Author's Note: This story takes place from 1470-1520 and the main characters from the game are Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Auditore, and Ezio. You'll see why as you read. I'm also doing historical and game research for this; I hope you don't get confused too much. If you have any questions or comments please don't be afraid to say something, I hope you enjoy!

Edited Notes: Here is the edited version of this chapter! The original was written in 2011 and the edited version was written in 2012. I've learned to work harder and set better goals now, so I should get much farther on this story. This is in honor of AC 3! May the Father of Understanding Piss on the Templar's Heads and blame it on their wives!

Aren't I so civil? Enjoy!

-X-

"Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness."-Leonardo da Vinci

"There will come a day in which men no longer cheat each other. And on that day we will see what mankind is truly capable of." -Giovanni Auditore

-X-

"Shadowed History"

Prologue: "Death"

October 3rd, 2011. New York City, 9 PM.

I never thought I'd ever slip. I was born to free run; I had been doing parkour since I was a kid. It felt almost as if it had come naturally to me, while the other kids couldn't even walk, I could scale short walls. But now I knew I was falling. Falling hard and falling fast. The metaphorical story of my life.

I felt the scenery whoosh past me like a car on a ninety mile limit highway. But, as I fell, I could only think about how I should have stuck the landing. I should have leaped, pushing my legs down harder; I shouldn't have jumped from roof to roof while it was raining. That last one was obvious, but I was reckless beyond belief. Or maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't have left my dad alone at home. Maybe I should have went with my mom when she left us, maybe I should have joined The Order like my dad asked of me, instead of running away.

But, what's done is done, as they say. So it didn't matter how I could have prevented the slip up, but that I didn't, and that I was in-fact falling from a ten foot building in the middle of The Big Apple. God, I felt so stupid!

Thoughts of joining my cousin; Jasmine flashed before my eyes. My cousin had been inducted because Abstergo had been after her, poor girl. It was bound to happen. The deference between us was our attitudes and who our dads were. In the long run though, the only real difference is that she had the balls and the brains to do the job. I flipped Fate off and spat in her face instead, for that I got the lifelong penalty of 'what ifs' and 'maybes'. I also got eternal loneliness.

The Ash brothers, mine and Jasmine's dads back in the good 'ol days, had been once heralded as great Assassins, until one ran from The Brotherhood and hid himself, along with his family, in the backwoods of Texas. A dumbass move if you ask me, but I have no room to talk. My dad, however, remained a loyal member to The Brotherhood and told me about The Order and trained me to be an Assassin himself. Jasmine knew nothing about it, since she was raised a sheltered life, and wasn't even really trained like I was. Yet she jumped at the idea of becoming an Assassin when offered, thinking it would be an exciting adventure. Pft, exciting adventure my ass!

I, however, refused. To tell the truth, I thoroughly refused. I took the offer and threw it back in their faces like dirt, even after years of training.

I knew the rules, you obey The Creed or else you get kicked out and banished, or some bullshit like that, then Abstergo has their way with you if they catch you. Damn Templar scum! "Screw that!" I had said, refusing my father after all the hard work he had gone through to fully train me and raise me to be a member of The Order. I ran away from the Denver base after that, to New York City, and I became a free running delivery girl for 'The Underground' and 'Anarchy'. Two major groups of cults, rouge assassins, hitmen, mafia, and gangsters. There were plenty of them in the NYC, more than plenty. I was always lousy with business, sometimes I ended up in situations that were way over my head! I had become the best and fastest of all of New York's illegal delivery services quickly. I feel so dirty about it now, giving kids illegal guns? I felt like some guerrilla, and not the kind you'd find in zoos.

I could beat my cousin any day! The little-…..gah! I hated her so much!

But the thing was, I wasn't supposed to slip.

While running a last minute delivery it began to rain, and bad. Pouring down like cats and dogs! But as arrogant as I am I believed I could run the route anyway. As I jumped to the next building I grabbed the metal railing from an overlook on an apartment building and then...I slipped. The metal lost its friction under my grip and my grasp was lost under the touch of rain drops. I kept trying to reach out and grasp it again, but it was too late.

My fingers, one by one, slipped off the metal as rain and water pelted me like freezing cold stones, it stung more than I thought it would. Now I was falling.

Darkness pressed in all around me, taking away all color as I focused on nothing but the fall, as wind flew from my lungs. It felt like something sucked out my last breathe. I closed my eyes as I felt gravity at my back, pulling me down, like Death's hands pulling you into the never ending Abyss. Millions of things ran through my mind, the 'what if's' I had been talking about, 'how comes', and 'why me's?'. But, really all I was thinking was...-

"I DON'T WANT TO DIE!" The words screeched from my lungs like an Eagle's cry even though I could not breathe. It seemed impossible, but my will had always been strong, now so was my fear. Fear swallowed me up whole, the fear I had been holding back and suppressing since day one. Tears streamed through my pinched shut eyelids. I could feel the salty drops rush from my cheeks and up into the air as I fell.

Only through such an experience did I realize I regretted most of the decisions I had made in my life. Too many promises I had broken; too many people I had hurt through my arrogance. I regretted every second of it! I missed my dad! I missed my dog; Altair. I missed my mom, and I still loved her, even though she left my dad and me. I missed my cousin, and I know I don't hate her, I'm just so jealous of her! Why didn't I say yes? Why did I leave the base? I even missed the crazy guy they called The Keeper down in the Denver Assassin Storage Temple! Yes, that was indeed saying something!

I just wished I could have a second chance! I really really really wished I could have a second chance, even though I didn't deserve one!

Just then everything went white. I opened my eyes to see why when all I saw was lightning. Right in front of me a blue streak of lightning was stopped, an inch from my face, as if time was paused. It zig zagged all the way up into the dark abysmal sky. Everything else around me looked like an old Internet Explorer loading screen. White was just, everything. The only color came from the streak of lightning two inches away from my nose and the clouds above.

"Abide by The Creed, Assassin, and you will live."

It was a beautiful melancholy voice that spoke to me, flowing like a river, and distant like a star. As I stared at what I perceived to be my death, the blue streak, ready to smite me, I listened to such a sweet and angelic voice. I listened like I should have when I was twelve and my dad told me not to touch the stove when it was on. I still had the scar from after that. I saw no one however, all I knew is it sounded like a woman, so feminine and beautiful. Maybe it was an omnipotent being, maybe God was a woman?

"I-I p-promise." I stuttered as if I had forgotten how to use my tongue, really it felt as if my body was being penetrated by a thousand needles as I spoke. As the woman spoke and as time lingered; the more it felt like the blood was draining out of my body, everything going numb. My lungs burned and my mouth was beyond dry, like a desert with no oxygen. If I was dreaming or if I was already dead then there was no reason to fear speaking to an illusion, not that I really cared about my sanity right now. There was also no reason to question it. Is it God? Doesn't really matter to me. Could be Hades for all I care!

"If you fail to keep your promises you will be doomed to repeat your regrets. Follow the path, Assassin, and you will live. How long is up to you to decide. Choose wisely."

Then, as the beautiful voice finished, time un-paused. The blue streak of lightning struck me head on before I could even blink. My body flailing like a fish as it did. I guess God believed me, how odd. Well, then again, I didn't lie. I'm pretty sure God could tell if I was lying or not. Before I could even blink, pain flowed through my body. Pain that I thought never existed covered me from head to toe. The electric currents didn't numb anything, but they were tearing my nerves apart with fire instead. If I could breathe I would have never stopped screaming. Matter of fact; I'm pretty sure I did scream, I just wasn't aware of it. You don't really think when your body feels like its being roasted from the inside out.

Waves of those electric currents flowed through my body like waves into a river. My nerves were so on fire; it was blazing like the fire of a great building, destroying everything in sight. The pain was so bad I really couldn't even think, I could only feel. At that moment I had no idea where I was, when I was, or who I was. In that blink of a moment in time I was nothing but the thought of pain.

The next thing I know my body drops from nowhere, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting from a ten story fall. I splash into a puddle on what felt like solid concrete ground. Oxygen rushes and fills my lungs again like air into a balloon. I breathe in greedily, thinking if I didn't get enough oxygen into my lungs I'd die right then and there. My body is still in great pain, I can't move an inch, my muscles so tense their like stretched out stone. Now at least I can feel the other things around me, if only a little bit.

My eyes are still closed as I begin to scream, I scream suddenly and I don't know why. A belated effect maybe, from earlier when I thought I was screaming. I screamed so loud and so long though, my throat became raw and I could once again not breathe. It was a horrible cycle, when I could breathe I screamed, I screamed until I couldn't breathe, and so on. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't stop it, not one bit. It was like my brain had crashed and this was the after math of that wreck.

Tears slid down my face again as I failed to even move when I tried to. All I wanted was for the pain to end and the screaming to stop. It was a while, a while of me wishing on bated and raw breath, that all the pain would leave my body. I prayed that it would stop, I even wished on it really hard, but it was a while before I even stopped screaming. If Hell was worse than this, than I felt bad for the sorry bastards that were down there. We Assassins though, whether I was one or not, we grew up not believing in any religion. But, hey, you gotta believe in something, right?

Before another tear, or prayer, could roll down my cheek or come from my mouth I began to hear something. Through the rain I heard a man running. I tracked it in my mind like I had been trained to do. When you listen to someone walk or run, you can get a good idea of how strong or well-trained they are, that is if you know how to spot the details. This man, if it was a man, mostly likely it was, was clumsy. He kept tripping over his own feet trying to run to me. I hoped he wasn't going to try anything, in my state if he did I wouldn't be able to fight back in the least.

I could not open my eyes to see him and when he knelt beside me, which he did slowly and gingerly, I'm guessing he was surprised. When he began to talk all I heard was a dull roar, kinda like gibberish. Like white noise in my ear, I supposed my nervous system and muscles hadn't been the only thing to get messed up when lightning struck my freaking face.

The man was then helping me up, trying to carry me. Although he wasn't doing a very good job of it, it seemed to me he wasn't very strong. In the long run he had to pick me up bridal style. I could hear he was panicked but nothing more, I could not even open my eyes to see him. That's one thing that frustrated me the most. I could see into people, tell if they had stained souls or not, just by looking at them. Another thing taught to us in the 'Academy of Assassins'. Without my eyes and ears I was hopeless. Everything ached now though, at least the severe pain was gone.

Just as I felt I could open my eyes again, at least I thought I could, to see who was kind enough to help a street rat like me, my body fainted from fatigue. Damn! Everything was black once again; I gladly welcomed the rest from such pain. So, I guessed I'd have to scope out the dude that saved me after some much needed rest. I was dead tired, almost literally.

I kinda wished that I wouldn't wake up though. I preferred the darkness to the shit fantastic job I'd done of ruining my life. Really my life had become meaningless to me, I had only just realized that, through the pain and sorrow comes truth. Deep, right? If I could I would gladly give my life to someone else, anyone else. At least then I couldn't screw everything up again.

Leaving Denver had been a sorry mistake.

-X-

Ending note: There, I hope it seemed...mysterious. I have revealed nothing but the setting of the main character. If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them! Or if you have any interesting history tidbits that fit in with this time line in Italy I would very much like to hear them!

Edited Ending Notes: I hope it's better than how it was originally! I'll be playing through the game as I write this, but the beginning is Pre-AC 2 and then goes into the game. I'll have fun writing the parts about young Ezio, then if I have the stamina I'll write an AC:B continuation of this.

I would still like reviews! Better, worse, pie? Oh! Dean! Get out of my head….pie.