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Shall We Play A Game, a story that is technically a Yu-Gi-Oh and Red River/Anatolia Story crossover, but is mostly as historical romance/drama set in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure duels will happen at some point... Currently on Chapter Nine. This currently may be undergoing a major shift and rewrite.
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"Hello, Clarke. It's good to see you again."
The words echoed through the room for several long heartbeats as the two females stared at eachother. Well, Clarke was staring, with a hanging jaw and wide eyes at that, while the older woman that had been waiting for her was grinning at her thunderstruck expression.
"Kassandra?" Clarke said, sounding more than a little bewildered, before shaking her head and frowning faintly. "Why are you here? Hell, how are you here? How did you even know about this place?"
"I'll be happy to explain it to you, but we're going need to find ourselves a bit of privacy first. I'd hate for us to get interrupted, and I'd hate to blow your cover after you've put so much work into hiding your identity." the brunette warrior-woman responded with a casual shrug, pointing with her thumb at the space behind her. A space which, Clarke now saw, that had a small, distinct, faintly gleaming circle on the floor.
"What exactly is that supposed to be, some sort of elevator?" she asked, frowning at it curiously for a moment, and Kassandra tilted her head from side to side in a strange sort of half-nod, half-shake.
"I guess you could think of it like that, sure, in that it takes you between places. Technically, it's called a 'Matter Manipulation and Translocation Network Node', but no one actually called it that. We just went with Mat-Trans and called it good. Anyway…" Clarke yelped softly as the older woman reached out and wrapped a hand around her wrist. "We need to get moving. I was supposed to get my hands on you the instant you got to the ground, but you ended up running into Niylah instead and things went a little sideways. Not that I can blame ALIE for that."
Clarke pulled back, resisting Kassandra's attempt to lead her toward the strange circle, absently wondering why Geri and Freki weren't protesting the rough treatment of their mistress. "ALIE? What does she have to do with any of this? And you still haven't answered how you're even here!"
"Your ancestor built this palace, Clarke, and the Coalition doesn't know all of it's secrets. That's how I'm here. And I will explain everything to you after we reach the Vault." Kassandra scoffed, and Clarke's efforts to free herself paused as she blinked in surprise again.
"I thought this was the Vault. ALIE told me that I needed to reach this place to find out about my heritage, and a legacy, and…" she trailed off, trying to remember exactly what details she had been given and when, and Kassandra nodded briskly.
"It's true, you do. And this is a Vault, but it isn't the Vault." she clarified, looking somewhat exasperated with Clarke's continued lack of cooperation. "You couldn't, wouldn't, get the full explanation until we reach the real Vault. Now are you going to come with me, or am I going to have to bring you with me?"
The implication was pretty clear, and hardly ambiguous: Clarke could walk herself into the Mat-Trans, or Kassandra would carry here there. And Clarke had no illusions at all that she could take Kassandra in a fight for even a moment, she had seen The Wanderer, as her grounder friends had called the woman on occasion, disassemble warriors twice Clarke's size with a dozen times her experience in a matter of seconds. That being said, Clarke wasn't prone to being manhandled, blackmailed, threatened, or otherwise controlled. Not without out some pointed and aggressive responses, anyway.
"Clarke, it's fine. Kassandra doesn't mean you any harm. In fact, she's probably the best ally that you have on Earth, myself included. Just follow her and keep your wolves close, alright?" ALIE's voice said into her ear, sounding firm and reassuring alike, before she could make a decision one way or the other, and Clarke frowned for a moment more before growling in annoyance and clicking her tongue at her pups. They obediently pressed themselves against her side, letting her twine her fingers through their fur to give her some modicum of physical control over them. And, more importantly, a bit of physical comfort.
"Fine. But I expect answers, real ones, the moment we arrive."
Kassandra's lips quirked into a half-smile as she guided the trio onto the glowing circle. "You'll get them, I promise. You remind me alot of your great-grandmother, you know? Same stubborn chin, same demanding tone when you want something. You look alot like her too, actually."
Clarke wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not, and she was even less sure what to think about the implications in Kassandra's words, but before she could respond or even really absorb them properly, they were standing in place. The circle beneath their feet began to glow with increasing intensity, lines of blue-white light tracing geometric patterns across its surface, a faint humming, thrumming sound filling the air alongside a building pressure that was all-to-easy to feel.
"Beam me up, Scotty." she heard Kassandra drawl, voice thick with amusement, and then the pressure popped with a blinding flash that had her swearing and ducking her head as she tried to blink the spots from her eyes, the yelps and whines from her canine companions telling her that she wasn't the only one that hadn't enjoyed that particular part of the experience.
When Clarke's vision cleared, she found herself standing in a chamber that made the previous room look like a janitor's closet. The ceiling stretched impossibly high above them, supported by columns of what appeared to be polished obsidian veined with threads of silver that pulsed with their own inner light. The walls were covered in murals that seemed to shift and move when she wasn't looking directly at them, depicting scenes of technology and warfare that belonged to no time period she could identify.
"Welcome to the real Vault, Clarke." Kassandra said, stepping off what Clarke now realized was an identical transport circle and gesturing to the colossal space around them. "The Central Vault, specifically, though it has other names. Many other names, stretching back, oh, a few million years or so. Something like that, I think?"
"Four point seven five million years, as you are well aware. Welcome to Turin, New York, Clarke. Or, rather, a massive hidden complex stretching beneath most of the city." ALIE chided Kassandra a bit dryly, stepping out of thing air as far as Clarke could tell, and Clarke absently noticed a bit of bright something around her edges with the tiny portion of her mind that wasn't stuck on the actual words.
"Wait, New York? That's like, hundreds of miles from where I was!" she squawks in surprise, getting soft laughter from her two companions.
"340 miles or so, as the eagle flies, traveled near-instantly. A side-benefit of your legacy, I suppose you could say. One of many." Kassandra confirmed, smiling faintly. "I'm somewhat impressed by the fact that you focused on that, not how old the complex was. Or is it that it hadn't really sunk in?"
"Definitely the latter." Clarke confirmed instantly, shaking her head and running a hand through her air as she gave a disbelieving scoff of a laugh. "This is insane. Completely insane. I knew that the Old World was more advanced than the Ark, but I know it wasn't that different, that advanced. So why don't you two get started with the explanation before I start freaking out."
And she was sure that she would freak out, once what was currently happening really sank in.
"The explanation is going to be difficult to believe, even given what you've already seen." ALIE said, her form becoming more solid as she moved closer to them, and Clarke wondered briefly why her voice still sounded as though it was coming through a radio of some sort. "But we need to start at the beginning. Your great-grandmother, Alexia Griffin, wasn't just an incredible soldier and leader. She was part of a project that spanned millennia - a guardianship that has been passed down through very specific, cultivated bloodlines."
Kassandra nodded, her expression growing serious, beckoning for Clarke to follow her as she turned and started walking deeper into the complex. "The Coalition thinks they know the history of the world, know Alexia's history, but they only know fragments. What Alexia wanted them to know, what they were ready to know at the time. The nuclear war that destroyed civilization? That was just the most recent catastrophe. There have been others - many others, with some that could be averted and some that could not. And each time they couldn't be stopped, a small group of people have worked to preserve what could be saved and prepare for what comes next."
"The Vault system was built by your ancestors, Clarke, but not your recent ancestors. The Griffin line goes back much further than you know, many thousands of years as a matter of fact." ALIE continued, sounding almost…was that pity? Remorse? Clarke wasn't sure, but she didn't like it, and she was pretty sure that she would like the reason it was there even less. "Hundreds of generations, all carefully cultivated by the Precursors and those that they guided, to ensure that there would always be a hero to save mankind."
"What do you mean, 'cultivated'? You mean that it was deliberately manipulated, like some sort of, what, breeding program?" Clarke scoffed, disbelieving, though there was a lump in her throat at the look in both older women's eyes. Their looks, and the quiet voice in the back of her mind that reminded her of the conversation she had had with her clan-born friends not so very long ago. She swallowed heavily at their silent confirmation, and her voice was fragile when she continued. "How, why? Who are these, these 'Precursors', and why would they do that? Why us?"
"It's a very long story, Clarke, one that's as old as humanity, which is a lot older than you can imagine and you were taught. Simply put, the humanity you know is an…off-shoot of a much older, much more advanced, much more powerful race. Eventually, for reasons that we quite frankly don't have to time to fully explore right now, the two sides ended up fighting a war. A war that only ended when the Great Catastrophe, a dangerous series of solar flares, wiped out the vast majority of both. Only a dozen or so Precursors survived, by one means or another, and perhaps ten-thousand humans." Kassandra explained with a casual air that Clarke wasn't really sure fit when such insane things were being said and discussed. "It was predicted that it would happen again, in 2012, and significant effort was put towards preventing such catastrophic damage. How much did they teach you about that era, up on the Ark?"
"Not much, I don't think? I remember something about the aurora borealis and the aurora australis being unusual for a few years, and something about magnetism, but that was it. Just a passing mention before focus shifted to the time period around The Last War." she responded, frowning faintly as she tried to dredge of the memories of what had amounted to 45 minutes of lecturing a decade before. Then she paused, eyes widening as a thought occurred to her, and she couldn't help but voice it despite finding it absurd in the extreme. "Are you telling me that that whole thing is related to stopping the disaster?"
"Yes." came the blunt and, as far as she could tell, entirely honest response. "What was seen as the aurora borealis was actually a type of energy field, shifting the Earth's magnetic field enough that the coronal mass ejections from the solar flares couldn't wipe out the planet. Unfortunately, with only a partial understanding of the situation, the man who activated it -a member of your lineage, Desmond Miles- wasn't able to operate it properly. The fields got strong and stronger, until humanity was in just as much danger from the solution as they had been from the danger to begin with."
"At which point, the surviving members of the Order that your family has long belonged to stepped in. They searched out an ancient, sunken city of the Precursors, where they found Kassandra waiting for them. Kassandra intended to give them the key to their own salvation, but instead…"
"Instead, Layla convinced me to leave Atlantis behind and help them more directly. I was tired, so tired you can barely imagine it, but…she was passionate, and persuasive. She convinced me that giving up and letting others finish the fight didn't much suit my nature, so…" Kassandra shrugged, sounding almost wistful, an echo of something much like longing in her voice. Then she shrugged again. "I didn't intend to still be here today, no matter what Layla had to say, but…I'm still needed, and my pater and my mater didn't raise me to give up."
"How…" Clarke started, before stopping and swallowing heavily again, having the feeling that the answer was going to utterly blow her mind. Still, much like Kassandra, she hadn't been raised to be a quitter, and so she forged on. "How old are you, Kassandra?"
"Oh, let's see. I haven't kept track in a while, you understand, and we didn't quite count dates the way you think of them today back when I was a child, but…twenty-two hundred years or so? Something like that, I think. And before you ask how that's possible, call it one of the side-benefits of being a result of that breeding program we were just talking about. Amongst a few other things." came the response, one slender finger tapping the odd, caedecus-shaped amulet that Clarke was just now noticing hung around the…well, calling her an elder was an insane understatement if she was telling the truth. And Clarke really, really had the idea that she was.
"That's insane. That's…Jesus, you're older than Jesus!" she whimpered, there was no other word for it, somewhat pleadingly, and Kassandra gave a delighted bark of laughter.
"If I had a drachmae for every time someone has said that to me over the course of my life, I could have bought the world out from under the Templars and prevented The Last War outright." she chuckled, shaking her head as ALIE shook her head in bemusement beside her, light refracting strangely off of her hair. "Yeah, I'm a bit older. Met him once or twice. Good kid, better man. Would have killed Judas myself, if the squirrely little shit hadn't done it himself first. Coward."
Her jaw worked like she intended to spit to the side, though she didn't, and Clarke struggled -more and still- to grapple with the continued onslaught of insanity. And God was she repeating herself, using that word over and over again, but it was insane. Hell, she was starting to question her own sanity at this point, legitimately starting to wonder if this was some sort of fever dream.
"At any rate, that's not really important right now," she continued, and Clarke wanted to protest, because that seemed really fucking important to discuss, but her tongue felt like a solid block of lead in her mouth. "because what we really need to focus on is why you're here. Which is to prime you for your destiny, or at least a part of it."
"What, ruling mankind? Because I think it's going to take a long time before I'm ready to fulfill any sort of prophecy to 'lead humanity into a new golden age', Kassandra. I've got big enough problems to deal with as it is, so unless you have a way to save everyone on the Ark with a snap of your fingers, I really need to focus on that first." Clarke folded her arms beneath her breasts with a scowl, only to gape again as Kassandra shrugged and nodded.
"I do, but I'm not going to give it to you yet. It's not the right time, and it will make things worse instead of better." she proclaimed, waving a hand sharply as Clarke bristled and went to protest. "Clarke, you're a smart girl and a good leader, so let's see if you can follow along, alright? The first scenario, the one you've been pursuing for now with Lexa's help, is to bring your people down to Earth and slowly integrate them with the Coalition. It's a good plan, and one that would likely succeed because your Arkers would depend upon the Coalition for survival. To learn how to eat and sleep and build and live in a world that is completely out of their experience and understanding. The two disparate groups would bond over the efforts of education and survival."
Clarke nodded along slowly, understanding so far. While she hadn't quite thought that far ahead, having been mostly focused on saving her people, she had been considering how best to help them integrate with the clans. Oh, some Arkers would say that they should live on their own, leave and move somewhere else or remain where they landed and stay isolated from the clans, but neither option was remotely realistic. Even above and beyond her supposed destiny, she couldn't rest easily if there was a chance that her old life and her new one would turn weapons against each other. She couldn't even bear the thought of it.
"The second scenario is the one that would come to pass if I did as you suggested. If I gave you the means to bring the whole of the Ark's population to the ground in an instant, with everything that they needed to survive and thrive with the means and lifestyles that they are familiar with -better than that, even, and more advanced!- do you think your people would integrate? Or would they see the grounders as little more than savage, backwards, primitive barbarians to enslave, subsume, or eradicate?"
Clarke flinched, the words hitting her like a physical blow, her heart aching in time. The thought of her people – her Ark people – treating the grounders that way made her stomach churn and her teeth clench, but she couldn't deny the truth in Kassandra's words. She had grown up as a princess of the Ark, born and raised in the highest echelons of society. How many times had she heard her mother's colleagues discuss returning to Earth and rebuilding human society with confident, nigh on arrogant, surety?
"You're right," she admitted reluctantly, the words painful but compelled by honesty to say them nonetheless. "They'd... we'd see ourselves as superior. As the ones who kept civilization alive, as the people who are the rightful owners of the world. The Council would just say that it was for the Coalition's own good, and when the Clans didn't fall into line they'd use it to 'prove' how bad they are."
"Exactly," Kassandra nodded, her eyes not quite sad, but there was certainly a depth of emotion there, one that spoke of experience, and Clarke had to wonder what the ancient woman was thinking of. "Your people need humility before they can be given any kind of power They need to understand that survival on Earth requires more than technology – it requires respect for the land and those who've learned to live with it."
"They need to understand that they're not gods or saviors descending from the heavens to rescue those beneath them, but refugees seeking sanctuary from their doom amongst a people that, though in many ways different, are their kin." ALIE added, sounding almost pitying, which Clarke found herself almost irrationally annoyed by. "Not all of them would be like that, of course. But enough of them would be, and power corrupts, Clarke. You know that better than most. And technology is a very potent power indeed. Give a desperate people a clear, significant, and unambiguous advantage over strangers that can all too easily be perceived as rivals or threats? History has shown a thousand times what happens next."
"…alright then. Since I'm assuming you don't want all my people to die, and you seemed to at least be moderately approving of my original plan, I'm assuming that you have a plan for making it happen? Because if Mount Weather is being run by traitors -and I still want more details on that, given what you've told me tonight I'm doubting it's not nearly as simple as all that- I need another way to communicate with the Ark. So if you have an incredibly powerful radio transmitter lying around, now would be a great time to let me know." she finally ground out her response, knowing that they were right and having little and less she could use to push back their arguments.
"We don't, no, but there is a system hidden inside the palace in Polis that will allow you to begin the process of stabilizing Earth's atmosphere. Once you do that, it should become possible for you to reach the Ark with the equipment that you have now." Kassandra denied, shaking her head but smiling slightly as she offered another solution, Clarke feeling her eye start to twitch at the knowledge that she had been even closer than she had realized to said solution for the last month. "Of course, we can't do that quiet yet. What we actually need to do right now is awaken your bloodline. You've been reaping some passive benefits so far, but it won't be enough, and while you might manage it on your own, the cost would be…problematic."
"What do you mean?"
"People like you and I, with a high concentration of Precursor genetics, are…more than human. Do you remember reading about people like King Arthur, or Gilgamesh, or Heracles?" Kassandra explained, and Clarke nodded slowly in response, wondering what mythological figures had to do with anything, and Kassandra made a gesture with a right hand as if to say 'there you are, then'. "All of them were people like us. Stronger, faster, smarter, more durable, longer-lived. The greatest heros, and many of the greatest villains, of human history and mythology were people from bloodlines like ours. And you remember what most of those people had to endure before they became such legendary heroes, don't you?"
"Loss. Incredible loss, usually with significant personal suffering. That's the cost you mentioned?" Clarke's voice was quiet, and she nodded somberly after Kassandra made a gesture of confirmation, looking just as somber. "So, since I don't really want to imagine what the cost would be if watching my father die wasn't enough, I suppose the best thing I can do is put myself at your mercy. Which I really shouldn't, I barely know you, but ALIE has done nothing but help me and I can't see someone going to all this effort to trick me instead of just killing or kidnapping me."
"Smart girl. You're right, we don't mean you any harm at all. On the contrary, both of us want nothing more than for you to succeed and thrive." ALIE said, her form flickering slightly as she moved closer, her eyes firm but not hard as they met Clarke's own. "Though I should clarify something before we proceed. The awakening process itself isn't painful, but it will change you in ways that may be... difficult to adjust to. Your senses will become sharper, your reflexes faster, your physical capabilities enhanced beyond normal human limits. But, perhaps most importantly, you'll begin to experience what we call 'genetic memory'. Flashes of knowledge and experience from your ancestors, even whole memories. It will be…a lot."
Kassandra nods her agreement a bit grimly, though she doesn't seem particularly worried. "It can be overwhelming at first. You'll start to know things you've never learned, remember places you've never been and understand things that would have been mysterious to you before. The memories of dozens of your predecessors will become accessible to you, along with their skills and knowledge. We will give you the means to control the flow, somewhat, and improve your learning, but it will still be quite the change for you."
The warm press of Geri and Freki against her sides was a comforting anchor as she tried to process this latest revelation. The idea of having other people's memories, her own ancestors memories, and their experiences trickling into her brain and meshing with her own was…terrifying, exhilarating, and oddly appealing. How many times has she wished to grow stronger faster? How many times had she hated having to spend time practicing skills that she struggled with? How many times had she bitterly wished to herself that she was just betterthan she was? More times than she could count, she knew, and this offered a sterling opportunity to take a significant shortcut towards being what she needed to be to live up to all the expectations people had of her.
Not least of which her own.
"How long does it take?" she asked, surprised by how steady her voice sounded, and Kassandra grinned and turned away, leading her further into the complex once again. "The awakening process, I mean."
"The initial activation will, technically, be instantaneous. However, the process itself will take a few hours, mostly of your body and your brain restabilizing and adjusting to the changes." ALIE responded as a door hissed open before them, admitting them into a large, octagonal room that had a massive platform dominating it's center. A platform that made Clarke think, in many ways, of the altar daises that she had seen in the history books, complete with a table-like object for someone to lie on. Of course, there was also a…significant amount of machinery hanging in gleaming clusters over the table, which was more than a little disconcerting. "Go ahead and get comfortable on the table, Clarke, and we can get started."
"This is really starting to feel like some kind of horror movie…" the girl in question muttered to herself, even as she followed instructions. Geri and Freki whined as she tried to make herself comfortable on the cool, stone-metal surface, grimacing in slight discomfort as she felt it conform slightly to the contours of her body. Not significant, like some sort of gel or liquid, but just enough to prevent any kind of stiffness on her part. As the machinery above her started to shift with quiet whirs and hums, she blurted out. "Wait, what about my wolves?! You're going to take care of them while I'm…whatever?"
"Don't worry, Clarke. When you wake up, they'll be right here with you and doing just fine." the older woman assured, and Clarke was busy opening her mouth to ask what she meant by 'when you wake up' when she felt a prick on her neck, and everything faded away.
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"Is this really the best way to handle this, ALIE? We had five months left before her deadline, and there is no way that the Ark would have been capable of landfall until at least five or six months after that. We had plenty of time, we could have simply had her activate the ORACLE System and dealt with the rest of this later." Kassandra asked her only concious companion, sounding if not worried than at least hesitant, and ALIE shook her head firmly.
"I really wish that we could, Kassie, but we don't have as much time as you think. Clarke needs to be ready before anything on the ground changes significantly, because I get the feeling that things will get out of hand quickly once they do." she responded, walking over to stand beside the table, looking down at their unconscious embodiment of hope. "Alexia might have killed Juno for good, all those years ago, but the Templars still exist, and we both know that they aren't the only threats in this world. Regular humans notwithstanding."
Kassandra nodded soberly at that. Juno, the Isu that had sought nothing more than the destruction of mankind since the Isu/Human War all those millennia ago, had been behind much of the Templar Order's actions since she had been released by Desmond Miles in 2012. She had acted as an advisor and consultant, guiding their strategies and helping them develop more dangerous weapons, gather more dangerous followed. All in pursuit of her goal of eradicating humanity, which she had nearly succeeded in doing when she had ushered in the use of WMDs during The Last War through her manipulations.
Fortunately for Humanity, Alexia Griffin had been able to stop her from finishing the job. No one, not even ALIE, knew exactly what had happened when the Last Assassin had confronted the final member of the Capitoline Triad, but they knew that Juno had finally been destroyed -for good, this time- and the surviving fraction of humanity had been saved. Doing so, however, had cost Alexia a great deal. She had never fully recovered, for all that she had still been beyond the human norm, and she had died well before her time.
But while Juno was gone, her legacy lived on. The Templars had scattered after The Last War, but they hadn't been destroyed. They had adapted, evolved, learned to hide among the survivors. Some had joined the Coalition, working their way into positions of influence, though most of them had been purged alongside Sheidheda. Those that hadn't, had died mysteriously in the night at Kassandra's own hands.
Others had found refuge in places like Mount Weather, where their obsession with control and order could flourish behind closed doors. There weren't many of them, not officially, thanks to the vestiges of American ideals still holding strong, but those that existed were in very high rank, influential, or both. And in another generation or two, things would be corrupted enough that it would be an entire population of Templars, with access to pre-War weapons and technology.
Of course, there were Assassins to counter them. The Sentinels, founded in secret by Alexia with Kassandra as their leader, had lived in and around the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier ever since the bombs fell. But save Kassandra herself, none of them were anything more than regular, highly-trained humans. None of them had enough Isu DNA to resist the power of the Pieces of Eden. That was a vulnerability, a critical one.
Perhaps ALIE was right. Perhaps rushing Clarke into preparedness was necessary, for all that Kassandra would prefer to give her more time. To let her have something resembling a normal life for as long as possible, before ushering her towards her destiny.
Because Kassandra understood destiny. She understood the weight of the expectations, the pressure of knowing that entire nations, entire species, could live or die based upon your actions. She understood it, she hated it, and she didn't wish it on anyone. Least of all a girl Clarke's age. But then, Clarke had already been somewhat prepared for that, hadn't she, thanks to the Ark? Perhaps, if anyone was going to have to face that kind of pressure, that kind of responsibility, someone such as she was the best to do so.
Sighing to herself, she settled back to wait as ALIE, and the machines under her control, did their work.