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rionaleonhart) wrote2016-01-16 01:56 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2016-01-16 01:56 pm
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Fanfiction: Visiting the Pokémon Centre (Assassin's Creed/Pokémon)
I accidentally wrote a Pokémon AU of my Sense8 AU for Assassin's Creed. Looking back, I somehow feel that I should have seen this coming.
Title: Visiting the Pokémon Centre
Fandom: Assassin's Creed/Pokémon
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,300
Summary: It’s been tradition in the Assassin Brotherhood for over a thousand years: every novice receives an Eevee. In deciding what to evolve it into, you will discover yourself. (Inexplicable Pokémon AU of the Visitorverse AU.)
It is a long-standing tradition in the Assassin Brotherhood: every novice receives an Eevee and must decide what to evolve it into. A test of character, and of how well one knows oneself.
“Look after her,” Al Mualim says, placing a tiny kit into Altaïr’s arms. “One day you will know who you are, and you will know what she must be.”
Altaïr knows who he is already, and he fully intends to evolve his Eevee into the form that will give him the greatest advantage in battle. But he doesn’t yet know what that form will be.
Umbreon is a popular choice, and Altaïr can see the value in having a Pokémon that can blend into the shadows. But there seems little point in choosing a Pokémon for its dark coat when their own cloaks are white.
Vaporeon? His inability to swim is a weakness he hates. A Vaporeon would be able to carry him over water. But a Jolteon would be swifter on land.
Time goes on, and he makes no decision. He is reborn as a novice again, he meets strange figures from the future, he discovers Al Mualim’s betrayal, and still he makes no decision. He feels further from a decision than ever, in fact, because he realises now that he never truly knew himself in the first place.
One day he is sitting at his desk, his Eevee sleeping on his lap. He is sketching out the schematics for his new hidden blade, the one that will let future Assassins keep all their fingers.
His Eevee starts to her feet suddenly. She blinks, twice, and sneezes, and shakes out her coat.
And then she leaps down from his lap, and she begins to glow.
She’s evolving.
Altaïr’s first instinct is to call out to her to stop. He doesn’t yet understand himself; he doesn’t know what form would best suit her.
And then he realises what she must be evolving into. The sunlight is streaming in through the windows. He thinks she’s fond of him; she’s always been affectionate.
And... it feels right. He wants to learn; he wants to know; he wants to seek out wisdom. He needs a Pokémon that can help him in that pursuit.
The glow fades. Altaïr holds out a hand, and his new Espeon rubs her head against it.
“She suits you, Mentor,” a voice says behind him.
There was a time when Altaïr would have started at the sudden noise, perhaps leapt at the intruder without thinking. But by this point he feels he can at least trust Ezio not to do him harm.
“I suppose she does,” Altaïr says, rubbing her under the chin.
His Espeon pricks up her ears suddenly. Pads over to Ezio. Twines herself around his legs.
“She sees you,” Altaïr says, startled.
“The psychic powers, perhaps,” Ezio says. He looks delighted.
“I would not expect her to take to you so quickly.”
“Perhaps she always knew I was here, even before she could see,” Ezio says, crouching to stroke her. “Or perhaps she simply recognises my charm.”
Altaïr turns away to hide his half-smile.
-
Ezio is given an Eevee on his thirteenth birthday, like Federico before him.
“Consider your options,” his father says. He opens the lid of a box to display a set of evolutionary stones, foaming and bubbling, flickering with inner fire, shot through with lightning. “Consider yourself. It may take years. It may take decades. But one day you will know who you truly are, and you will know which form will most suit you. Evolve him then, in the knowledge that you have made the correct decision.”
“Thank you, Father,” Ezio says, and he watches as his father locks the stones away in a drawer.
That evening, Ezio breaks into the drawer and evolves his Eevee into a Flareon. He means to conceal it from his father, but that becomes difficult when his bedclothes end up on fire.
“I expected nothing else,” his father says, with a weary smile, once Claudia’s Krabby has extinguished the flames.
A lifetime later, when Ezio is sitting on a bench in Firenze’s sunlight, when the other visitors have gathered to say farewell and his Flareon (elderly now, but time spent suspended in the Pokéball has stretched out his lifespan to match Ezio’s) is warming his lap, Haytham sits beside him.
“Did you ever regret evolving him so early?” Haytham asks.
Ezio laughs. “Cruel, to bring up a man’s regrets at the end of his life,” he says, stroking his Flareon’s mane. “But no. Sometimes the decision made rashly, in the moment, is the correct one.”
Haytham seems to take a moment to consider that. He glances at Connor, at Desmond, at Shay and Aveline.
“You and I are very different people, Ezio,” he says at last.
“Perhaps,” Ezio agrees. “But I am glad we have known each other.”
-
Walpole is dead, and that means that everything of his is now Edward’s. Pokémon included, of course.
He’s only carrying one Pokéball, but Edward can’t complain about its contents. Eevee can always fetch a good price. This one won’t get him as much as a breeding female would, but male Eevee are still in demand by trainers and pet-owners.
Edward’s planning to sell it at the earliest possible opportunity. He can’t stand the way the tiny thing keeps pawing at his cloak and looking sadly up at him, as if wondering why its former master’s clothes are on the wrong person.
But then his crew take a ship that turns out to be carrying a cargo of evolutionary stones, and, well...
Edward’s never seen a stone used. He’s curious. And there’s an obvious choice of which stone to use, conveniently enough.
He lets the Eevee out once he’s back on the deck of his Murkrow. It goes straight to his cloak and starts sniffing it, as it always does.
“You won’t find him here,” Edward tells it. “But I’ve got something else for you. C’mere.”
He holds out the Water Stone. The Eevee pads around his hand, looking at it cautiously.
Edward claps the stone to its side.
The glow is instant, so bright Edward has to shade his eyes. The stone’s turned hot in his hand, but a moment later it seems to disappear, as if it’s boiled away or been absorbed into the Eevee. And the Eevee is reshaping itself, the tail lengthening, the ruff thinning, the fins sprouting down its back...
The glow fades, and there’s a Vaporeon sitting in front of him.
Edward grins at it.
The Vaporeon stretches. It examines its legs, then its claws, and then starts turning in circles on the spot, apparently trying to get a good look at its tail.
Must be strange. Edward tries to picture how he’d feel if someone clapped a stone on him and made him sprout gills. Well, in some ways it’d be convenient.
The Vaporeon cocks its head, perhaps listening to the waves, and suddenly bolts off at speed. It runs twice around the deck, then leaps straight off the side of the Murkrow.
That’s that, Edward thinks for a moment. This Vaporeon’s going to swim across the seas and spend the rest of its life searching for Walpole, and he’ll have missed out on an excellent profit.
But then he crosses the deck and looks over the edge, and the Vaporeon’s still there, swimming around his ship in happy circles. Edward has to laugh at the sight.
Eventually the Vaporeon clambers back up onto the deck and shakes itself off (all over the complaining crew), and trots straight over to Edward. It seems far livelier than it ever did as an Eevee.
“Enjoyed your swim?” Edward asks.
The Vaporeon nudges against his legs in what Edward quickly recognises as a request for food. He goes down into the hold – they always keep food suitable for Water Pokémon in stock – and returns with a bowl of pellets. The Vaporeon eats ravenously and then falls asleep on his shoes, Walpole apparently forgotten.
“You’re extremely disloyal,” Edward informs it.
“Maybe he found someone more deserving of his loyalties.”
Edward looks around to see Shay; he hadn’t heard him arrive. “More deserving than the Assassin who went to the other side?” he asks, innocently. He’s still not fully clear on this Assassin-and-Templar business, but he has some idea of why Shay’s visits with the others often seem uncomfortable.
Shay winces. “See if I ever pay you a compliment again.”
Edward smirks. “Anyway, he’s in for a nasty shock, if that’s what he thinks. I’m on my way to sell him.”
“No, you’re not,” Shay says. “If you wanted to sell him, you’d have done it when he was an Eevee. He’d’ve been taken up by anyone who wanted a Sylveon, an Umbreon, any of the -eons. You knew you were cutting his value when you evolved him.”
“I wanted to see what it was like,” Edward says, after a moment’s pause.
Shay folds his arms. “You wanted a Vaporeon.”
Edward looks down at the Pokémon sleeping on his feet.
“It’s possible,” he admits.
Kidd’s got a lady Umbreon, hasn’t he? Maybe they can breed some kits to sell.
-
“You chose a Dark type for its underhanded tactics?” Connor asks.
“I didn’t choose anything, Connor,” Haytham says. “She evolved of her own accord.”
Connor stares at his father’s Umbreon. An Eevee will only evolve into an Umbreon if it truly loves its owner, he knows.
“She was a gift from my father,” Haytham says, as if reading his thoughts. “I’ve known her a very long time. Do you think she would have stayed with me if I treated her cruelly? Do you think I would have treated her cruelly in the first place?”
“If you can show kindness to a Pokémon,” Connor says, “why not to a human being? Why do you kill the men who give us information?”
“She is mine,” Haytham says. “Informants are nothing but a liability to me.”
“I am yours,” Connor says. “And I ask you to leave those men alive. Am I anything to you?”
Haytham looks at him for a moment.
“Don’t try to manipulate me, Connor; it won’t work,” he says at last.
“Is it manipulation to make a request of one’s father?”
“You’re an Assassin,” Haytham says. “I am a Templar. We’re trying to manipulate each other with every word we speak.”
“And if I only want to have a conversation?” Connor asks.
Haytham shakes his head. “That’s for other families, Connor. It’s too late for us.”
-
Shay falls off the ledge with a bullet in his shoulder, and his Eevee falls with him. He tries to reach out for her, but he’s barely conscious already, the pain he’s in, and a second later he plunges into the freezing waters.
When he wakes, when he somehow finds himself alive and in the care of the Finnegans, the first thing he does is ask after her.
“Was there an Eevee with me? When I was brought here?”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs Finnegan says, quietly. “There were no Pokémon at all.”
He was expecting nothing else, but it still twists in his gut. If he could have kept just one friend with him, maybe making an enemy of the others would be easier to bear.
It’s a good while later, and he’s exploring the frozen wreck of a ship, when he hears movement. He drops into a crouch, laying a hand on his pistol. He’s almost certain he heard the roar of a Beartic not long ago, and he’s not keen on meeting the voice’s owner.
Something creeps out of a vast split in the ship’s hull, and his first reaction is relief – not nearly large enough to be a Beartic, not that that means it can’t be dangerous – before he registers what it actually is.
It’s a Glaceon.
A Glaceon? Don’t see many of those in the wild.
He creeps a little nearer, and the Glaceon stills for a moment. He’s expecting it to run, but...
It comes closer. Just a couple of steps, hesitant.
“Hello,” Shay says, keeping his voice soft. “Where’ve you come from?”
And then he sees that the tip of its ear is missing. The left, just like the damage his own Eevee took when they were fleeing Lisbon.
It’s impossible. His Eevee fell into the freezing waters with him; she can’t possibly have survived. Not unless...
Not unless she evolved into something that could take the cold.
“Do we know each other?” Shay asks quietly, holding out his hand to the Glaceon.
-
Aveline visits the evening after Shay’s Glaceon tracks him down.
“I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time around Templars,” she says, warily.
Shay throws another branch onto the fire. “I could say the same of you.”
“Around Templars who leave with their lives,” Aveline amends.
There’s not much Shay can say to counter that. He waits for her to speak again.
“If you can’t return to us, I understand,” Aveline says. “But joining the other side... I already have one enemy who can appear in my life at any moment of the day. That’s more than enough.”
“Whatever happens, I won’t seek to do you harm.”
“Will you not?” Aveline asks. “Our lives overlap. What if your new Templar masters send you to kill me? Or someone I love?”
Shay tries to swallow down the thought, but it sticks in his throat.
“Well, I’ve already disobeyed my masters once,” he says.
“So you’re planning to disobey the Templars before you’ve even joined them?” Aveline asks. “It’s not exactly an auspicious start.”
“I’m planning to think about what they ask me to do,” Shay says. “They haven’t sent me to kill you yet. Not always a bad thing, questioning orders.”
Aveline falls silent for a moment. Watches his Glaceon pad around the camp, never getting too close to the fire. Shay’s still at the stage where he constantly has to look over at his Pokémon, just to make sure she’s still there.
“She’s beautiful,” Aveline says. “Does she have a name?”
He never really found the right name for her when she was an Eevee. It didn’t raise any eyebrows – a lot of people don’t name their Pokémon, and nameless Pokémon are particularly common amongst the Assassins, where it can be painful to get too attached – but he’s always felt she should have some sort of identity.
He looks at her now, and he knows what her name has to be.
“Lisbon,” he says. “So I won’t forget.”
-
“A Sylveon?”
“Do you have something to say?” Aveline asks.
“It’s so... pretty,” Edward says, dubiously. “Doesn’t really strike terror into the hearts of your enemies, does it?”
“I mean to strike a blade into the hearts of my enemies,” Aveline says. “If I precede it with terror, do you imagine they will let me come close?”
“Still,” Edward says. “All these bows and ribbons. It doesn’t exactly say ‘fearsome assassin’.”
“That’s rather the point,” Aveline says. “Am I being lectured about ‘pretty’ Pokémon by the fearsome pirate who owns a Vaporeon?”
Edward pauses.
“Well, that’s different,” he says.
“How so?”
Edward frowns at her. “Because my Vaporeon is perfect, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Aveline says.
-
Connor expends no thought on what he will evolve his Eevee into. They hunt together, they fight together. Once he shows his Eevee a display of evolutionary stones in a shop window and asks his opinion. The Eevee turns away, and what right does Connor have to override that decision?
One day, when they are tracking a Sawsbuck through dense woods, his Eevee freezes, then sprints off to the west.
When Connor eventually catches up, his Eevee is sitting on top of a moss-covered rock and glowing. Connor pauses and waits until the Eevee has settled into his new shape.
“He is a Leafeon,” Connor informs Achilles, when they next see each other.
“Well, yes,” Achilles says. “Obviously. Grass. Growth and change. The work you’re doing to develop this place. Not to mention the amount of time you spend in the woods. I was wondering how long it would take you.”
“I did not choose the form myself,” Connor says. “He chose it.”
“Then he is a Pokémon who knows and cares about his master,” Achilles says. “Look after him, won’t you?”
Connor nods.
-
There was a new litter of Eevee not long ago. They’ve all been distributed to novices, apart from one: the runt of the litter, tiny, unwanted. Desmond’s been stopping by the room where she’s kept every day, worrying about what’s going to happen to her. They’re saying she’s bad breeding stock, she can’t manage any attacks, and if she doesn’t learn to be useful soon...
He goes to take one more look at her on his sixteenth birthday, before he leaves. She’s sitting in her cage and crying, a thin noise that seems to saw into Desmond’s chest. It’d be kinder to keep her in a Pokéball, probably, but that’d interfere with the ceremonial ‘catching’.
Traditions are screwed up sometimes.
Desmond jolts when he realises there’s another man in the room. Dressed in Assassin robes, ceremonial-looking ones that Desmond hasn’t seen before, white and simple with a red sash.
And then the man looks at Desmond, and Desmond realises he hasn’t actually seen this guy before either. There’s something familiar in the face, but he’s pretty sure it’s a stranger.
They don’t get many strangers on the farm.
“Who are you?” Desmond asks. He probably shouldn’t draw any attention today, not if he’s going to escape this place, but he can’t help himself.
“A friend,” the man says. “You may call me Altaïr.”
If he weren’t so nervous, Desmond would laugh. “Do the elders know you’re going around calling yourself that?”
“Is she yours yet?” the man asks, gesturing to the Eevee.
This is already a very weird conversation. “I’m not a novice yet. And they say she can’t fight, so, uh, I don’t think they’re planning to give her to anyone.”
“You do not need a weapon, Desmond,” the man says. “You need company.”
Desmond stares at him.
“Soon enough, you will meet me again, and it will be in a situation where you need friends,” the man says. “I cannot always be with you.” For a moment, he looks almost ashamed. “And I may not always be friendly. Do you know who keeps the keys to her cage?”
Desmond nods wordlessly.
“Take her when you leave. Be safe.”
And when Desmond escapes, with alarms blaring behind him and a Pokéball on his belt, he takes heart in the knowledge that someone supports his choice. A strange, strange stranger who calls himself Altaïr, perhaps, but someone.
-
Almost a decade later, Desmond lies on the floor of the Precursor temple, his Eevee sleeping on his chest, and thinks.
He still hasn’t evolved her. He’s always vaguely wondered whether it’s something he should do. But he likes the idea behind the Assassin tradition, the concept of evolving your Eevee when you know who you really are, and... well, he barely knows what his own name is half the time, after all these months in the Animus.
Perhaps he’ll decide. Or perhaps he won’t. Perhaps he’ll end up with an Espeon like Altaïr, a Flareon like Ezio, an Umbreon like Haytham. Perhaps he’ll have a Jolteon, just to be different.
Perhaps he’ll keep her like this, an Eevee, small and weak and perfect.
Right now she’s potential, she’s a set of possibilities. Everything else in his life is controlled by other people right now. Sometimes it feels like her evolution is the only decision he has left open to him. He doesn’t really want to take that away yet.
Part Two
Title: Visiting the Pokémon Centre
Fandom: Assassin's Creed/Pokémon
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,300
Summary: It’s been tradition in the Assassin Brotherhood for over a thousand years: every novice receives an Eevee. In deciding what to evolve it into, you will discover yourself. (Inexplicable Pokémon AU of the Visitorverse AU.)
It is a long-standing tradition in the Assassin Brotherhood: every novice receives an Eevee and must decide what to evolve it into. A test of character, and of how well one knows oneself.
“Look after her,” Al Mualim says, placing a tiny kit into Altaïr’s arms. “One day you will know who you are, and you will know what she must be.”
Altaïr knows who he is already, and he fully intends to evolve his Eevee into the form that will give him the greatest advantage in battle. But he doesn’t yet know what that form will be.
Umbreon is a popular choice, and Altaïr can see the value in having a Pokémon that can blend into the shadows. But there seems little point in choosing a Pokémon for its dark coat when their own cloaks are white.
Vaporeon? His inability to swim is a weakness he hates. A Vaporeon would be able to carry him over water. But a Jolteon would be swifter on land.
Time goes on, and he makes no decision. He is reborn as a novice again, he meets strange figures from the future, he discovers Al Mualim’s betrayal, and still he makes no decision. He feels further from a decision than ever, in fact, because he realises now that he never truly knew himself in the first place.
One day he is sitting at his desk, his Eevee sleeping on his lap. He is sketching out the schematics for his new hidden blade, the one that will let future Assassins keep all their fingers.
His Eevee starts to her feet suddenly. She blinks, twice, and sneezes, and shakes out her coat.
And then she leaps down from his lap, and she begins to glow.
She’s evolving.
Altaïr’s first instinct is to call out to her to stop. He doesn’t yet understand himself; he doesn’t know what form would best suit her.
And then he realises what she must be evolving into. The sunlight is streaming in through the windows. He thinks she’s fond of him; she’s always been affectionate.
And... it feels right. He wants to learn; he wants to know; he wants to seek out wisdom. He needs a Pokémon that can help him in that pursuit.
The glow fades. Altaïr holds out a hand, and his new Espeon rubs her head against it.
“She suits you, Mentor,” a voice says behind him.
There was a time when Altaïr would have started at the sudden noise, perhaps leapt at the intruder without thinking. But by this point he feels he can at least trust Ezio not to do him harm.
“I suppose she does,” Altaïr says, rubbing her under the chin.
His Espeon pricks up her ears suddenly. Pads over to Ezio. Twines herself around his legs.
“She sees you,” Altaïr says, startled.
“The psychic powers, perhaps,” Ezio says. He looks delighted.
“I would not expect her to take to you so quickly.”
“Perhaps she always knew I was here, even before she could see,” Ezio says, crouching to stroke her. “Or perhaps she simply recognises my charm.”
Altaïr turns away to hide his half-smile.
Ezio is given an Eevee on his thirteenth birthday, like Federico before him.
“Consider your options,” his father says. He opens the lid of a box to display a set of evolutionary stones, foaming and bubbling, flickering with inner fire, shot through with lightning. “Consider yourself. It may take years. It may take decades. But one day you will know who you truly are, and you will know which form will most suit you. Evolve him then, in the knowledge that you have made the correct decision.”
“Thank you, Father,” Ezio says, and he watches as his father locks the stones away in a drawer.
That evening, Ezio breaks into the drawer and evolves his Eevee into a Flareon. He means to conceal it from his father, but that becomes difficult when his bedclothes end up on fire.
“I expected nothing else,” his father says, with a weary smile, once Claudia’s Krabby has extinguished the flames.
A lifetime later, when Ezio is sitting on a bench in Firenze’s sunlight, when the other visitors have gathered to say farewell and his Flareon (elderly now, but time spent suspended in the Pokéball has stretched out his lifespan to match Ezio’s) is warming his lap, Haytham sits beside him.
“Did you ever regret evolving him so early?” Haytham asks.
Ezio laughs. “Cruel, to bring up a man’s regrets at the end of his life,” he says, stroking his Flareon’s mane. “But no. Sometimes the decision made rashly, in the moment, is the correct one.”
Haytham seems to take a moment to consider that. He glances at Connor, at Desmond, at Shay and Aveline.
“You and I are very different people, Ezio,” he says at last.
“Perhaps,” Ezio agrees. “But I am glad we have known each other.”
Walpole is dead, and that means that everything of his is now Edward’s. Pokémon included, of course.
He’s only carrying one Pokéball, but Edward can’t complain about its contents. Eevee can always fetch a good price. This one won’t get him as much as a breeding female would, but male Eevee are still in demand by trainers and pet-owners.
Edward’s planning to sell it at the earliest possible opportunity. He can’t stand the way the tiny thing keeps pawing at his cloak and looking sadly up at him, as if wondering why its former master’s clothes are on the wrong person.
But then his crew take a ship that turns out to be carrying a cargo of evolutionary stones, and, well...
Edward’s never seen a stone used. He’s curious. And there’s an obvious choice of which stone to use, conveniently enough.
He lets the Eevee out once he’s back on the deck of his Murkrow. It goes straight to his cloak and starts sniffing it, as it always does.
“You won’t find him here,” Edward tells it. “But I’ve got something else for you. C’mere.”
He holds out the Water Stone. The Eevee pads around his hand, looking at it cautiously.
Edward claps the stone to its side.
The glow is instant, so bright Edward has to shade his eyes. The stone’s turned hot in his hand, but a moment later it seems to disappear, as if it’s boiled away or been absorbed into the Eevee. And the Eevee is reshaping itself, the tail lengthening, the ruff thinning, the fins sprouting down its back...
The glow fades, and there’s a Vaporeon sitting in front of him.
Edward grins at it.
The Vaporeon stretches. It examines its legs, then its claws, and then starts turning in circles on the spot, apparently trying to get a good look at its tail.
Must be strange. Edward tries to picture how he’d feel if someone clapped a stone on him and made him sprout gills. Well, in some ways it’d be convenient.
The Vaporeon cocks its head, perhaps listening to the waves, and suddenly bolts off at speed. It runs twice around the deck, then leaps straight off the side of the Murkrow.
That’s that, Edward thinks for a moment. This Vaporeon’s going to swim across the seas and spend the rest of its life searching for Walpole, and he’ll have missed out on an excellent profit.
But then he crosses the deck and looks over the edge, and the Vaporeon’s still there, swimming around his ship in happy circles. Edward has to laugh at the sight.
Eventually the Vaporeon clambers back up onto the deck and shakes itself off (all over the complaining crew), and trots straight over to Edward. It seems far livelier than it ever did as an Eevee.
“Enjoyed your swim?” Edward asks.
The Vaporeon nudges against his legs in what Edward quickly recognises as a request for food. He goes down into the hold – they always keep food suitable for Water Pokémon in stock – and returns with a bowl of pellets. The Vaporeon eats ravenously and then falls asleep on his shoes, Walpole apparently forgotten.
“You’re extremely disloyal,” Edward informs it.
“Maybe he found someone more deserving of his loyalties.”
Edward looks around to see Shay; he hadn’t heard him arrive. “More deserving than the Assassin who went to the other side?” he asks, innocently. He’s still not fully clear on this Assassin-and-Templar business, but he has some idea of why Shay’s visits with the others often seem uncomfortable.
Shay winces. “See if I ever pay you a compliment again.”
Edward smirks. “Anyway, he’s in for a nasty shock, if that’s what he thinks. I’m on my way to sell him.”
“No, you’re not,” Shay says. “If you wanted to sell him, you’d have done it when he was an Eevee. He’d’ve been taken up by anyone who wanted a Sylveon, an Umbreon, any of the -eons. You knew you were cutting his value when you evolved him.”
“I wanted to see what it was like,” Edward says, after a moment’s pause.
Shay folds his arms. “You wanted a Vaporeon.”
Edward looks down at the Pokémon sleeping on his feet.
“It’s possible,” he admits.
Kidd’s got a lady Umbreon, hasn’t he? Maybe they can breed some kits to sell.
“You chose a Dark type for its underhanded tactics?” Connor asks.
“I didn’t choose anything, Connor,” Haytham says. “She evolved of her own accord.”
Connor stares at his father’s Umbreon. An Eevee will only evolve into an Umbreon if it truly loves its owner, he knows.
“She was a gift from my father,” Haytham says, as if reading his thoughts. “I’ve known her a very long time. Do you think she would have stayed with me if I treated her cruelly? Do you think I would have treated her cruelly in the first place?”
“If you can show kindness to a Pokémon,” Connor says, “why not to a human being? Why do you kill the men who give us information?”
“She is mine,” Haytham says. “Informants are nothing but a liability to me.”
“I am yours,” Connor says. “And I ask you to leave those men alive. Am I anything to you?”
Haytham looks at him for a moment.
“Don’t try to manipulate me, Connor; it won’t work,” he says at last.
“Is it manipulation to make a request of one’s father?”
“You’re an Assassin,” Haytham says. “I am a Templar. We’re trying to manipulate each other with every word we speak.”
“And if I only want to have a conversation?” Connor asks.
Haytham shakes his head. “That’s for other families, Connor. It’s too late for us.”
Shay falls off the ledge with a bullet in his shoulder, and his Eevee falls with him. He tries to reach out for her, but he’s barely conscious already, the pain he’s in, and a second later he plunges into the freezing waters.
When he wakes, when he somehow finds himself alive and in the care of the Finnegans, the first thing he does is ask after her.
“Was there an Eevee with me? When I was brought here?”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs Finnegan says, quietly. “There were no Pokémon at all.”
He was expecting nothing else, but it still twists in his gut. If he could have kept just one friend with him, maybe making an enemy of the others would be easier to bear.
It’s a good while later, and he’s exploring the frozen wreck of a ship, when he hears movement. He drops into a crouch, laying a hand on his pistol. He’s almost certain he heard the roar of a Beartic not long ago, and he’s not keen on meeting the voice’s owner.
Something creeps out of a vast split in the ship’s hull, and his first reaction is relief – not nearly large enough to be a Beartic, not that that means it can’t be dangerous – before he registers what it actually is.
It’s a Glaceon.
A Glaceon? Don’t see many of those in the wild.
He creeps a little nearer, and the Glaceon stills for a moment. He’s expecting it to run, but...
It comes closer. Just a couple of steps, hesitant.
“Hello,” Shay says, keeping his voice soft. “Where’ve you come from?”
And then he sees that the tip of its ear is missing. The left, just like the damage his own Eevee took when they were fleeing Lisbon.
It’s impossible. His Eevee fell into the freezing waters with him; she can’t possibly have survived. Not unless...
Not unless she evolved into something that could take the cold.
“Do we know each other?” Shay asks quietly, holding out his hand to the Glaceon.
Aveline visits the evening after Shay’s Glaceon tracks him down.
“I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time around Templars,” she says, warily.
Shay throws another branch onto the fire. “I could say the same of you.”
“Around Templars who leave with their lives,” Aveline amends.
There’s not much Shay can say to counter that. He waits for her to speak again.
“If you can’t return to us, I understand,” Aveline says. “But joining the other side... I already have one enemy who can appear in my life at any moment of the day. That’s more than enough.”
“Whatever happens, I won’t seek to do you harm.”
“Will you not?” Aveline asks. “Our lives overlap. What if your new Templar masters send you to kill me? Or someone I love?”
Shay tries to swallow down the thought, but it sticks in his throat.
“Well, I’ve already disobeyed my masters once,” he says.
“So you’re planning to disobey the Templars before you’ve even joined them?” Aveline asks. “It’s not exactly an auspicious start.”
“I’m planning to think about what they ask me to do,” Shay says. “They haven’t sent me to kill you yet. Not always a bad thing, questioning orders.”
Aveline falls silent for a moment. Watches his Glaceon pad around the camp, never getting too close to the fire. Shay’s still at the stage where he constantly has to look over at his Pokémon, just to make sure she’s still there.
“She’s beautiful,” Aveline says. “Does she have a name?”
He never really found the right name for her when she was an Eevee. It didn’t raise any eyebrows – a lot of people don’t name their Pokémon, and nameless Pokémon are particularly common amongst the Assassins, where it can be painful to get too attached – but he’s always felt she should have some sort of identity.
He looks at her now, and he knows what her name has to be.
“Lisbon,” he says. “So I won’t forget.”
“A Sylveon?”
“Do you have something to say?” Aveline asks.
“It’s so... pretty,” Edward says, dubiously. “Doesn’t really strike terror into the hearts of your enemies, does it?”
“I mean to strike a blade into the hearts of my enemies,” Aveline says. “If I precede it with terror, do you imagine they will let me come close?”
“Still,” Edward says. “All these bows and ribbons. It doesn’t exactly say ‘fearsome assassin’.”
“That’s rather the point,” Aveline says. “Am I being lectured about ‘pretty’ Pokémon by the fearsome pirate who owns a Vaporeon?”
Edward pauses.
“Well, that’s different,” he says.
“How so?”
Edward frowns at her. “Because my Vaporeon is perfect, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Aveline says.
Connor expends no thought on what he will evolve his Eevee into. They hunt together, they fight together. Once he shows his Eevee a display of evolutionary stones in a shop window and asks his opinion. The Eevee turns away, and what right does Connor have to override that decision?
One day, when they are tracking a Sawsbuck through dense woods, his Eevee freezes, then sprints off to the west.
When Connor eventually catches up, his Eevee is sitting on top of a moss-covered rock and glowing. Connor pauses and waits until the Eevee has settled into his new shape.
“He is a Leafeon,” Connor informs Achilles, when they next see each other.
“Well, yes,” Achilles says. “Obviously. Grass. Growth and change. The work you’re doing to develop this place. Not to mention the amount of time you spend in the woods. I was wondering how long it would take you.”
“I did not choose the form myself,” Connor says. “He chose it.”
“Then he is a Pokémon who knows and cares about his master,” Achilles says. “Look after him, won’t you?”
Connor nods.
There was a new litter of Eevee not long ago. They’ve all been distributed to novices, apart from one: the runt of the litter, tiny, unwanted. Desmond’s been stopping by the room where she’s kept every day, worrying about what’s going to happen to her. They’re saying she’s bad breeding stock, she can’t manage any attacks, and if she doesn’t learn to be useful soon...
He goes to take one more look at her on his sixteenth birthday, before he leaves. She’s sitting in her cage and crying, a thin noise that seems to saw into Desmond’s chest. It’d be kinder to keep her in a Pokéball, probably, but that’d interfere with the ceremonial ‘catching’.
Traditions are screwed up sometimes.
Desmond jolts when he realises there’s another man in the room. Dressed in Assassin robes, ceremonial-looking ones that Desmond hasn’t seen before, white and simple with a red sash.
And then the man looks at Desmond, and Desmond realises he hasn’t actually seen this guy before either. There’s something familiar in the face, but he’s pretty sure it’s a stranger.
They don’t get many strangers on the farm.
“Who are you?” Desmond asks. He probably shouldn’t draw any attention today, not if he’s going to escape this place, but he can’t help himself.
“A friend,” the man says. “You may call me Altaïr.”
If he weren’t so nervous, Desmond would laugh. “Do the elders know you’re going around calling yourself that?”
“Is she yours yet?” the man asks, gesturing to the Eevee.
This is already a very weird conversation. “I’m not a novice yet. And they say she can’t fight, so, uh, I don’t think they’re planning to give her to anyone.”
“You do not need a weapon, Desmond,” the man says. “You need company.”
Desmond stares at him.
“Soon enough, you will meet me again, and it will be in a situation where you need friends,” the man says. “I cannot always be with you.” For a moment, he looks almost ashamed. “And I may not always be friendly. Do you know who keeps the keys to her cage?”
Desmond nods wordlessly.
“Take her when you leave. Be safe.”
And when Desmond escapes, with alarms blaring behind him and a Pokéball on his belt, he takes heart in the knowledge that someone supports his choice. A strange, strange stranger who calls himself Altaïr, perhaps, but someone.
Almost a decade later, Desmond lies on the floor of the Precursor temple, his Eevee sleeping on his chest, and thinks.
He still hasn’t evolved her. He’s always vaguely wondered whether it’s something he should do. But he likes the idea behind the Assassin tradition, the concept of evolving your Eevee when you know who you really are, and... well, he barely knows what his own name is half the time, after all these months in the Animus.
Perhaps he’ll decide. Or perhaps he won’t. Perhaps he’ll end up with an Espeon like Altaïr, a Flareon like Ezio, an Umbreon like Haytham. Perhaps he’ll have a Jolteon, just to be different.
Perhaps he’ll keep her like this, an Eevee, small and weak and perfect.
Right now she’s potential, she’s a set of possibilities. Everything else in his life is controlled by other people right now. Sometimes it feels like her evolution is the only decision he has left open to him. He doesn’t really want to take that away yet.
Part Two