Disclaimer: Trust me, if I own Assassin's Creed 2 in any way, it would have turned out to be a crappy game. Lol

Warning: Rated T for pairings and language. IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED PAST SEQUENCE 12 OF ASSASSIN'S CREED 2 YET, YOU WILL FACE SPOILERS.

PS: Babelfish absolutely fails.

Leonardo was crouched in front of a table in his studio, examining what was on the table before him. A bright yellow orb intricately carved with thin lines glowed on the table like it was a tiny replica of the sun – yet it was not a star cut out from the very night sky. It was not a light bulb that somehow was magically able to glow by itself – that would be anachronism (1), wouldn't it?

Yet somehow it still attracted the curious engineer, along with the three assassins that stood behind him. He wanted to know, as much as the others in the room, the nature of the artifact.

"Fascinating," Leonardo breathed. One hand steadied his balance while he kneed before the table, while another perched up his chin and stroked the fuzzy goatee below his mouth. "Absolutely fascinating."

"What is it, Leonardo?" Ezio asked the engineer. "What does it do?" He knew that the inventor wouldn't be able to tell him what exactly the fist-sized globe was, but he wanted to see at least Leonardo's perspective on the mysterious object.

Leonardo took another second to ponder on its appearance before he finally replied, "I could no more explain this than explain to you why the Earth goes around the sun!"

"You mean," Mario, Ezio's uncle, interjected, "the sun around the Earth?"

"It's fabricated with materials that shouldn't exist," he observed. His hand reached out from his chin to grasp the Apple from the top. He could feel it crackle and hiss underneath his touch, but it still managed to remain in one piece. "And YET," he added, "this is clearly a very ancient artifact!"

"The Codex refers to it as a 'Piece of Eden'", Mario said, remembering what he had read from the deciphered pages.

Suddenly Ezio's eyes widened, remembering what the enigmatic Rodrigo Borgia had told him back in Venezia. He had thought that the Templar was merely speaking in riddles, but now, some parts of his confusing speech began to make sense to him.

"The Spaniard," Ezio began. "He called it the 'Apple'." Borgia's words started to repeat in his head. Now he knew a little bit about the orb that shone before him, but he still couldn't decipher any other of his phrases. What did Borgia mean by the 'prophet'? Why did he refer to himself as the 'prophet' first then hear from Antonio and Mario that Ezio was the actual one?

The painter's voice barely broke the surface of Ezio's waves of thoughts. "Like Eve's Apple?" he could hear him ask. "Of Forbidden Knowledge?" He then stood up so he could continue his inquiry. "Are you then suggesting that this thing—"

The Assassino was too engrossed in his pondering to listen to the rest of his friend's observation. Without realizing what he was doing, he placed his hand on the Apple.

Suddenly the Apple's twinkle grew much larger into a light that could not even compare to sunlight and shook Ezio out of his contemplation. It consumed the entire room in a bright flash that made the four men recoil in surprise and shield their eyes. What made it worse was that a high-pitched screech emanated from the Piece of Eden, which doubled the effect of the recoil by sevenfold. Ezio, Niccolo, and Mario all squinted their eyes shut and clasped their hands tightly at their ear holes to try and reduce the agony, but even through all the recourse they tried to issue on themselves, they were not able to make the light and the whining go away.

Suddenly, Leonardo began to experience something that was significantly different from the other three Assassins' troubles. The screech began to dilute and pulse harmoniously, almost as if a voice within the mysterious Apple was beckoning to him. The anguished painter, still having his eyes firmly closed and his palms securely covering his ears, shook his head to show his fear-coated refusal. The chime sparkled again, almost in an assuring way this time. Leonardo was taken slightly aback by the Apple's calling; finally, he gave a sigh of exasperation and decided to give up. His hands pried themselves from his ears, and his heavy eyelids began to open as if he was waking up from a heavy sleep.

But Leonardo was not waking up from a heavy sleep. He woke up to an even more entrancing dream.

The overpowering flash had all subsided, replaced by projected images assumingly created by the Apple's power. All around him, pictures of different objects flashed in gold outline. Letters formed words, words formed phrases, and those phrases formed analytic notes that danced and circled around the pictures, disappearing and reappearing as it wished. Strangely enough, the font of the notes was his handwriting, most of them even being styled in his famous mirror writing. Slowly, Leonardo began to recognize some of the drawings that were being shown before him. He recognized almost immediately a few feet in front of him a sketch that he had drawn of his flying machine shortly before he had constructed it. A few feet in front of him, he caught a glance of the pistol mechanism that he had designed for his Assassino friend.

Assassino… Leonardo mused quietly to himself. Wait a minute…

Before he could realize that his friend was writhing on the floor in pain, more images began to appear from the Apple's light to distract him. All of them were images that Leonardo knew for sure he didn't sketch at all. However, he somehow was able to make a faint recognition of every single object that he laid eyes on, even if they were the strangest objects that he has ever seen. One invention he saw was a very thin carriage that wasn't even covered by anything at all. It just had a carriage frame, two very prominent wheels, one on the front and one on the back, a seat, and a horizontal pole of metal attached to a piece of metal below the seat. Not one sketch of a horse accompanied it. Instead, there was one movable platform on each side of the frame attached to some strange, disc-like objects at the center of the frame, and that was what probably made the object travel distances. (2)

Another icon flashed nearby the drawing of the peculiar vehicle. Leonardo inched over to the new picture and found what appeared to be a cylinder. It looked to have been made almost entirely out of metal, like one from a sword, except for the top of the shape, which was covered by a pane of glass. For one second, the amazed inventor thought of it to have been some sort of drum, but then he noticed that a column of light shot out from the glass-covered face of the cylinder. (3)

There was one picture that caught Leonardo's attention the most. He paced over to the intriguing drawing to find another one that was much similar to a carriage, too. However, its build was nothing like the first one that he had come across. Unlike the first invention, this one was entirely box-shaped, and its wheels were considerably smaller than a regular carriage's. A long rod extended from the front of the transportation device, and it reminded Leonardo, once again, of Ezio's pistol. This invention did not earn the same type of amazement from Leonardo from the other two brand-new inventions that he had seen through the holograms. This one was more fear-inducing, tense, and appalling of a monstrosity than anything else.

Still, Leonardo stood there, eyeing the image with awe. He wanted to know so much about it, try to open it up, dissect it, and examine it like all the other human bodies that he had performed autopsies on. The painter knew that unlike the human body, this device had new wonders to explore, boundaries to extend, and minds to shock. He wanted to recreate it so much, to unlock its secrets, to find out which part controls what section, what the final product will look like, and what effect it will have on his peers and colleagues. The possibilities were endless! His mind filled so much to the brim with his curiosity for this powerful object that he felt like his head will explode. Leonardo could care less about the other two inventions that he was already starting to forget about. He wanted to know so much about this object, this particular one! Why did it intrigue him so much?!

Leonardo absentmindedly reached for the mirage with weak, shaky hands, too drunk from the greatness of his feelings to notice. He grinned wickedly as the light slowly began to eat at his well-being and his judgment. His bright blue eyes had long ago absorbed the Apple's glow, and they were now starting to fade into a muddy, coal-like hue…

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ezio mustered up what little energy he had left and slammed his hand against the Piece of Eden again, making the Apple's power disappear as swiftly as it had appeared. The light left behind a thin yellow mist, and the screech was reduced to its crackling that was held within the orb. Niccolo and Mario gave out a sigh of relief, glad to have been eased of the seemingly lifelong torture. Leonardo, on the other hand, was brought back into sanity. His glossed eyes flashed back to its sky-blue color, but it showed a brief moment of shock and confusion over the interruption. As the shock and perplexity subsided, Leonardo grimly realized the intoxication that he almost completely submitted himself to.

Once everyone else in the room was able to recover, Leonardo walked over to the faintly-glimmering Apple, his expression as hard as stone.

"This must never fall into the wrong hands," Leonardo stated. His serious tone heavily contrasted with his usual cheerful disposition. "It would drive weaker minds insane…" And I would have been one of them too, if Ezio hadn't stopped its radiation, he added quietly. His Adam's apple shook as he swallowed nervously.

"No doubt, the Spaniard will be relentless in his desire to gain it back," Ezio replied in the same tone as Leonardo's.

"Ezio," Niccolo finally spoke, directing his full attention to him, "you must protect this with all the skills we have taught you."

"Take it to Forli," Mario suggested. "The citadel is walled, protected by cannons. And our ally controls it."

"Wait," Leonardo suddenly interrupted. A plan had popped up into his mind and he wanted to see if the Assassins would approve of it. Niccolo and Mario both glared at the unintentionally rude painter. "Umm," Leonardo started nervously, regretting to jump in the conversation that didn't involve him in it. "Let me analyze the Apple and see what other abilities it can perform." What are you doing? he hissed at his muse. Are you going insane? The painter tried to keep a neutral face while he battled his seemingly independent thoughts, but from the looks on the other Assassins' expressions, he could tell he wasn't doing a swell job keeping it together.

"Leonardo," Ezio spoke in his thick Italian accent, placing a firm hand on his friend's shoulder. Sky blue eyes darted up to make contact with rock-solid brown pupils. "You just said that weak minds would be driven to insanity in the Apple's presence…" He squeezed his shoulder lightly in saying his opinion. "Are you sure you are not one of them?"

The Adam's apple on the engineer's throat bobbed warily as he swallowed again. "Ezio," he said, "I'll be able to handle it." He forced a fake smile.

From the moment that Leonardo's doll smile came into existence, he was not able to take it back easily. He knew that he was lying to everyone in the entire room as well as himself. It was the first time he ever remembered fibbed with anyone intentionally his whole life. He always wondered why the criminals and the fraudulent scammers spewed oceans full of them from their mouths, and now, he felt extremely horrible just telling this one. His stomach twisted in pain and whined from his white lie, but somehow, he still could not wipe that possessed grin off his face. It hurt him to commit this sin. What was he thinking?!

Time began to unwind at a slower rate, and then it just stopped ticking completely. He could see the frozen expressions on each of the Assassins' stilled faces. Ezio's appearance looked even sterner – he could spot out the stress wrinkles he had developed prematurely fold into his forehead and around his cheeks. His irises resembled two boulders he had seen on his travels to Romagna. The weight on his shoulder from Ezio's palm began to make the artist sink. The growing guilt that Leonardo felt crawl in his stomach was making the feeling even worse. He felt like he was drowning in quicksand, and the weight of the assassino's hand merely accelerated the torture. The engineer felt like disappearing, going somewhere other than here, so he could at least slap some sanity into himself.

Suddenly, Leonardo could feel time unfreeze itself again, as the mannequin in front of him began to breathe. It was either a miracle or an illusion. It didn't matter anymore. The painter's mind numbed from the overdose of nameless emotions.

Niccolo eyed the window and noted the sun's position in the sky. "I'm afraid that it is getting late," the politician stated. "I must be off. I have to attend to some matters with Caterina Sforza concerning Forli's defenses."

Mario looked out the window and hummed in agreement. "Yes," he added, "and I must go back to Monteriggioni to watch over the villa. Come, nipote," he called to his assassino relative, heading towards the exit door. The rumored ubriacone grasped the door latch and tugged it open, leaking orange beams of light into the dark room. Leonardo squinted from this very different source of light. He had not been in his studio for even fifteen minutes, and already, he felt like that he had been locked in there for about an hour.

"Leonardo." A familiar voice snapped the engineer back into attention. Ezio was still in front of him, unmoved by his fellow Assassins' words to leave.

"Y-yes, amico mio?" Leonardo sputtered slightly.

"Listen to me," Ezio began. The creases on his face folded into a serious look, and his eyes shone like dark, burning coals. "If…I ever…see you go crazy from the Apple…" He took his hands off of Leonardo's tense shoulders and flipped the white hood over his head. He gave out a shaky sigh.

"I may never forgive myself," Ezio finished, his voice barely loud enough for Leonardo's sharp hearing to catch. With that, he swiftly slid from Leonardo's reach out the door that Mario held open. Mario stepped into the portal to the city of Venezia, and the door closed with a quiet click.

It was done. Leonardo remained the only one in the room, the twisted smile still sprawled across his face. After the door closed, the invisible strings tugging at his face loosened into an incredulous expression. Suddenly, memories – if he could even call them that anymore – of his mindless actions came flooding back to him. He couldn't believe that he was able to manipulate people so easily, especially his dear friends. He just straight out tricked them into thinking that keeping the artifact would be for research benefits, but really, it was for something that even he could not comprehend. He was frustrated at not knowing, either. For the first time, one side of him was wreaking evil deeds for selfish goals, and another side stood at the side bound in chains and watched helplessly.

He glared at the Apple from his peripheral vision. This was the cause for his current miseries. This was what made him so much like an evil puppet, unwillingly serving it. He would love to take the Apple and throw it out of his window into the canals to end his miseries, but he didn't know what it would cause next. It was too easy for someone to just spot it, take it, and face the same fate as he was about to lead himself into. The distraught artist didn't want to give it back to the Assassins so suddenly, as they would think that he would be incapable of carry out his "promised" task. He would make himself look as silly as the court jester in the Doge's palace.

Ti odio, he cursed at the poisoned Apple. Ti odio, ti odio, ti odio. Go away. I wish you never existed. He hoped that if he repeated his chant a certain number of times, the Apple would stop seducing him to its horribly addictive power.

Suddenly, as if the Apple heard him, the orb began to glow brighter, blanketing the walls of the artist's studio with its artificial sunlight. Leonardo had not anticipated the move from the Apple of Eden, and thus could not bring up his hand to shield his eyes in time to block the light. As the light engulfed him, his hand froze right below his nose, vibrating from the added force in its stationary position. Once again, Leonardo could feel his eyes glaze over and his entire mind wiped of any doubts that he had kept from the Apple. He felt a sensation pulsating from his heart and travel through his veins to every place of his body.

Relax, a voice whispered in Leonardo's mind. It was strange and foreign to the painter, for it was definitely not his own – it sounded like it was uttered in a different language, yet Leonardo was able to understand it like it was Italian or English, and it was neither male nor female. Another peculiar thing about the voice was that it didn't even feel like something that his ears detected. It felt like a wave that washed from the center of Leonardo's conscious mind and traveled throughout the nerves of his brain. In fact, he felt his ears ring slightly from the detection after the message had been delivered to him.

Who are you? Leonardo's conscience asked the invading voice.

Don't think, the wave pulsed in his head. Just relax. The Apple hummed quietly in an accompanying matter, like it was agreeing with the voice. Discover what's inside the Apple. See what wonders it contains. Sketch it all. Just relax.

Rilassare, Leonardo hummed back. It was not a thought of his anymore; his mind was now completely lost in words. The pulse in his brain thumped to the rhythm of the Apple of Eden's reverberation and was commanded to do nothing else more.

Eyes now completely replaced with paper-pale white, he stepped with great boulders attached to his feet and slowly reached for the Apple…

(1) For those of you who don't know what anachronism is, it's a literary device where one object from one time period shows up in another time period that it's not supposed to belong to in a book. If you're still confused, think of Merlin from King Arthur. Lol I broke the fourth wall by using that phrase… xD

(2) The invention I had just explained in that paragraph was a bicycle. Yes, there were people that innovated bicycle use way after Leonardo da Vinci's time, but it was drawn up by Leonardo da Vinci himself.

(3) For those of you who couldn't think up the invention I described here, it was a spotlight.

Translations

Nipote – nephew

Ubriacone – drunkard

Amico mio – my friend

Ti odio – I hate you

Rilassare – relax

*Keep in mind that I am not an Italian speaker, and I am merely using a translator for most of the Italian phrases. So if any of you guys who fluently know Italian find out any mistakes in the dialect, please don't shoot me. :)*

Christ on a bicycle, this took HELLA long for me to finish! This is NOT the end, good people – it's too long as it is to continue on in the same chapter. Anyway~ I've been writing this whole thing for pretty much more than a month now. It's my longest fanfic yet! The second (and hopefully the last) chapter will be better and probably not as long as this, I promise :D

BTW I draw and stuffs :D I don't have a -current- deviantART account because my parents don't like that site (My other three ones are really old and have been around for about 2-3 years now o.e) But I still like to show my art to you beautiful people :3 Here's some of the links to my drawings (take off the spaces when you're entering the URL in the address bar):

http:// i226. photobucket. com/ albums/dd105/Neon-POP/AC-Trust. png - Ezio and Leonardo
http:// i226. photobucket. com/ albums/dd105/Neon-POP/AC-Leonardo3. png – Leo :3
http:// i226. photobucket. com/ albums/dd105/Neon-POP/AC-Eziop. png – Ezio~ :D

Reviews are good for everyone's health. It makes the reviewer and the reviewed (me) very happy. Happiness leads to joy, and joy leads to giggles, and giggles lead to laughter, and laughter leads to more years added to your lifespan :D It's been proven so by Leonardo~! Well, maybe not, but still, review please? :3