak’ab or wendigo. Not some hitman (multiple hitmen?) who can’t even competently take out their target.
Seriously, whoever these bastards are, they’re really good at getting out before they get caught, and absolutely suck at the whole killing Desmond thing.
Okay, there’s a new thought, maybe they’re failing on purpose? Like, trying to start the equivalent of a war between the Dragon and...somebody else? Though if they were trying to blame somebody, they’d do a much better job of leaving fake clues, wouldn’t they? Although—actually.
If they’re not trying to blame anyone in particular...the factions seem like neurotic bundles of paranoia. The Templars are out for blood, trying to find the culprit. Between that and Beaumont, they deployed Javier, who’s probably one of the most provocative people Desmond’s personally met, and pretty similar to throwing dynamite into a cave already wired with explosives. If this particular theory is right, that means the Templar are predictable enough to fall right into the enemy’s hands. The Illuminati are pretty much just waiting for an excuse to throw down, and the Dragon—well, nobody can predict them, which can be difficult to deal with, particularly in situations where you’re trying to go for diplomacy. It feels a lot like the kind of place that would produce a Machiavelli.
Which, thinking along those lines—maybe it’s a third party. Not one of the major factions. Somebody who would benefit from watching the Big Three get into a knock-down drag-out fight. Unless it’s the Dragon going for maximum chaos. He can’t rule that out; they might go for it even if it’d seriously hurt them, too. But maybe they’re trying to weaken them, maybe even take down the whole alliance and the Council. Maybe it’s a distraction, something to keep them busy and out of the way. He’d floated the idea that maybe it was a message, something like ‘keep out of this if you value your life’, or maybe more likely ‘stop making friends with Templars’. Given how ineffective that’d been so far, though, he wouldn’t think they’d keep trying.
Could be Beaumont, but...it doesn’t seem like his style. He might’ve been giving orders to his fellow Morninglight early on, but at this point it seems like he’s acting—he’s acting like he doesn’t need them anymore. Until Desmond drew blood, it seemed like he wasn’t even really taking Desmond seriously. More likely, if it’s them at all, it’s somebody else within the Morninglight serving as backup without being told he should—from Beaumont, at least. One of the others, Che maybe, might still be lending a hand even without request. From what Shaun had been saying, cults asking members to do suicide attacks isn’t unheard of, and just because you’re willing to die if you have to for the cause doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t avoid it if they could, or have second thoughts in the face of death, particularly if they didn’t actually pull the hit off. It could definitely get in the way of stopping Beaumont. Could be Orochi. He hasn’t seen enough of them to have too much of an idea of how they operate or what exactly they’re after, but he still can’t shake the aura of ‘enemy red’ hanging over them like a cloud. The Phoenicians said there was a truce, but they could’ve been lying. He still doesn’t know what the unknown-number text was about, and Rebecca hadn’t managed to find anything. That she was telling him, anyway.
And there’s probably other groups he doesn’t know about yet, because this world is so much more complicated. No wonder the Templars need experts like Rebecca and Shaun to keep track of this stuff—it was bad enough trying to keep track of all the moves Abstergo was making.
He reaches out and pets Rukh. He’s surprised to learn that he’s still a little shaky, but then, now that the raven’s not staying perfectly still, he is, too. It’s not the first time Desmond’s been shot at, and it definitely won’t be the last, but...thinking about it, if Rukh had been in the way...there’s been too many close calls, lately. “You okay, buddy?” He probably doesn’t have to lower his voice; it’s not like there’s anything other than ak’ab nearby showing up red in Eagle Vision, but he does it anyway. Rukh snuggles up closer, clacking his beak a bit and blinking rapidly.
From a glance at the map on his phone, it looks like they’re not far. He’ll get at least close enough to see the treehouse—that might be it, peeking behind one of the trees, but he can’t quite be sure.
So far, it’s mostly what he expected, but he’s glad he went ahead to check it out anyway. Lots of ak’ab, the nests, a few big ones glowing target gold. And even if ak’ab are normally mean and aggressive or even supernaturally sentient and evil, the presence of the nests probably means that they’re even more so. It’s going to be a pain to fight all the way out there, but, he gets the feeling, worth it. Time to report back.
