Just a few warnings and comments before we set out:

This fic will likely offend people due to the crude humor that will be portrayed (not necessarily in this chapter, but in ones to come) and as said by Ted the bear, "If I have ever offended you, just know from the bottom of my heart, I really don't give a shit." This is mostly a crack!fiction but it's my style to make things realistic and do my best to characterize canons accurately. Besides its more fun if it's real and canons are actually acting like themselves and not teenage girls, that's what makes the weird stuff funny and not just blended into a background that is already full of awkward.

All the italian came from google translate and thus is likely very inaccurate, but unless anyone volunteers to give me accurate ones I will continue to use the translator and shamelessly never look back.

This chapter is pretty dry by my standards but is setting the stage for future crack. Sorry about that but have fun if you can!


Her name was Joy but everyone called her Jo, mostly because she was never a joy to be around. The xbox must've presently understood that about her. Despite the hours it spent providing the college student with entertainment and despite how she left it on unused for hours or drunkenly decided the freezer was a good place to store it she simply could not allow the tired console to slip into technological death peacefully. It had been roughly two hours since the green ring had gone dark in the middle of Assassins Creed:Brotherhood and the situation had gone well beyond the point where time of death needed to be called and encroached upon a perverse failed attempt at necromancy, yet here they sat. Girl and xbox, performing open console surgery while still plugged in to the wall. There was a reason Jo wasn't studying to be a doctor.

Lacking anything that might possibly be considered tools Jo poked, prodded, screwed and unscrewed about in the xbox's collapsing innards with a dinner fork. That was not to say that this was a task she was in any way qualified to do even with the correct tools. There was not an inch of this situation that contained any intelligence and if it weren't for the marijuana she'd smoked Jo likely would've had a much more sophisticated approach to fixing the xbox. However the twenty two year old had a tendency to excel in behaviors that were simultaneously self-destructive and idiotic, so anyone who knew her wouldn't have been surprised.

The truly surprising thing was what happened when Jo's fork hit something it obviously shouldn't have, and while the electric shock she received was horrific it was something that was due to happen and probably should have happened much sooner than it did. The surprising part was the bright, blinding white light that filled the tiny rundown apartment, leaking out into the Arizona night through her slatted shutters and then disappeared as suddenly as if the light switch had been turned off. Which coincidentally had a similar effect on the lights actually attached to switches in the rest of the building, going out just seconds after the flash generated by Jo's angrily short circuiting xbox.

The electrocution had caused her to pass out but only for a few moments, awaking to the pain in her hand, the smell of burning flesh and the sounds of feet stomping in the apartments around her and… some that sounded quite close. Though for a few precious seconds she just attributed it to the ringing in her ears and she was pretty content to just lie on her floor a while until a steel greave covered boot connected hard with the interior of her armpit as her arm had been bonelessly outstretched across the carpet.

"Son of a whore!" The girl exclaimed with a hiss of unreal pain, sitting up and throwing her hand against the throbbing pain shooting through her entire arm. Shocked and kicked to the lymph nodes, it was turning out to be quite the night.

Jo's reaction did not go unnoticed and was met with a quick response in Italian. "Chi è là?" A male voice demanded, reaching down to grab the arm of the shadowy girl whom he had stumbled over in disorientation, unable to make out his surroundings more than dark, vague shapes. Jo found herself hauled to her feet and nearly off them by that same arm that felt lifeless and burning thanks to the shock and being kicked in the armpit.

Her mind was reeling, mostly with thoughts of 'Seriously? Kicked in the armpit? Who the fuck?' as she was pulled to her feet and shoved against the wall in a manner that was none too friendly and quite demanding. It all happened within seconds and only once she felt the hard press of the wall to her back was everything falling into line but the man pushing her against it was much more on the ball than she was. "Che posto è questo? Come sono arrivato qui? Chi sei?" The man demanded in a flurry of Italian that left the slightly stunned Jo at even more of a loss, not aided by the shake that followed the question knocking her skull lightly against the wall.

"...What?" Strange as this was, she was being held against a wall by a man she could only barely make out in the dark in front of her and she'd been lying if fear didn't blaze to life in her belly like a wildfire. "Get off! Get off! Get the fuck off!" Jo's aches and pains were suddenly forgotten and she struggled against the man holding her to the wall, kicking, slapping and thrashing like a fish on a hook. She'd always imagined that if something like this happened she would take care of herself, kick ass, take names and claim balls to encase in bronze for trophies. Instead she was reduced to a frightened nine year old slapping her attacker in the chest. In a chest covered with hard steel plates. That struck her as odd.

Luckily Jo did not have to put up much of a fight as the man holding her quickly realized that this was in fact a woman he was near brutalizing and obviously frightening with little reason and like a true Renaissance man, he was nearly appalled at himself for the mistake. He released Jo as though her skin were on fire and she bolted. Albeit in the dark, so she bolted and ran into the table that was in the kitchen all of three steps away in the tiny apartment, all but sprawling onto the piece of furniture and sending notebooks full of homework she wasn't going to do anyway slapping to the tile floor.

"Get out of my house! Get out!" She said, in more of a plea than a demand since all her guile and rough exterior seemed to be shed in this situation. Farther away now she could clearly make out the figure of a hooded man standing in her living room, speaking vibrant Italian she didn't understand in a familiar voice. "Perdonami signora, non so dove sono io qual è il tuo nome?" The man said, gentler this time, holding a hand out to the girl's shadowy form in an attempt to calm her.

Calm, however, was not an emotion that Jo would be feeling for a while and as the lights in the building came back on that fact became much more certain. Jo found herself half sitting on her kitchen table, staring at a middle aged man who looked startlingly like Ezio Auditore in his Brotherhood robes, looking left and right in calm confusion at the marvel of electrical lights and everything else a Renaissance man might find odd in an a modern, if not slightly run down, apartment. Even though she had a significant amount of marijuana on board, Jo was not compelled to believe this was Ezio Auditore and instead just took the idea of a creeper breaking into her apartment to a whole new level of fucked up nerd needing a date and possibly willing to shoot up anyone who stood in his sad way.

Thanks to her brother and his slightly negligent concern for her safety, a long black police flashlight that doubled as a nightstick rested on her kitchen counter. While the man was marveling at the brightly burning 100 watt bulbs protruding from the living room ceiling fan spinning away, Jo reached for it and rushed at the man, taking an imprecise swing at his head with the flashlight that had been enough to give him a good clock to the nose but not much else, screaming for no describable reason as she did so.

"Merda!" The man exclaimed as one hand wind to his nose, sopping up blood and turning to face the girl, finally seeing the dusky blonde young woman as more than just a shadowy outline. She was tall, leggy, fleshy yet obviously athletic with a feminine, fox like face that had no touch of softness and wore clothes just as strange as the room he'd found himself in. A woman in jeans with a hole in the knee was a strange and foreign sight to the Italian, women in pants was not a common sight and the bitch had just hit him.

"Pazza! Calmati prima difarti del male!" Ezio shouted at Jo who clearly did not understand what he was saying and was coming in to take another swing at the man. He responded as though his body were liquid and the action were as simple as standing up, taking hold of her arm that was aiming to take another swing at him with the flashlight and twisting it, throwing off her momentum and sending her clear off her feet, landing flat on her back and hard on the ground.

On the ground and as vulnerable as she could get, Jo had the opportunity to get a good look at the man standing above her. This man was dressed like Ezio Auditore, looked like him down to the smallest of details, had all the armor, all the weapons, dropped her on the ground like she was a child and spoke what she assumed was fluent Italian in an unmistakable voice. She felt heart palpitations in every limb and extremity, the pupils of her eyes spiraling wider as she stared numbly at the man. "...Ezio?"

Ezio's head tilted in curiosity as the young woman spoke his name, and he looked left and right before taking a step closer and offering a hand to help her to her feet. "Sì, come si fa a conoscermi nome?" He said, his voice drained of it's previous irritation. The girl continued to stare at him, looked around the room as well, felt the pain in her hand and her arm and knew she wasn't dreaming, though did mildly entertain the possibility of hallucinating on the weed, which she had never known herself to do and certainly not on such a small amount.

The man sighed in frustration, understanding clearly that the two of them did understand a word of the language that the other was speaking. He gave his hand a shake in gesture, at least wanting to help her up. "Alzati, non voglio farti del male se non mi ha colpito di nuovo." Much more tentatively than was normal for Jo she reached up and took the offered hand, feeling herself hauled to her feet before her body had any say about it, a testament to the man's strength and made him that much more Ezio-like.

Jo backed away from the Italian, continuing to stare at him in stunned disbelief just as the door opened. She really ought to lock it, then she wouldn't have to worry about strange men breaking into her apartment. She probably subconsciously just liked the unknown of anyone being able to just walk in at any time.

"Hey, I'm bringing your dog back since he just pissed all over my carpet and you're obviously-" Standing in the doorway was a slim young man with a head of shaggy, loosely curled dark hair, wearing clothes that nearly drowned him with a black and tan chihuahua mix under his arm, emanating the vague smell of urine. Just as Jo was standing stunned, so was the young man, staring at the unmistakable form of a living, breathing Ezio Auditore standing in Jo's living room.

"...Oh fuck." He blurted.

Dually noted.


Italian translations in order of appearance:

Who's there?

What is this place? How did I get here? Who are you?

Forgive me miss, I do not know where I am, what is your name?

Shit!

Crazy woman! Calm down before I hurt you!

Yes, how do you know my name?

Stand up, I will not hurt you if you do not hit me again.