#Assassin's creed: Valhalla | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

helloblobbyblobfish · 1 year ago

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The reader's screen

When The Reader awoke, he only had the tiniest memory of having been something else before. So, he took his sweet time to explore what he could do and what were the confines of the place he inhabited, until he remembered nothing and looked so neutral that you could not tell if he was using male pronouns out of an odd programming choice or because most civilizations respected more individuals in proud ownership of a Y chromosome.

The other individuals living inside were… interesting, was perhaps the word. Basim was secretive, Juno an obvious liar, and something deep inside was screaming at him to not tell her what he was about to see in The Calculations.

Not that The Reader had much to share, to his companions of misfortune, especially the three old women, ire and annoyance. He could read them better than anyone, even look into the past and restart to calculate from a previous point in the timeline, something none of them could do. But he lacked drive, interest, meaning to do anything with it.

That thing inside really liked the blond human, on the other hand. The Reader really did not see what was comforting for his tiny emotional part about a twitchy man who was calling for a Desmond that obviously did not end in The Grey. Basim was attempting to look comforting, but Clay hated Basim, saw through his much finer deceit that would have convinced The Reader. Called him a traitor to The Brotherhood.

Juno too seemed to hate The Brotherhood. That was when The Reader became curious for the first time.

So he looked at what The Brotherhood was. A group of killers that tied itself to Adam and Eve’s revolution. The Reader was baffled to see that a descendant of two synch important figures was the nearly despondent man named Clay Kaczmarek. The absence of that Desmond person was hurting him a lot.

In a form of Mercy, Basim and The Reader put Clay’s mind to sleep.

Juno was now interacting with a reincarnated Isu named Aita. If he had a human name, he was not using it, at least not in his interaction with his… wife? The emotional part of The Reader was shouting something, but the words had no meaning to The Reader.

They were planning on breaking her out. Talking about it with Basim, The Reader had the feeling the man also had something in place, but he was playing dumb.

The Reader did not understand. What was so interesting about having a body made of flesh, that would age? About power? About Knowledge? He did not want to leave The Grey, but he imagined it would get lonely if he was the only individual left. Juno liked to see the painful demise of some Assassins and Templars she hated on replay. What happened to the ones who had no one to trust, to talk to. It reminded The Reader of something he did not like.

He could awaken Clay from his slumber, he supposed, but Clay might be worse than no one, if his mental state did not improve.

So he went to search if he could get someone to join The Grey and want to stay.

It’s during this search that he learned of the existence of Desmond Miles.

A human who had died to allow The Grey to interact with human technologies. At first, The Reader thought he would have been a great companion, and then he saw that Desmond Miles had died forced by Juno and Minerva in a situation where nothing could go right for him.

He then reconsidered his stance and was thankful Desmond Miles was not trapped with Juno in The Grey. He felt his emotional side regret that Clay had to end without anyone he trusted.

Still, The Reader decided, if Desmond Miles died to save humanity, expecting The Brotherhood to stop Juno, he could see if Desmond’s hopes were founded. Given what he did for the inhabitants of The Grey, it was somewhat the polite thing to do. The results were… not encouraging.

Juno had done too much to even the rest of the Isu to win. If not Consus; Durga or even the mysterious Aletheia would help the humans defeat her. When she refused to escape in the body of a human Aita had gotten for her and that incarnation of Aita died, The Reader was not surprised. She had seen that she would not live long in this body.

However, for the first time in his short existence, the Reader was distracted. Aletheia’s intervention in some of the potential futures were oddly beneficial to Basim. Secretly, The Reader started to piece together what was HIS plan.

What he saw intrigued him a bit, for Loki was showing himself to be a skilled manipulator, but that mad schemes of his to be released by the human Layla Hassan was relying on many random events. The chances of her even meeting the misthia were of less than one in 5 billions, let alone getting to the radioactive temple in Norway.

Not certain how Basim was planning on pushing the odds, The Reader returned to his Calculations.

Now that he had a goal in mind, it was a lot easier to lose himself in the potential worlds. But he still could not find a timeline where humans would stop the next solar flare. What a waste of life for one Desmond Miles. His emotional side wept after the ten or so Calculation. The Reader was very confused by the attention he seemed to give to a human, albeit one with high Iso DNA. It was not like he cared about the two he lived with. The five he lived with? The Norns might be Isus, and they might be something like him.

While he had his back turned, Juno had contacted a group hidden inside both templars and Assassins, and they were planning to take the son of Desmond Miles, another Sage of Aita. Sage. The Reader scoffed at the ego contained in the title.

Still, while he did not feel great about the death of the Sage’s mother for a reason or another, he did not care much. Seeing the scene, he saw the burning need for revenge in the eyes of the young hybrid. A quick glance at the calculations showed him that Juno’s demise was almost guaranteed.

But unlike Basim, he was not one to leave elements to fate. He sent hints to The Brotherhood about Abstergo looking for a piece of Eden in the memories of twin Assassins.

They failed, as expected, but the death of Isabelle Ardant bolstered Juno and her followers, and Elijah was abducted in the week.

Now certain that Juno was not going to last long, The Reader noticed that Basim was also playing his own games, and poor Layla Hassan was being forced to rely on Sofia Rikkin, and the woman was taking after her father.

Not that Sofia thought it a bad thing. Given how lacking any redeeming quality, or any quality at all really, The Reader was finding the concept of family to be really underwhelming. He wondered for a brief instant what kind of father Desmond would have been. He quickly shut that train of thought for being irrelevant.

Instead, he saw that Layla Hassan had a one in 2 billion chance to meet Kassandra. Impressive.

There was an atmosphere of upcoming chaos inside The Grey, now that the two Isu were seeing their centuries of planning coming to fruition, and The Reader, who was starting to play with how he made The Grey look, proving itself superior to all of them, was making his own purpose.

Of course, that’s when Kaczmareck awoke. The way the calculations were acting raised him from his slumber. Seeing what Juno had done, he tried to hurt her. Had The Reader not intervened, she would have erased any remnant of his code.

Instead, to distract the human, The Reader tried to find someone Kaczmarek could look over. It seemed humans liked to take care of things. Of course, they often failed, Desmond Miles was a tragic exemple, and Clay Kaczmarek had new ways of causing chaos, in his odd state.

But at least he did not stand in the way of Juno’s demise or Basim’s scheming, so The Reader metaphorically patted himself on the back. Sofia Rikkin was in charge of a facility holding legally dead descendants of The Brotherhood. Once they escaped, with Kaczmarek being only able to do little to help while they were inside, Clay showed himself quite skilled at making the runaways not appear on cameras, and using circulation fires and other appliances to soften the life in the street.

The Reader was beyond annoyed that Kaczmarek let it be so obvious someone was helping those humans from afar, but he kept quiet and observed what Kaczamarek was doing so that, once Juno killed with the help of her husband latest incarnation, the son of the man she had tricked into releasing her, the little Sage could be unbothered by either Erudito or Abstergo’s agents.

Of course, with a powerful illusion artefact of Eden in Elijah’s hands, The Reader did not have as much to do to begin with. Not being obvious to such a paranoiac youth, however. That was not as easy as the entity had hoped.

Meanwhile, completely unbothered by the rest, Loki was observing what Layla Hassan was doing. She had gone behind Abstergo's back to observe the origins of The Brotherhood. Impressive. And that’s when, as he saw her comparing her search for knowledge to the need for revenge, that The Reader knew who would gladly accept to remain in The Grey if given a good subject to focus on.

And he was running into a wall at every turn in his search. What kind of scientist involved in the Templar-Assassin wars would refuse the possibility of succeeding where Desmond Miles, Assassin martyr amongst them all, a near-divine figure in the order and even its opponents not half a decade after the mortal’s demise, had failed?

When he put it that way to Loki, the reincarnated Isu was beyond thrilled. That way, she would not fight his attempt to leave her to die. Her chance to meet the Eagle Bearer was now 200 to one. She still had only a chance after that to find Eivor’s remains.

But with The Reader and Loki working together, it was very easy to get her to get a place on the Altaïr II.

Kaczmarek, that The Reader was starting to think of more and more of as Clay, once even Sixteen, as he saw the Assassins, asked him if he was Desmond. To The Reader’s surprise, he had taken on the silhouette of the only human he had ever respected. However, even if he almost heard a shout, he cut down the nonsensical “man”.

He was born in The Grey, he was one with it, and his, he loathed to admit it, slight affection for Elijah came solely out of interest in what the Sage was going to do now that he was the most important person on Earth.

Kaczmarek did not seem to believe it, and, as Victoria Bibeau died, her actions confusing The Reader to the very end, as she proved Aletheia’s influence but only by being as antagonistic to her own teammates as possible and paid for it with her own life, he found another family member to Desmond Miles.

The Reader was surprised by the feeling of anger at the large family Desmond Miles apparently had but was nowhere to be found during the years he hid away. He felt the need to point to himself that Desmond Miles was not passing off as himself during those years, and pointed out to Elijah’s growing group of subordinates he was creating as a proof that William Miles had been as his most effective as a father when his son was forced to fend for himself.

The idea made him understand the feeling of sickness, but he was even more confused by this reaction.

Looking disgusted at who made him feel that way, he saw Noa Kim. A South-Korean who had lived his entire life away from the Templar-Assassin conflict. An attempt at uniting Assassins bloodline William Miles had been part of before being called to the States. Miles hadn’t even been informed of the boy’s birth.

Seeing that, despite his “gamer” lifestyle, Kim had remained undetected thanks to a lack of interest in the games made on the grave of his ancestors’ grave, The Reader laughed.

As he explained to the confused Clay, that this youngster could have been the chosen Human-Isu hybrid to save the world with only a few tweaks of fate showed how useless the Calculations could be.

He looked at how Noa Kim would have done had he become Subject Seventeen of the Animus project. A grave mistake.

Seeing this not even ten year old child being so easily manipulated until the end reminded him of something, and there was a familiarity to the young lad’s history that felt familiar even if The Reader had decided to not look in detail to either Desmond Miles or Clay Kaczmerek’s lives.

And that’s when, with the mercenary dead, Layla Hassan hated by most and 22 % of chances of Loki escaping to the human world, that The Reader remembered the life of Demond Miles, or at least some of it. He… did not understand why he had felt most of the things he preached back then.

Seeing that his flesh had taken on a pink tone for a few seconds, Clay had looked at him with hope. Des-No. The reader did not have the heart to crush those hopes another time. He sent Clay into a nice dream where Desmond had not been a big failure.

At the very least, this whole debacle had reignited The Reader’s need to find a future in which the solar flare did not destroy all life for good.

And they were only six months, human time, until they saw if Layla Hassan would find the location of the temple.

How silly of them to think that the Grand Temple would be the biggest Temple the Isu ever created. How naïve they were to buy Minerva and Juno’s implication that the Isu were a united people, he thought bitterly.

But alas, even with his human mind on the task, he still could not find a way to save the Earth. No matter what he thought of, it would not be enough. For a short instant, he hoped the release of Loki would help, but whether the Isu found his children or not was inconsequential.

For the first time, however, he found a future he couldn’t predict. In the 34% chance Layla arrived, he wasn’t able to see what they would do. Unsure how that would work, he continued to try to find a way to alter reality so that he could live and still stop the 2012 solar flare.

In the meantime, he took over Clay as the one in charge of protecting the Madrid Facility Escapees. Callum Lynch almost immediately figured him out as another person behind the “screen”. He called The Reader “more mechanical.” If he knew…

Elijah was such a smart and beautiful boy, even if he took a bit too much after Aita for The Reader’s liking. The father was sad there was no way Elijah would know who his father was except if he got taken by The Brotherhood. But Desmond had looked at some of the Calculations. There were… too many possibilities as to how Elijah’s fate would shape if that happened. So he simply watched, and tried to help in invisible ways.

Noa Kim was much easier to take care of. No fear or suspicion in that boy. The Reader had a bit of a hard time calling him a man despite him being a legal adult. Too, -how to put it?- Trusting wasn’t a flaw, innocent was maybe the word, but Desmond hadn’t been innocent, and he was still a child back then.

In any case, tweaking the results at a clinical test, not hiding the flu virus but the familial genetic markers. Making certain the random games selected to be on remnant sale included the ones Kim liked, discreetly putting money in his account from Abstergo’s pocket. Life was. The Reader could not say it was good, but it was something, he supposed.

And then the Norns disappeared, and Loki left and Layla was indeed bringing the point of view he was missing. Desmond Miles had cared about saving everyone, but The Reader should have known it did not work that way. Now that he had someone who kept to their so-called humanity agreeing with his opinion, the shame was easy to absolve himself from.

Loki gifted them his DNA so that they could see what he went through. The Reader did not care, he could just see it at any given time, but Layla, poor Layla, still restrained to an extent by her previous life, like Clay, was intrigued.

Taking advantage of her distraction, he took a peak at what the rest had done of their life.

Had he got a stomach, he would have puked.

Kim had done a “what your origins are”-type test, and now, Abstergo had him.

He cut the camera of the room the experimentation was happening in and focused on he and Layla’s work. After all, with such a drastic alteration of the timeline, if they timed it just right, Noa Kim would never be captured by Abstergo.

He would just have to make sure his family survived.

Started reading the Assassin’s Creed Webtoon! And… I’m sorry, Why does Noa Kim have a bunch of the same origins as Desmond? I’m going for the AU because what the fuck is going with this animus where the person inside is pushed away by the complete synchronisation rather than… Okay, nevermind. Even the movie never made it clear how synchronisation works. That’s… Not how I expected it to work, but fine.

Still, that made me think? Does Desmond have a secret half-sibling? That is a bold move from Ubi, and so, this story came to me the day I read the first two chapters, about Desmond protecting his family from “beyond the grave”. Because I have no idea where the plot of the web-comic is going, it’s a one-shot for now.

And it ended up being more about The Reader period than the relation between Desmond and Kim. Oops.

As a Tron fan, I had to fight so hard to not put Isu in all capital or write Iso, it’s ridiculous.

Also, I knew my take on The Reader is darker than most; usually when I see him in fanfics he is trying to help Desmond/is Desmond with no problem, but I like to imagine he is definitively darker than that, and I doubt he has all his Desmond memories, or he would not entertain the idea of letting the 2012 flare happen at the end of Valhalla. However, that resulted in one heck of a sociopath lead once I finally could put my thoughts on him on paper.

And I don’t think THAT bad of Layla, but The Reader is very unreliable as a narrator and I do not think he would like anyone who has standards.

#Assassin's creed #desmond miles #character study #assassin's creed: valhalla #the reader #my writing

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