Who: Balthier, Shaun, Tadgh. When: Now. Where: London and then en-route to the assassin HQ. For once they aren't just hanging out in the pub. I know, right? What: Balthier heads to meet a “random creep on the internet” to talk science. Rating/Warnings: Vague references to Balthier's injury/torture and Shaun's kidnapping by Abstergo. And Shaun and Tadgh being...Shaun and Tadgh. Status: Complete
Balthier looks pretty awful, when he checked his reflection in a mirror, but he’s trying to put a good face on it. He offered “Balthier” to the “creep” from the internet for a name, and he was honestly feeling almost good in the sunlight as he headed toward the park. There’s some huge old oaks dotted around the place, and the grass was still novel enough that he was tempted to tug his shoes off if he had the chance.
He woke up, a couple of hours ago, in what looked like a winter vacation cottage. There was some stale tea in the cabinet, which - he felt guilty for stealing, as well as the oldest shirt he found abandoned on top of the tiny laundry machine. It had long sleeves and wasn’t his size, but - it was something. Better than this morning, he could tell himself.
The other benefit of the sweatshirt was that it was hiding the improvised belt he’d managed for the prison trousers. The leather bits were gone, which left some darker fabric bands on his lower leg. Still - he could almost pretend it looked normal. Tall thin tired guy, going for a normal walk in a normal park to discuss interdimensional science. There’s worse things.
Shaun wasn’t QUITE sure what he was doing, but he knew that the new guy seemed interesting enough, and he wanted to get to him before somebody else. Shaun took his role as Assassin Mentor seriously, so seeking out allies?” Was a really good idea right now.
He made his way through to the park, moving carefully enough,though it did seem like maybe his routes and making sure he wasn’t followed, involved a bit of double tracking. Still, there he finally was?
“Uh hello?” he said, to what seemed to be the guy. “We talked online.”
The guy offers a bright smile and offers his hand. “I’d prefer Balthier. Random fellow on the internet, right?” He’s got a British sounding accent, with a sort of nasal twinge to it. “The oaks are ancient here, aren’t they?”
“That would be me.” Shaun takes the hand and shakes, noting the accent at least SOUNDS similar enough to him. That’s good, that won’t take a lot of deciphering on anyone’s part. “You know, I hadn’t thought about that, but they probably ARE. There must be information saying HOW old somewhere.” If he’s into that sort of thing anyway.
“Fawkes.” For now , at least.
“Pleasure,” Balthier says, with a slight bow. “Under one of the trees?” It looks like a lot of people are sticking to sunbathing, and there’s enough trees that they could get one to themselves. “You said there was something interesting that you wanted to show me.”
Off hand, he’d guess Fawkes looks - better than he does. Which isn’t hard. It didn’t look like his dad wanted to kill him as much as - terrify him when they confronted each other. Which Balthier’s trying very hard to not think about that. The glasses remind him a bit of the pair he wore sometimes for doing detail work, and the accents all around them do sound enough like Archades that he can ignore the dampness in the air and the green grass.
“Well, actually,yeah.” Shaun muses. “Supposedly when they’re cut down you can see how old they are. Ring counting or...something. And I do, yeah. You mentioned patterns, symmetry. It turns out I know, well, something about that kind of thing. At least in theory.”
And he’s nodding slowly, picking up a stick there and looking for a spot in the dirt to scrawl, well, some of the easier sigils he’s able to remember closely enough to replicate. “I’m fairly confident I won’t summon any of those who came before this way.” he adds, “But...have you see anything like, say this?” He’s not exactly an artist, but some sigils are things you commit to memory anyway, and a few bits and pieces of the markings on the wall of the Grand Temple are seared into his brain as easily as anything else, given that they’d saved the world there. He’s carefully adding in a few of them, circles within triangles, odd shapes, what could possibly be a map schematic of sorts, though it’s simpler than what the precursors themselves came up with.
“This is….very close to SOME of what I’ve dealt with, markings, directions...I can see them but I’m not the one meant to interpret them. HE isn’t exactly here. Still, we carry on.”
“The ones who came before,” Balthier repeats and winces a little as he settles on the ground to peer over the sketches. He splays out a hand, trying to ignore the pale spots where he’d normally have his rings on, and checks the symmetry of a portion of it. He can’t quite get the spread to be perfect ninety degree angles with his middle finger and thumb, but it’s good enough for this kind of thing. “That reminds me a bit of auracite. Though that’s magical and not mechanical.” He’s frowning a little.
“It’s similar though? You’d summon espers with a glyph, once you’ve made the bond, but that’s a simple bilateral symmetry. Not exactly like this. My father had met one, which is the only reason why I know much about it.” Balthier’s still looking at the patterns. “That looks closer to something you’d do for technomancy. Which -” He trails off again. “Think of it like having connections to independent things to have them act as a whole? So - something to make a piston drive something else. Remove the piston, and the other thing, and you’d have patterns like this.”
“That’s, technically we’re still trying to determine what they DID with markings like this.” Shaun notices the wince, and he does consider that, maybe, this isn’t such a good idea right now. A little bit of a bad one, anyway, but someone who knows relatively what he’s talking about, someone who isn’t Evie or Haytham Bloody Kenway or Arno who...he doesn’t even know what’s going on with him these days, but he knows it’s not fantastic, anyway, someone who has an idea of what’s being gone for is a rare thing here. He DOES miss shooting emails to Gavin, he’ll admit to that, but in front of him, it’s good enough for now.
“We SUSPECT it’s their technology, the way they’d see it. They...it’s held that we come from the creation of an ancient race, humans … humes, you call them, I think you said or someone did, somewhere anyway, now I think of it, there might be a few of you people around, but we come from this race, who created us to be as servants to godkings and created powerful objects to allow them to keep us all in check…” He’s probably not supposed to go spilling that kind of a secret straightaway but...at worst., he’ll get a weird look and chucked into the category of odd. He’s okay with that. It’s not like the templars HERE care all that much about outdoing them and bringing about world domination is it?
“They’re unstable and very powerful and these could be maps, directions for how to use them...it’s hard to say it offhand. We’ve been studying for YEARS where I come from, my people.”
“So you’re dealing with an outsider viewpoint, in a way,” Balthier says, watching him. He’s sitting half cross-legged and squinting a bit at the sun behind Shaun. “Some kind of dangerous artifacts, and a dangerous map that may be to - use them or warnings about them. Sounds like it’s not entirely safe to mess with them at all. Are you all right? Servants to godkings sounds like a messy legacy to prod.”
“Rather.” Shaun nods, quite seriously. “We have had scholars, through the ages, people who know, well, relatively what we can find. The wisest among us, who became infatuated with power, corrupted by greed, once said that he who increases knowledge DOES increase sorrow. That’s proven true, time after time. And well, using them and getting rid of them depends on what the effects are, and what our goals really mean. I don’t think anyone would be mad enough to try using an artefact right now, unless like us, they hadn’t had a choice. I’ve done it.” He confesses. “It’s never something to take lightly, but when there are other forces who would have you serve, not only godkings but those people who would enslave everybody else...it does have a certain appeal if you can save your world while you’re at it.”
“And you said you’ve met people possibly from - my homeworld,” Balthier says slowly. “Did any of them look like they were related to me? Or ask for a man named Bunansa? Ffamran? Names might help me know, since there’s a few people from home I’d rather like to avoid.” He gestures a little. “I’d be willing to take a look at what you have, but - I suspect I’d spend a great deal of time talking to you about what I know, and accomplish little for a while. I know that there’s probably no one who knows what the patterns mean, and without the cultural backing, I’d be making guesses.”
He does wonder, in a way, if there’s stories about losing hands in relation to the ones that came before. There were stories about the Kiltia cult, and people who took the Rood of Iocus and lost their hands in the process in favor for some sort of mechanical replacement. It sounded a bit like horror stories to scare children. There were stories too that taking an Esper glyph might slowly destroy you, and those too, favored hands.
“Not in any detail . I’ve seen some posting here. The word sounds familiar,anyway, humes.” He considers.”Two blond men.Brothers. “ The names are not actually helpful, at all,but he IS bringing that up, looking thoughtful. “And, well, I was curious more about how these measured up, compared to your mention of paths. I see something similar and I jump on it. My assassins, they could use that sort of hope. If not, well, no one’s trying to take things over YET.” He smiles, like this is some kind of a relief.
“The sketches here, those are safe, enough, and I’ve seen objects used for good,as well as terrible. It depends, I think, on what you’re willing to do in the pursuit of power. We prefer peace ourselves, but have to fight for it.”
“Brothers,” Balthier repeats. “How are they?” Since - he suspects there’s dozens of brothers who he’s been in contact with over the years. And if it’s Basch, then that might mean there’s also Gabranth. That - is not something he wants to consider too closely. “Peace sounds good to me as well, but that shouldn’t be that hard to agree on.”
He leans to blur the lines and traces out the glyph for his father’s esper. It’s abstract enough that he doesn’t think it’d look like much of anything. Knowing the form of it, he can see the crown like shape at the top could be rolling fog, perhaps, possibly the armor or face of Famfrit itself, the urn, and then below the squares and “x” shapes that might be chains. Or water. “If I wanted out, again, what would that take?”
“Confused, I believe.” Shaun says, thinking about that carefully. “This place looks...different to this one. By a lot. I know a guy who...friends of an enemy.” he explains, with a little smile. “OR, perhaps, it’s better to say he’s more of a worthy adversary who I respect. Someone on his side knows more about them now, I would imagine. Twins, though, “ because sets of twins are probably still not all that common, are they? “Uh a knight and a soldier. And no, it shouldn’t be. It’s funny, how here, a few of us from, shall we say extraordinarily competitive circles can manage to co-exist. When you’ve got stranger things to face, I suppose that helps, and the fact we’ve wound up here, and don’t particularly want to murder each other...it’s a good sign.”
He studies the glyph now, interested. “The ideas seem similar, but yours? You could use them, in theory?” Shaun’s intrigued, and kind of impressed. “And if you wanted out, I don’t think any of us would mind much here. We’ve had people walk away before. It’s rare, but it’s happened. I’d like nothing better than to be able to put it aside at home, but here, there’s still work to be done, and without some of the darker elements..we’re able to be relatively used to what we’d call normal.”
“Two factions, you said. And the faction here isn’t - terrible.” Balthier frowns. “I’d think it’d be sensible to talk to them.” Better than vanishing or getting locked to his work again. “But . . . we could do that.” He looks at the pattern. “This is an esper glyph. One at least I’ve seen enough to draw it. I was a military engineer, I suppose. And I think I might know those twins. I’d trade meeting your folks, and letting them vet me, in trade for a chance to talk to them. With the usual - bargaining.”
He looks over at Shaun. Does he look angry? Does he look like he understands that fear of just - getting trapped? You show too many cards and the bear trap latches on your foot kind of trapped?
“That can probably be arranged, pretty easily.” Shaun’s not sure if mentioning exactly HOW easy it is would be amusing,alarming, or something else in between, but, it is exactly what they’ve managed to make it so there’s that to think about. “It probably would.” he nods. “We generally try. One of my men is...close to their grandmaster. Not a euphemism exactly.” he adds, in case that assumption gets pulled out in front of Haytham or something. He doesn’t want to deal with the issues THAT could cause, since he’s never exactly ASKED how the man from the 18th century feels about that sort of thing.
“A military engineer. That’s actually fantastic, like you were saying. It...there are a lot of things you’d probably find INTERESTING anyway. And sure, I can make that happen. You probably don’t want to just be dragged off to our lair though, yeah? Kidnapping’s not fun and even though that isn’t going to happen you’ve got no way of knowing that. I mean, one minute you’re leaving work and the next you’re ziptied in the back of a van being told you know too much to stay alive and shouldn’t have shared it with the world, yeah?”
“Enh, if it’s traditional, you could. I’d sooner you just grabbed my elbow instead of playing around with restraints.” Balthier offers him a smile as he blots out the sketch he just made. “And probably not.” He uses the tree trunk to get back on his feet. His father did arrange for a medic from the prison to visit, so he’s not in terrible shape. Just sore. “Blindfolds, I find particularly annoying. I look young enough to start with and hiding the crow’s feet doesn’t help.”
“That’d work.” Shaun eyes him. “Uh, you also look like you’re kind of worse for wear. We’ve got a guy who does healing if he’s around, otherwise, we have people who can go a little more traditional. “How do you feel about freakish magic that nobody can explain that’s probably going to blow up in our faces someday but hasn’t yet?” he’s keeping the tone light there at least, since he’s relatively sure that most of what Damien’s doing at this point hasn’t bitten them in the ass.
“Blindfolds we can definitely do without. I mean, sure, it’s probably a little wild and crazy, but we’ve got safehouses if we ever needed to go underground, and really, you can’t miss the place.”
“Now I’m just picturing some hulking lump of a building with a large sign saying it’s an unimportant warehouse.” Balthier smiles and offers his arm. “Lead on, Macduff? I’m well enough to walk, and to meet your explosive healer.” He hesitates. “If it helps, there’s a reason why I’ve been sticking to the mundane end of what I know. Military magical research is probably odd, no matter where you are.”
“Pretty much.” Shaun agrees. “I don’t think I’d really be able to get the particulars, which would annoy me FAR too much.” He shrugs, like that’s a joke, but actually, it isn’t so much. “And definitely, things can be a little…” He’s not sure what he’s going for. “We’ve all seen some shite, I think.”
“Back of the van, waiting to die?” Balthier offers quietly. “It’s understandable.”
“It was...insane.” Shaun doesn’t want to focus too much on it, seeing as the whole story’s probably going to scare him off. “There’s this company where I come from, run by the enemy faction, and they’d been doing...all sorts of shady things for...decades. Since they started. I found out some things about them, put it all online and ignored the warnings I got from Be...From someone who was trying to help me.” He doesn’t say Rebecca’s name if he can help it now, or get down to nicknames and he rarely mentions Desmond either. It’s easier to think of them that way, as people in the past.
“After we got me out, I wound up joining in, get something of our own back at them. For what they’d done to the world.”
“And there it is.” There’s a stronger accented person coming up behind them now, looking more like something out of, well, an early eighties film than most of the people around them. Tadgh’s got a fairly worn leather jacket, flannel around his waist and jeans and boots that are a little interesting and sort of filthy.
Hearing him RIGHT behind him, Shaun JUMPS about a mile in the air, even if he SHOULD have suspected this. The little shriek is probably incredibly amusing to everyone else there anyway. “Blimey! I’ve TOLD you not to DO that. “
Then he’s turning to Balthier, and sighing. “This is Falcon. He’s with us. I THINK.”
“Catch yourself on, Mentor.” Tadgh mutters, just because he can. “I’m the backup and the lift.”
Balthier doesn’t jump, but - it’s a near thing. He is turning with - well - he hopes it’s a casual air, but he can hear his heart racing in his ears. “The backup. You’ve caught me at a poor time for that, I fear.”
He probably looks - rumpled himself. The shoes were some ones he found abandoned in a closet, next to a pile of slippers that were way too small, and the shirt’s got dying elastic on the sleeve cuffs. He did get a shower, and tried to just not look, while he was drying off. It was hurried, though, since he had no clue when the owners would return.
That’s when Tadgh really notices him, and the fact he looks like, well. He’s seen plenty of people come out of things looking like that before, and his face softens from the almost challenging smirk he was shooting at Shaun, just because he could. “And THAT was the wrong way of going about that.” He mutters, having the grace to at least look a LITTLE chagrined. “You look completely done in. We’ve probably got emergency food in the van.”
Which, thankfully, from the way it looks when he nods toward the only van in the parking lot is fairly normally nondescript and not exactly murdery. There’s a huge dent on one of the doors, a couple bumper stickers in various languages, and a pile of blankets and jackets on one of the back seat benches.
And Shaun’s rooting around in the glovebox for something now, then unearthing a couple granola bars. “Honestly, I’m not sure these are actually real food, but it’ll work for now, if you’re hungry. And there’s water under the seat here…” he’s finding a bottle, which’ll be warm but for the moment, it’ll work. It’ll have to, right?
The line of Balthier’s spine softens and he flashes a smile at Tadgh. “Not your fault.” He does brace himself a bit for climbing in, but - it’s not too bad. He leans to check out the options. “Do I look that awful? Or is it more - the experience with this sort of thing factor?”
“Shellshocked kind of thing.” That’s Tadgh, and he’s definitely looking more sympathetic now. “You’ve been to the wars, mate. You don’t have to tell us all about it, but...we’ve mostly all got stories and they mostly all brought us here. I’m not sure we’ve got anybody on who didn’t come their way to us through some kind of hell or other.”
“There’s the Rooks.” Shaun points out, turning so he can keep an eye on Balthier as they talk. “Born into this, but everybody else...We’ve sort of...trickled. Luckily, we’re supposed to be the good guys. You going to be all right back there?”
It somehow helps, to - hear that Falcon knows he looks awful, and doesn’t really - think it’s a terrible thing. Balthier’s not thinking about the sympathy of the expression right now, because he suspects he’d try harder to fake being fine. He’s not sure he can. “Of a sort. I didn’t head out expecting a war. More like it came to me. But - it’s been peaceful since I ended up here.”
Balthier takes a bit to rummage around for a seat belt before giving up and flipping over one of the bars to check out the ingredients. He’s guessing something that’s more grains might be safer, but he’s got no clue. “It’s good? I know how to brace myself, if the traffic gets rough.” He slides the other options back. Some yogurt and fruit iced one sounds - interesting but dubious on his already uneasy stomach, and the other one had a filling, and he can’t identify it at all. Not even loan word guessing from the ingredients helps. The label says it’s mango and passion fruit, but that’s nothing he’s heard of. “Thank you, Fawkes.”
If there are people you don’t have to fake being okay with, it’s their ragtag little group at least. Shaun suspects that if Ezio or Altair were to wander in and assume command, that’d all change pretty rapidly, or Hell, if BILL turned up, he’d definitely be pretending he had everything under control all of the time, because it’s just a thing you do with legends like that, and Bill may be a complete ass and a terrible emotional support system, but he was still good at what he did. But even EVIE, the most polished one of them here is under pressure has had her moments and no one’s PARTICULARLY cared. At least moments like this one.
“It’s less a war, at least, more a comfortable stalemate.” Tadgh answers, focusing on backing them out and remembering which side he’s supposed to drive on here. Since they’ve been fluctuating between a lot of places, it’s not as easy as you’d think sometimes, and he can’t shake the feeling that at some point there’ll be traffic stops that are really almost ridiculous. Ridiculous considering the breaks for it they’ve all had to make before.
“Thank YOU for not dismissing all of us as the group of weirdos without giving things a shot.” Shaun answers pretty seriously. “I mean we ARE, but there’s a method to the madness.” Somewhere deep down at least.
Balthier chuckles. “Well, you’re not -” He gestures with the granola bar to try to encompass the extent of weirdos that aren’t trustworthy. “You agreed to the two things I’m the most worried about. The rest can come out in the wash. It’s better than me spending half my time searching for things and staring at the results in bafflement.”
He pauses. Does Tadgh know? Maybe? “I’m . . . not from around here, Falcon. I don’t know how much Fawkes told you. I mostly caught his attention by worrying how - risky it’d be to be an engineer here.” A military engineer. With his father the head military scientist.
“I’m not from around here either.” Tadgh assures him, “I’d have thought you for a Brit, but near all of us in our little group, with a couple exceptions’ve come from the same basic world. Different points in time and places. But…” he shrugs a little. “There’s a couple with us who’re not. I take it yours is different along the lines to how some of theirs might be. There’s a few we’re eying who’re from positively medieval and the grandmaster on the other end...he’s got a pack of people from all over the place. And engineering..that’s not bad. Ought to work here depending on what you’re used to, or you’ll pick it up.”
“He’s a good...thirty years out of date from me.” Shaun explains. “And we’ve got some others from all over the place that way. It’s odd but we rub along. We mostly rub along.” he amends, since the statement’s getting him an eyebrow from the driver’s seat. “Watch the bloody road.” he mutters.
Balthier’s drained a surprising amount of water, but it’s helping the mild headache that’s threatening to get worse. “It’s about 706 for me, so - I don’t know if that makes me a medievalist or if the calendar dating system is completely different. Didn’t help that first muddling around as I tried to figure out where I was. I’m Archadian, for the record. One of those - I wasn’t noble, but dad had just about cemented our position as steady.”
He leans to carefully set down the bottle and the empty wrapper and shifts to tuck his legs up on the bench seat. He could fall asleep. Easily. The coats and blankets are cushioning his sore back, and it feels - better in the smaller space. Less open.
That has Shaun laughing a little. “Oddly, one of the new potential recruits a few people have recommended to me’s from one of those worlds, but it sounds actually medieval as opposed to...you’ve got interesting technology and magic intertwining too. You’ll probably love it here, this world, once you get your feet under you.”
“Or, you muddle through until it makes sense and see where it goes after a while.” Tadgh puts in, but that’s less argument out of reflex than a generic thing that’s actually happened. “Thankfully. We’re not too far out actually.” And he’s going a little quiet then, glancing over at Shaun from time to time and checking in his mirror. “I’d say we should keep Jacob out.” he says, when he’s fairly sure Balthier can’t hear them. “Give yer man a day or two without the...well…” He glances back then, just to be sure before they go on talking anymore.
There’s a very soft snore. Balthier’s curled up between the sidewall and the back of the bench and definitely out for the count for now.