#and team jackdaw is on a rescue mission to paris

[piratekenway]

Desmond hopping down from the Morrigan and looking around Victorian era London comments that it’s. so much smellier than he thought it would be. and Edward, with a laugh, is like you’re standing by the Thames, what the fuck did you think it would smell like, roses? and then he pats him on the back and introduces him to Thatch and Desmond just needs to sit down a second because every goddamn person knows Fucking Blackbeard and this is a lot to handle. this is very much a lot to handle.

Aveline: oh, it gets worse. Desmond: how does it get worse! Aveline: we had all of Edward’s pirate friends chasing after us before we found a bridge into here. Desmond: all???

he’s also not very happy Juno might be around because of him! Aveline notes that maybe the real Juno left traces of herself behind in the Abstergo server while she was there, and then between the virus and the general chaos they caused and Desmond’s own memories of Juno, it all kind of Frankensteined the Juno remnants already in the server and Desmond’s Juno into a fully sapient being who is well aware of what went down and wants to get back out there and like. dig her claws into the real world. bc right now she’s limited to the Assassin servers, and a being such as that who’s desperate to claw back some power and to regain her people’s position over humanity wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

“well, we’re aware of that, but why take Hope?” Shay breaks in. “or—Kaniehtí:io, is that right?” (a nod.) “for that matter, why the pirates?”

Desmond is quiet for a long moment before he says, “shit. I think she’s trying to get into the Internet—everything’s connected these days, even the top-secret and classified shit, and if she has even a few Assassins, or people who could keep up with them, on her side—”

“—then it stands to reason she’d bring ruin and wrath wherever she finds her way,” Thatch completes for them.

“we can’t let her get out of the server,” Desmond realizes. “I can’t let her get out of the server. what if she starts World War III?”

“then we end her here,” says Ratonhnhaké:ton. “together. all of us.” he says this meaningfully, and Desmond is just like, oh boy, I did NOT learn how to deprogram shit, but I guess we’re learning on the fly.

and then they all look at each other and come to another horrible realization: if she’s using Desmond’s memories of the three Master Assassins whose lives he went through, then. then. oh shit. then she’d know exactly how to hurt Ezio and Altair the hardest. she figured out Ratonhnhaké:ton! she used his mother against him and his father, and she could well use Achilles or somebody else he cares about: like Kanen'tó:kon.

which means getting back to Great Inagua, which is much easier now with two ships. they just...might have to stop by a fort on the way.

“why do we need to stop by a fort,” Haytham says, in a manner that says he has already guessed at the answer.

“oh, we might’ve taken a couple of galleons and a few frigates on the way to El Impoluto,” says Edward. “just to keep fit, y’know. anyway, as soon as we get rid of those pirate hunters the better, I’ve no wish to lead them or anyone else to our cove.”

--

what if another problem! the portals aren’t always stable, so when the Morrigan and the Jackdaw/Aquila used their portals, those slammed shut right behind them. they can still find server bridges all over London, but Desmond has to figure out how to actually open them himself and then teach the rest. it turns out opening them is easy, but getting somewhere stable is the harder bit, so Ratonhnhaké:ton goes in with him to watch his back as they go through an unstable bridge—one set in a nightmare of WWI London and Roarin’ Twenties New York, and Desmond finds some way to like. stabilize the place. they also see Lydia Frye there, and clock that she’s also under Juno’s control when she goes after them.

not sure how Desmond manages to stabilize the bridge, but maybe something about the Eye? whatever it is, it’s enough to get rid of the Berlin and WWI elements (including Lydia, who vanishes before she can land a hit) and open a direct line from London to Great Inagua in the middle of the Thames. huzzah!

so then they sail right through and reunite with the guys who were left behind at the cove and give updates! and then it’s off to go find their missing Assassins with Desmond as main bridge-opener. and then yeah, they can in fact sail the skies if there’s no deep enough body of water for either ship, which is a wild thing to discover when you’re rolling up into like, Rome and suddenly your ship is miles above ground and slightly glitchy. don’t mind the missing boards guys, just.....stay on the railings.

and their first order of business is Paris.

--

Jacob is having a real bad time in the meantime. they can’t split up, bc Elise is gunning for Arno and Roth has brought his Blighters along with him, so they’re already outnumbered and somewhat outmatched! Jacob could recruit a few people seen as green through Eagle Vision, but he’s got a hard limit of five and it’s not like he can go around liberating districts by doing all the side activities—

“what if we can?” Arno interrupts.

“what?”

“if some of London has seeped through into Paris,” Arno says, “doesn’t that mean some of how the mechanics of liberating London has seeped through as well? if we do the club contracts and the co-op missions and the heists, things meant to catch their attention...”

“then we can trigger a gang war!” Jayadeep says, slamming his fist into a palm.

“and I know there are three stable bridges around the city,” says Arno. “Belle Epoque, that bloody eyesore of a tower—”

“the what now,” says Jayadeep.

“the Eiffel Tower, I should show you this movie one time,” Jacob distractedly says. he’s looking out from their hiding place and going into Eagle Vision, and each speck of red passing by makes him nervous. but no one gold has come just yet. certainly not Roth. he’d know. he’d know. Roth is not subtle. he owned a theater. (he should’ve seen it coming. but he had—he had—)

“—that eyesore, and the castle,” says Arno, on a roll. “we liberate the district that has one of those, perhaps we can find our way back easily!”

“except we don’t know who the gang leader would be,” says Jayadeep.

“easy,” says Jacob. “either Roth or Elise. and Roth...” he swallows. “he does whatever he thinks is the most fun, causes the most mayhem. a gang war with Assassins won’t be enough when he has the whole bloody French Revolution as a playground, he’ll just pay attention to something else. it’s almost definitely going to be Elise.” he looks at Arno.

Arno shuts his eyes and lets out a bone-weary breath. “merde.”

“at least Evie isn’t here,” says Jayadeep. “she’ll have warned the others by now, and they ought to be getting here fairly soon. I hope.”

“in the meantime,” says Jacob. “where do we start?”

“Le Marais,” says Arno. “that’s where the server bridge is, at the Bastille.”

“well,” says Jacob, taking a breath, and tipping his hat low over his eyes, summoning a rakish smile. this he knows. this he can do. liberate a district, fight a gang war, give power to the people. “then I suppose the Rooks are flying to Paris.”

(somewhere on the ship, Evie groans.)

the post is getting Too Long on my blog and it’s breaking my poor phone so. WHEE. new one!

gang sails off into the distance! and by “distance” I mean they’re high-tailing it into the Assassin servers in order to regroup and recuperate and figure out what the fuck to do now since. well. hey, they retrieved Desmond and they’ve kept him safe! uh. now what. if there were other Assassins’ memories in Abstergo, how long until they gain sentience as well? and how the fuck did Desmond and Jacob find a movie projector on the ship?

Desmond is still kind of reeling from everything that’s just happened, and to his surprise, despite the whole awkwardness surrounding Uh Fuckin Everything, the Kenways are willing to take him in, altho Edward somewhat morbidly jokes that their dysfunctional family being an improvement over his is really kind of sad when he thinks about it. then he offers to let him take a turn at the wheel—he needs to go see what they’ve done to the captain’s cabin anyway, he wasn’t able to since the collision and it’s probably messed with a few things.

they do need a base to operate out of for the time being. Davenport Manor is suggested, then somewhat reluctantly shot down bc of the two Templars around who are immediately like yeah uh No. Café Theatre is too cramped, although in a pinch it could do. the Frye twins’ train has little to offer in the way of bedrooms. Monteriggioni is considered and makes it into a top five list, only losing bc an entire town is a little too big and prone to glitches. (Desmond is a little peeved about it.) eventually everyone settles on finding a version of Great Inagua in the Assassin servers and regrouping there so they can figure out their next move. and maybe Edward is a little bit smug over it.

I do like the idea of Desmond teaching the gang how to really break shit in Abstergo, like—Juno is still in there, and there’s a possibility there might be more sentient data representations of dead Assassins (and dead Templars) rolling around now in the servers. Ezio shudders to think of Juno at the same time that Shay does, and they’re both concerned about the idea of Juno being able to simply possess somebody, and if she’s able to do that in the digital realm, there’s the lingering possibility of her being able to do that to an actual flesh and blood person. which nobody wants! so that’s on their priority list. and also all the other possibly-sentient people who might be running around the servers.

Arno and the twins and Henry listen to all of this, then sit in contemplation. then all three of them are like. oh shit we have to check on our simulations bc Lydia and Elise might also be gaining sentience and god KNOWS what they’re doing right now without us. who wants to come with, we’ve got spare clothes for you. (aka: how to justify the legacy outfits lol.)

The “Too Long Post” which was about the playable characters in Abstergo’s games gaining sentience for easy reference. (And considering we ended it after they got away, we can count that as Arc 1 XD)

Honestly, I think the only valid locations for their homebase would be the Great Inagua or Davenport Homestead because they also need to park their ship (depending on who you ask, it’s either called ‘Aquila’ or ‘Jackdaw’) and the Seine river would be hard to navigate while the Thames is chock-full of other ships and boats and the moving train means they can’t always get to the ship quickly. Also, they all try to fit in the mansion that Edward had ‘commandeered’ but it becomes clear that there is a division. Altaïr, Ezio and Ratonhnhaké:ton took the rooms nearest to Desmond. Haytham took the room furthest away from everyone and Shay took the room to his left. Shao Jun took the empty room nearest to Ezio while Aveline took the empty room nearest to Ratonhnhaké:ton. Jacob��s the only one who went ‘whichever room is free’ and Arno took the room furthest away from Shay which sorta put him between Jacob and an empty room that Evie took for herself. Jacob joked of Jayadeep just sharing a room with Evie so he took the room on the other side of Jacob instead, making Jacob roll his eyes. Edward just took his old room (which was the largest room). So… they might be in this together but they’re definitely not exactly the bestest of allies at the moment.  

Desmond taught them what he knew, things he didn’t know when he was alive but he just… knew once he ‘woke up’. He doesn’t even know if these skills came from his memory of Clay or from his memory of Dionysus (holy shit, his Isu ancestor was the god of wine and debauchery? What the fuck???) but he wasn’t going to reject such a boon. He’s quiet about his life though, only sharing a bit if anyone asked about what they saw. 

And the only one who asked was a worried Shao Jun because Shay was keeping his distance and the others either didn’t have such a bad memory to watch (Aveline, Evie and Jayadeep) or didn’t even see any memory (Jacob and Arno).

The ones connected to Desmond though… Desmond told them everything. Even Edward who was just in the room with the three people who had the biggest urge to find Desmond and Haytham who Edward believes had been affected just as much by the time they started to piece Desmond back together. Edward provided the alcohol back then (although Altaïr did not partake) and they finished more than five bottles of Edward’s hardest liquor. He was especially worried for Haytham who grabbed an entire unopened bottle and just started topping his glass with it and ended up finishing it and still requesting his glass to be filled afterward.  

Are we talking about the Juno in Desmond’s dataspace or the real Juno in digital space? Because if it’s the real Juno and this is set after Syndicate BUT before the comics where she died, then Juno is out in the real world (which would give us an excuse to have our sentient Assassins travel into other corners of the internet XD).

However, I do like the idea that they’ve unintentionally created Juno 2.0 from Desmond’s memory of her (and also a bit of Ezio and Ratonhnhaké:ton’s memories). This also gives Ratonhnhaké:ton a reason to want to take her down since she… technically didn’t lie but she absolutely used Ratonhnhaké:ton and gave him the short stick in that deal. (With her past misgivings to Ratonhnhaké:ton, Edward would be on board and maybe even Haytham once he learned how everything had been set into stones because of the path the Isus have chosen the world to walk to, including how the Kenway family ended).

You know what would be fun? If they made the grievous assumption that the data are gaining sentient while they were gone BUT the real reason why they’re slowly gaining sentient is because all sentient data (them) are still connected to the virus that started this all. Now, the virus was fast-acting in Abstergo because it was meant to fuck shit up there but the virus also have a failsafe that makes it dormant when it knows it’s no longer in Abstergo’s servers. But… the virus itself might be dormant but constant exposure to it will still affect data. 

… wanna make Arno have a bad time once more? Élise is slowly waking up and she starts remembering…

The many times Arno repeated her death, together with the pain and rage that consumed her during those days, not knowing Arno repeated that memory over and over again to try and save her.

You gotta wonder… if Élise would even be happy to see Arno once more when her most lived memory was her death.

(Also… Lydia would be fine being sentient since she loves her grandaunt and granddad who raised her but… remember… Jack the Ripper is also in the servers).