Ten seconds before, Altair Ibn La-Ahad was training the novice Assassins with his friend Malik, safe in the fortress of Masyaf. Five seconds before, he had been clutching at the walls of the highest built monastery in Rome, and just a second before, he found himself on the floor of a hard, rocky room that he was completely unfamiliar with; rubber ropes and rubber plating digging into his skin.

Beside him, an unfamiliar man was crawling to his feet, looking around him with a blade - Altair realized – that was almost identical to his own. He spoke in a different tongue, and dressed strangely, but Altair could not help but notice the plating on his belt, or the hood that covered his eyes. Without having to question it, Altair knew that this man was his brother; an Assassin.

The Syrian rose to his feet almost silently, looking around the room that he was in. It was a vast, high ceiling-ed temple, though it was obviously aged. It's walls were cracked and the metalworking had been rusting for what looked like hundreds of years. Lining the far were were six statues - Altair did not count the one of himself – of Assassins that he had both studied, and knew nothing about.

"Where are we?" Altair spoke in the broken Italian that Malik had forced him to learn when he became the master of Masyaf. He frowned deeply, trying to remember if he had gotten what he said right. "Who are you?"

The man looked over at him, eyes going wide with shock. He dropped to one knee, bowing his head down and folding his arms over his chest. "We are at my home." He spoke in a strange language this time, not Italian, but not one that Altair needed to know to understand. He vaguely registered it as a language that was called English. It had been engrained into the subconscious of his mind when he was learning all that he could from the apple.

"A villa," The apparently Italian man continued on. "In the village of Monteriggioni, it is a place owned by the Auditore family, as far as I know." The other Assassin rose to his feet while he spoke. "I do not understand why it is like this, though..." He added this thought in confusion, looking at the room around them as Altair had. "I don't know why this rope is here, or why this place is so broken. The sanctuary should have been able to survive the attack... it should not have suffered so greatly..."

Altair frowned softly, the scar on his lips tugging the frown up on one side to look more like a grimace. "Who are you, brother?" He repeated his last question when the Italian Assassin did not answer him. "What is your name?"

The Assassin's eyes lit up when Altair called him brother. "My name is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, and we are in the place that I have called home for the past ten years of my life... A villa, owned by my uncle."

A sigh fell out of Altair's lips, but his speech was interrupted by the footsteps and voices of others. Altair spun around, noticing – for the first time – that another man lay on the floor, some feet away, next to a crackling and buzzing chair. The thing was strange, but just as Altair was about to approach the man and see if he could get any information out of him, the three voices that he had heard before grew louder and louder until they were perfectly clear, behind him and the man named Ezio.

Three people – two women, one man, and all dressed considerably strangely compared to the two Assassins – came down the steps that led to the inner sanctuary, their voices halting upon seeing the two ancient Assassins standing there, in front of them. The one closest to them, a blond woman, had been saying something about checking on Desmond. Altair guessed that this was the man that was lying on the ground.

As if on cue, that very same man started to stir, a groan falling out of his lips as he sat up into a sitting position, crossing his legs and pressing a hand to the sore spot on the back of his head where he had fallen. The man – presumably Desmond – looked up, and when he saw Altair and Ezio standing there, his face fell into an expression of shock.

"Uh..." The syllable spoken came out flat and toneless. He turned his head toward the three newcomers, his eyes still on the two Assassins. "Are you guys seeing this too? Or am I just bleeding again?"

"No, Desmond..." The male newcomer spoke in a different accent than the others. "No, they are quite real..."

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