dear_mun | Voicetesting!

That sounds very constructive! I'm sure finding a place like that, or someone like Miss Sato shouldn't be too hard with a positive attitude like that!

[She smiles, and nods.]

Thanks! I mean, no reason to assume the worst. [She offers a hand] And I'm Avatar Korra, to be formal about it. Nice to meet you.

Oh goodness! The Avatar?

Or...that is to say "An Avatar"? It is an honor. I am Joo Dee, former Supreme Bureaucratic Administrator to Ba Sing Se.

Now I am simply...Joo Dee.

[She's not entirely sure what that means because she hasn't had a purpose since the Fire Nation was kicked out of Ba Sing Se but that's fine right? Probably fine.]

Mmhmm. Successor to Avatar Aang, if that helps at all. And I'd rather simply be Korra too, so.

[She shrugs.]

Maybe we can both be 'simply' for a while.

Past selves, huh? Just...be careful. Seems like a great idea on paper, until you start hallucinating running around Acre in your sleep.

[No, Desmond's never done that, why do you ask?]

But it's different for you, isn't it? More literal and less...well, virtual.

[He pauses.]

Friends help. Keep you grounded and stuff. At least that's been my experience.

Very literal. My connection got severed a while ago, and I'm trying to get it back - but even before that, it was more like...having advice you could turn to. Otherwise, their spirits left me alone, by and large.

But what's this 'virtual' thing? Because some of them were pretty virtuous...

Yeah, I get that. My ancestors taught me a lot over a pretty short period of time. Problem is they won't leave me alone. That's the dangerous part about using the Animus.

[He chuckles. How is Desmond going to explain the Animus?]

It's like...seeing your ancestors in your sleep. You...live through the memories of their lives, learn what they learned, know what they know. That kinda thing. My ancestors live on in me because I learned directly from them, separated by a few hundred years or so.

[Desmond rubs at the back of his head a bit.]

Mine...not so much. I mean they were good people, but...sorta the "doing bad things for good reasons" kind of people.

[She thought about that for a long moment, nodding.]

Ooof, yeah, that's a lot rougher. I'm sorry you have to deal with that.

[Desmond shrugs. He's used to the weirdness of his life. Both being born into the Assassins and learning how to be and Assassin from childhood, and then having those lessons reinforced by the training of Altaïr, Ezio, and Connor that he'd lived in the Animus.]

You get used to it. Not that anyone should, but when you've got no choice, you do what you have to, to make it work. Especially when there's a lot at stake. Weight of the world and all that.

[He laughs. Desmond is remarkably blasé about the fact that he's got over a hundred years worth of other people's memories rolling around in his head, and is more or less the only hope for the human race.]

So what about you? Ancestors and reincarnations and stuff, right? That's gotta be a lot to process, even if you knew it young.

That's...weirdly not the hard part. At least, not for me. I can't speak for any of my previous selves.

The hard part are the foes that come with it. The people you can't save.

Having sage advice from predecessors...really quite reassuring, I guess.

[Desmond nods. That, he totally gets.]

Yeah, I get that. The...group...that I'm a part of. Our whole thing is killing one person to potentially save millions. I didn't get it at all when I was a kid, the truth was kept from me for a long time, until I stumbled into it by accident.

[Desmond laughs a little. All of his "advice" came through trial by fire. Except for the one time Ezio spoke to him directly when Desmond found the Synch Nexus that connected himself, Ezio, and Altaïr across the centuries.]

Must be nice. When I'm in the Animus, I'm seeing through my ancestor's eyes directly. I've had to learn things the hard way, over about 150 years worth of memories between my four ancestors.

[Not pulling it out of his bag, Desmond lays a hand on his Apple of Eden, conjuring four individual holographic images that gather around him. The first two look almost exactly like Desmond, while the latter two not quite as much. The hoods are a dead giveaway to the kind of work they did.]

I know there's more of 'em in my family tree, but Altaïr, Ezio, Haytham, and Connor were the only ones I ever got to experience directly. All four of 'em had to learn the right way to do things by making a mess of things first.

[And just as quickly as they appeared, the images vanish. Desmond doesn't like to use the Apple any more than is absolutely necessary, but he can't often resist the pull of the device to use it.]

[Ooooh she doesn't like the sound of that. Not one bit.]

[But she'll push it aside to examine the Apple of Eden, watching each of the images very carefully.]

I'm sorry you had to carry on in that tradition. Killing people must be terrible.

[She had killed - but just once, and by then...by then he was very far from being human. It will, she hopes, always bother her to her core.]

[Desmond shrugs. He'd mostly been desensitized to it over time, which obviously wasn't great, but it was a kill-or-be-killed conflict that had raged for thousands of years.]

It's not my favorite thing, but I've mostly only killed in self-defense, except for once. My dad was being held captive, and I killed the man responsible to save my dad's life.

[Not really wanting to hide it, Desmond actually pulls the Apple fully out of his bag, examining details of the device for really the first time ever. Most of the time, he tried to ignore his precious cargo. He turns it over in his hand, marveling at how such a small thing cost so many so much over the centuries.]

The war we're fighting doesn't really give us the luxury of mercy most of the time. I'd love to solve everything without violence, you know? [He pauses.] It's rarely ever that simple.

[That she has sympathy for. Life is, in the end, made up significantly of hard choices in a series.]

I'd end it, if I could.

[And she would. It is, in many ways, what she does.]

I wish I could, but I'm just one guy on one side of things, you know? Even having the power, I'm not always sure I'm worthy to use it like that. What if I'm wrong?

[Desmond thinks back to his invasion of the Abstergo facility in Italy, forcing Warren Vidic's goons to shoot him, and themselves dead, all so he could rescue his father and retrieve the power source for the Grand Temple, allowing them to access all parts of the facility.]

Even with all of the wisdom and skills I've picked up from my ancestors, I'm only human. I don't have any right to use this thing any more than it's creators did.

[Desmond holds up the Apple of Eden for Korra to see. It's barely bigger than a softball, but hums with a power that's impossible to describe.]

I don't advise trying to touch this thing. It's...a lot more than most people can handle.

[Her eyes flicked up, a wry look on her face, from her examinations.]

Oh, I don't need any more voices telling me how to do things.

[And she's silent for a moment, considering the questions he asked.]

You find people you know are good. And they tell you.

[Desmond returns the wry smile. She's a smart one, this Korra. Pragmatic.]

Good call. There are times I wish I didn't have to carry it around, but it's safer with me, than just leaving it sit in a dusty old crypt waiting for the wrong kind of people to find it.

[Like Lucy, or God forbid Daniel Cross. At Korra's answer, Desmond shrugs.]

Fair enough. My people are...pragmatic, and one's just an asshole. Kinda comes with the territory of spending most of your time being hunted, hiding in plain sight and all of that.

It sounds like a strange sort of life.

[Said with, really, quite a bit of sympathy.]

[Desmond laughs.]

It can be, yeah. Kinda one of those sink-or-swim kinds of things. You find your way into the life I lead, and you adapt quickly or die, really. The Creed helps, if you can understand it. When a person first hears it, it can seem a little strange.

[Desmond straightens up, like he's saying something stuffy and important.]

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

[He relaxes]

It's supposed to make you think, to examine your own actions and the actions of others with a critical eye. Never accept things at face value, that kind of thing. It can save your ass if you apply it right.

[And the look she gives him can be summed up in a single word: sadness.]

But to go through life, thinking everything can be done, and that there's nothing true? Nothing...intrinsically good?

I couldn't live that cynically. I don't think anybody should have to. Do you need help getting out?

[Desmond laughs.]

It would be a pretty cynical life, if if was meant as it's said. Our Creed isn't really meant to be taken literally. [He pauses, and holds out a hand, gesturing to illustrate his point.] Like...when we say "nothing is true" what we mean is that you need to look at both truth and lies with a critical eye, and that what might be true for one person will be a falsehood for someone else. It's cautioning wisdom, really. As for "everything is permitted" [He gestures with the other hand.], when we say that, it's meant to make a person think about what they're doing. Like...if everything is permitted, then why not do whatever you want? [He smiles.] The answer is that you can't do whatever you want, particularly if it interferes with the freedom of someone else.

[Desmond rolls up his the left sleeve of his hoodie, exposing an intricate tattoo that seems to snake it's way up the entirety of his arm, though only up to his elbow is visible.]

I didn't exactly choose the life I lead, the Creed I follow. I can admit that. I even ran away when I was a kid, tried to ditch that life for as long as I could, but...between them finding me [He laughs.] and the fact that...the Templars will still be there, trying to take people's freedom away because they don't think they can be trusted with it. Nah. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't fight. Someone's gotta.

[There's a determination in his voice, and almost pride? Desmond didn't choose his life, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let others suffer just because he chose not to act for so long.]

There's gotta be some of that in your life, too, right? The whole "chosen one" schtick. Being put on a path you might not've chosen for yourself.

Edited 2020-12-24 06:26 (UTC)

[She's fascinated by the tattoo, leaning in to examine it more closely. She looks up at his question.]

Schtick? But...this has always been my destiny and I accept it. There are people who will need my help, evils of...cosmic power to be stopped. Nobody else can do it, and good people will get hurt trying. There's nobody else.

[She shrugs, eloquently.]

I've never run from it because there's no point running from it. The Avatar is, and for now? The Avatar and me are one. There's...there's a lot of upsides, really. You get to see the world, see its wonders. And the people you meet, they're the good ones. The ones who will help no matter what. As for the bad ones...you find out quickly, and you defeat them fairly. It may take time, and it may hurt, but it's what has to happen.

[Desmond rolls his eyes at the term "destiny". Like...he had his destiny ordained thousands of years before his birth by the Capitoline Triad, to the point that even running away had contributed to the man he'd become.]

Yeah, I guess you've got a point. I just get sick of the whole "destiny" thing, because it feels like even trying to resist it just feeds into whatever you're meant to become. I had my path predicted...god...thousands of years ago, to the point that even me running away from it as a kid was a factor in where I ended up. Destiny's a hell of a thing when you know you've got no choice. Every minor decision spins off into it's own path, it's own version of "you" that could have been, but at the end of the day, we are who we are.

[Desmond coughs, speaking in a voice that almost doesn't sound like his.]

"What is a man but the sum of his memories? We are the stories we live, the tales we tell ourselves!"

An Avatar is even more so. We...connect to all our past selves. My connection has been...well, blocked, or lost or...something. For now, at least. So it's not even memories, but...well, talking to yourself? I'm not good at explaining some things.

It's like having a conversation and a memory at the same time.

[Desmond rubs his chin. It sounds a little bit like what he'd experienced in the Animus more than once. First with Minerva, then Jupiter, and finally Juno.]

I had something like that happen to me a while back. I...did something. Something I regret...and it put me in some sort of weird coma. While I was under, I connected with my ancestor Ezio when he was in his older years, when he went searching for the library of one of the older Assassins. For just a minute or two, it was like all three of us were in the room together, connected over the centuries. Ezio knew I was experiencing his memories somehow, so he called out to me directly. It was...surreal, you know?

[Desmond puts his hand on the Apple of Eden, concentrating on that particular memory, and projecting it all around them like a hologram]

Ezio was...he was a heck of a guy.

[She smiled, shrugging.]

For me, it was my life. I'm not even sure what 'surreal' means. I mean, as it's applied to my life at least.

Journeying back and forth to the Spirit World, meeting dragons, and fighting a great big evil kite'll do that. But I'm glad you had some good ancestors."

[Desmond laughs. He knows Korra is serious, but when your life is that weird, it's hard not to find it a little funny.]

I guess I got lucky, having a relatively "normal" childhood...I mean aside from my training, anyway, so that when all the weird stuff started happening, I had something to compare it to.

[He shakes his head.]

Man, you'd love the Capitoline Triad I bet. All vague prophesies and holier-than-thou grandstanding. They're the ones who revealed my destiny to me when I was working through my ancestor's memories. They'd pop up in my ancestor's lives, addressing me directly and confusing the hell out out of anyone else in the room. Supposedly they tried to save the world in their own time, and fucked up magnificently. They left behind recordings and stuff like the Apple for poor saps like me to find, thousands of years later, so we could try and succeed where they failed.

[Desmond thinks on the Eye in the Grand Temple, the glowing orb with the power to rewrite reality itself at the whim of the user, and how it waited for him to reach out and grab it.]

[Well that just sounds stupid. Popping into someone's past just to muddle things up?]

Wait, so, they jumped into your past to try and fix their past? That just sounds...confusing. For me it was always just getting to talk to your predecessors. Just...conversations and occasional wisdom.

[Desmond laughs.]

Pretty much, yeah. There was a catastrophe thousands of years ago that they called the "Toba Catastrophe", that wiped out their race and society, and left us humans as surviors. They knew it was coming, and even though they had really advanced technology, they couldn't stop it no matter what they did. They figured out that it was on a kind of cycle, and that it'd happen again in the future, so they poured what resources they had into finding a way to stop it that could be used in the future, and the person who could do it. [Desmond points to himself.] As an insurance policy, they left recordings of themselves at different points in history, in places they knew my ancestors would end up, knowing that I'd see their memories and see those recordings while I was at it. They gave me...literally just enough warning to get where I needed to go right before another catastrophe was ready to happen, and the knowledge to stop it. Talk about cutting it close, right?

[He shrugs.]

Now see? I'd love that. getting to talk things out instead of having to do the whole "live their life and learn things the hard way" thing. It'd be way less strain on my poor psyche, anyway.

[Desmond laughs, trying hard to ignore the ghost of Ezio appearing just on the periphery of his vision.]

That...that sounds really badly done, y'know, given the stakes. Mine are just there when I ask. Or were, rather.

[Desmond laughs. He understands why things have to be the way they are, but even he has to admit that the First Civ could have done it better.]

In their defense, they were kind of at war with the human race while they were trying to get it all figured out. They make us, but then get pissed off when we develop free will and decide that we don't like being their slaves, but then count on us to survive something they can't. It's a whole convoluted thing.

[He pauses]

So what happened? If you don't mind me asking. Like...you could talk to your past lives, but now you can't?

[And she visibly freezes up, but just for a moment, taking a deep breath.]

I was...the connection was severed, in battle to save the world. The Light Spirit, who makes the Avatar the Avatar...was torn out of me. We both recovered, but I've never been able to reconnect to those past lives. If I ever can.

[Desmond can, in his own weird sort of way, sympathize with that. He doesn't know what he'd do if he lost his own connection to his ancestors.]

I mean...they still existed, right? Just because you don't have a direct line to them any more doesn't mean that there aren't still things you can learn from them, right? You don't get the bleeding effect like I do, but I'm sure there's still ways you can benefit from your past lives, if not directly.

Yes. I mean, they'd have to, right? But what remains of their spirits...I don't know. I just don't know. Texts have such a different meaning from the actual feeling, you know?

I mean if I had a spare Animus laying around you could use I'd say go for it, but that technology's pretty hard to come by.

[Desmond shrugs.]

When I was exploring my ancestor Ezio's life, at one point I was actually...for all intents and purposes living in his house, Monteriggioni. Being there, seeing the few things of his that remained, it gave me a different kind of perspective on the kind of man he was, other than what I'd seen firsthand. I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though you might've lost your connection with your past lives, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're done teaching you things. You just need to find a different way of looking at it.

That makes sense. I think I knew that, but it's always good to be reminded of it. Thank you for that.

Voicetesting!

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Fashionably late?

Always happy for people arriving! :)

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