Opening Notes: Salutations. Here's another illogical crossover for you. And as seems to be my new modus operandi, the timelines are going to be rather... messed up, as well as it starting the way it is with little explanation at first, but please bear with me. Nothing will be left in the dark for long.

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Chapter One: In Medias Res

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"Still don't have your sea legs, eh?" Edward Kenway laughed as his Florentine passenger collapsed onto the dock.

"It's a matter of lifestyle," Ezio Auditore said as he pushed himself back to his feet. "And I never want to sail again as long as I live."

Kenway slapped him on the back. "Chances are you won't, not where you're going." He pointed to the mountainous horizon. "This is as close as we can get by sea. Just keep headed west and, if you don't mind riding all through the night, you'll find yourself in the Capital by tomorrow morning."

"Grazie, Capitano Kenway," Ezio said, shaking the pirate's hand.

"Anything for an Assassin," Kenway replied. "Especially one who paid in advance." He scanned the menial settlement they had come to, and spied a stable ripe with steeds. "And there's your ride. I'll provide a distraction, if you want. Free of charge."

XXXXXX

"I know you're out there." Robert de Sable looked out to the vast city from a window within the Empirial Palace. Assassins were unbearably stubborn, squeezing out Templar activity wherever they could, holding back the peace that they so claimed to want for the world. "There will be no place for you in the New World..." His musings were cut short by the sound of a door opening and young voice.

"Is something wrong, Robert?"

"Nothing of concern, your Majesty," the Templar leader said kindly, turning around and smiling at the Emperor. The ruler of the lands had to be less than half Robert's age, and yet held supreme power. Obviously getting on his good side was a necessary move towards the agenda of the Templars. "What brings you? Already bored with Honest's rantings today?"

XXXXXX

Esdeath, feared and respected General, felt her impatience grow every moment she was near her military peer.

"You don't know them like I do!" Sibrand aggressively claimed as they walked along the barracks, his eyes darting in every direction. "The Assassins are out there, waiting to strike! To put blades in our hearts and necks!"

"Calm yourself, Admiral," she responded with her usual tone. She had a very low opinion of the paranoid commander beside her. He had shown up long ago, claiming to be a comrade of the Emperor's confidant, Robert. And with nothing but Robert's endorsement, he had sealed his position. Esdeath had hoped that meant he'd be stuck on the coast, far away for the remainder of their time in the Empire. But here he was, ranting to her about men and women who could vanish out of thin air and kill like it was a mere flick of the wrist. Esdeath's father had told her the same stories and legends, but Sibrand's delusions about them being real were so severe, he wore armor every moment of the day.

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Slavers disgusted Altaïr. As a devoted Assassin, he believed in freedom and peace, and the trafficker below him gave only bondage and pain. As the lifelong slayer looked down from his perch on the roof into the courtyard of a menial complex, his target whipped one of his already dead servants for not moving fast enough to his doom. The slaver screeched some words of hate, but Altaïr didn't bother with hearing exactly what they were, only concerning himself with his target's position.

Finally, either believing his warning had been learned, or tired from flying his arms, the trafficker tossed the leather weapon to the side and beckoned two guards over.

"Get rid of it. I don't care where." He waved them off and helped himself to wine.

Altaïr's eyes drifted to the guards as they dragged the cadaver off, possibly to a ditch or slum well. With them gone, the foul man and the Assassin were alone. Rising from his crouch, Altaïr readied himself, and jumped.

The people-seller leaned back in a chair, enjoying the warmth in his chest as he swallowed, feeling it spread up and down his sternum. However, that pleasantness instantly vanished as something heavy and bright landed on him on. The splintered chair pieces dug into his back, and his ribs felt like they were on fire. Letting out a screaming fit, the pain remained but his voice died away. His vision, blurry from the impact, began to clear, and he saw a man standing above him with sharpened steel seemingly protruding from his wrist.

"Please don't kill me!" He begged. "You can have any of them you want! There are so much more of them all over the Capital, nobody will notice!" He would have gestured to the people in the cages around them, but that would have considerably increased his agony.

"I don't want a slave," Altaïr responded coldly, lowering the primary weapon of the Assassins to the reprobate's neck. "I want answers." He and his fellow Assassins had scoured the district, gathered useful information, but one important piece was still missing. "When is your superior supposed to collect them?"

Desperate at the chance to get out of the situation alive, the slaver fessed up. "Talal said he would be here in a week!"

"Perfect."

"So does this mean you'll let me go?" He asked, hope seeping into his voice.

Altaïr locked eyes with him. "You are not innocent, and I cannot risk you telling him that I'm closing in." As soon as he spoke, he plunged his hidden blade into the man's neck.

Letting the filth bleed out, Altaïr looked over to the people locked up, all of them too shocked to do anything but stare at him. He searched through the pockets and folds of the now deceased man's clothing, and sure enough found a key ring. Unlocking and opening the cages was about as easy as infiltrating the place.

"Run back to your homes," he said to them, pointing to the door. The sun was setting, so the guards would be absent to change shifts, thus leaving a path open for them.

All of their faces shined with gratitude, a few of them shouting "bless you!" as they ran to freedom.

His task complete, Altaïr scaled the wall and brought himself back up to the roof, free running across to quickly put a gap between him and the scene of what the Capital officials would surely call a crime.

The main roads were too wide for him to leap across, but the more compressed buildings side by side were perfect to tread above the streets and as a plus had perfect footholds to make his way back to the rest of the populace's level. After reaching what he considered a safe distance, he climbed down into an alley and walked into the crowd of people wrapping up their days and making way for home. Like them, he had a destination that was all too familiar to him.

Slithering through them, he occasionally placed a hand on some passerby's back or shoulder, gently guiding them away from him to avoid a bodily collision. He would have taken the rooftops, but the guards would have changed shifts and retaken their positions by now, and if his last run-in with Robert de Sable taught him anything, it was that sometimes direct contact was not always the best strategy.

After an hour of shifting through the people of the Capital, he arrived. To most others, it would have come off as just another building hardly worth notice unless one was going inside. Making his way over to the normal entrance, Altaïr grabbed the top of the doorway and pulled himself up. As he climbed to the roof, he heard the usual words of disbelief fill the air below from those who had stopped to watch the spectacle.

"What is he doing?"

"Has he lost his mind?"

"He's going to hurt himself!"

Most of them thought he would fall. Their expectations went unmet. Hoisting himself onto the roof and out of sight, the group below dispersed and the Assassin made his way over to the true entrance, only to be stopped. The gap in the roof, which allowed him and his fellows entrance into the Bureau, was blocked off by iron bars. The Rafiq, evidently, had turned in for the night.

With nothing to be done and feeling drowsiness nestle into him, Altaïr turned around and walked over to the edge. With the master slaver so far away, the information of his eventual arrival could wait for a few hours. Altaïr broke into an easy run, and jumped off the edge. As he came to the ground, he fell into a roll, and returned to his feet , setting off as if nothing had happened. Heights were but a second nature to him.

Walking along, considering where to go next, he felt something. As if danger was closing in on him. He looked behind himself and saw a mostly empty street. But out of the corner of his eye, for an instant there was a fleck of white and yellow. Realizing just what was going on, he started walking again with a faster pace.

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Leone smirked as she closed in on her prey. One would think that wearing spotless, bright white would make a man stick out like an infection. And yet he somehow managed to elude most people countless times. Most people. She knew him enough to spot him in a crowd, hiding in plain sight from the guards... unless it happened to be a scholar also clad in white, or another Assassin; she had tackled a surprised peace-bringer more than once.

She kept on tailing him through turns of the roads, not sure if he was going faster because he wanted to call it a day, or because he had seen her, but she shrugged it off. Either way, she was going to catch him this time.

No crowds to disappear into, she said internally. He was striding as quickly as he could without breaking into a run. She kept up, slowly closing the gap between them. She couldn't have been more than ten meters behind him when he made a sharp turn into an alleyway. Naturally, she followed him in. He must have sprinted when he turned because when she did the same, all she saw was the back of a white hood exiting to the left. Entering a run, she made it to the exit, only to find he had led her to a completely empty street. No people, no light except for the moon above, and no Assassin.

As she wondered just where he had gone, Leone heard something land behind her. Before she could react, an arm had reached around to position itself in front of her, and a wrist-mounted blade was prodding her neck.

"Nice try," Altaïr said, flexing his hand to make the hidden blade retract back into its holster.

"I'd say that makes us about even?" Leone playfully asked as they both began walking.

"Not even close."

"You're right," she agreed. "I'm still way in the lead."

He didn't laugh, but she had not expected him to.

"So how was your day?" She asked with a lilting tone.

"Productive," he answered with his familiar succinct attitude. "I found out when our next target is due to arrive in the Capital and freed his would-be slaves."

"My my. Productive indeed. I ran into some wide-eyed country boy. Wanted to join the military of all things," she laughed. "Got him to buy me a nice meal and some delectable sake."

Altaïr's eyes drifted over to her. Manipulating naivete? An admittedly dirty trick, but not one some of those in the Brotherhood were above.

Leone continued. "Oh, and I told him I had a contact in the army that could get him in, no questions asked..." She presented a sizeable pouch of currency. "For a small fee, of course."

Altaïr understood the scam. If she knew some higher up in the Empire's army, then he was a Templar. He was divided on it. Sure, he pickpocketed regularly, but that was mostly to gain vital information towards a target. Then again if the boy wanted to join the Emperial forces, that made him a potential enemy.

"So I was thinking," Leone looked at him. "I'm pretty sure neither of us want to go mountain-climbing back to base in the dark. With all this-" she shook the money bag, "- maybe we could find a nice room."

"Good idea. It's better than risking a fall or sleeping out in the open," Altaïr responded, tired from the exploits of the day.

Leone leaned over, pressing her chest into his side. "I was also thinking... we could keep each other warm."

They both stopped dead in their tracks. Altaïr turned his head to look at her. Even if the area inside his hood wasn't covered with blackness, his expression still would have been unreadable.

XXXXXX

"I don't think they're coming back tonight," Sheele said flatly.

"Is it possible they were captured and killed?" Akame inquired as she took a bite out of the creature she had killed and cooked earlier.

"I don't think so," Najenda replied. "If the Army had caught an Assassin, they would have dragged the entire Capital out to the streets to watch the execution." The leader of Night Raid had gone down to the massive city personally earlier to attend to some business, and nothing was out of the ordinary. "Those two know how to hide when they want to."

Her thoughts began to drift slightly. The Assassin had certainly proven to be a valuable addition to Night Raid, even though he originally, and she thought, probably still, didn't want to be there...

XXX Several weeks ago XXX

"Are you sure about this?" Najenda asked the old killer next to her as they watched the young but incredibly skilled man practice his sword on sparring partners.

"Absolutely," Al Mualim, Mentor of the Masyaf Assassins, nodded. "Our goals for the end of tyranny run parallel, thus we can help each other. While Altaïr's abilities are massive, his humility, comradery, and patience are wanting. He can help you eliminate our enemies, and along the way perhaps he can learn something. Plus, some of the Brotherhood in the Capital reports activity that is suited for his attention."

Najenda trusted him. The Assassins had backed the Revolutionary Army from the shadows for a long time, and if she got an exemplary fighter out of this, how could "no" have been an answer?

"If I may ask, what did he do to lose his rank?"

Al Mualim looked back over to his student. "His crass and arrogance cost one of his friends an arm and a brother, and made something of immeasurable value nearly fall into the hands of our enemy."

"I see..." She would have asked what exactly that something was, but could tell it was purely Assassin business.

The trek from Masyaf back to Night Raid's base was awkward to say the least. Altaïr barely said anything unless she instigated conversation, and whenever they stopped to rest, he would stare at the hours in in utter silence. Najenda was most relieved when they finally made it back, but she also hoped he would warm up to his new comrades, and they would do the same towards him.

"In the mountains," he said, dismounting his horse when they finally arrived at his new, possibly temporary, home.

"Just like you're used to," Najenda said as they walked towards the fortress.

"How many of you are there?" He asked.

"Well, with you here, there's eight."

"Such a small number, taking on an enemy that vastly outnumbers you." He seemed to slowly process his situation.

"Isn't that something you Assassins thrive on?" She asked knowingly. Before he could reply, their senses were taken over by the sound of a crackling fire and the scent of freshly cooked meat. Changing course and making their way past more trees, they came something common to Najenda but completely alien to her newest recruit. Two women, one roughly Altaïr's age and the other looked a few years her junior. Both of them were sitting next to a fire, over which was a skinned beast that had to be three times bigger than both of them. Both of the women looked over. The older blonde appeared excited to see her leader again while the apparent younger one looked at Altaïr with a blank expression.

"Is he one of us?" She asked her leader without looking away from the man in white, not yet sure what to make of him.

"Ah yes, introductions are in order," Najenda gestured to the Assassin. "Akame, Leone, this is Altaïr Ibn La'Ahad. He's going to be fighting the good fight with us."

"Safety and peace," he greeted to the two of them.

Leone couldn't help but laugh. "We're sorta short on both of those." She looked at him up and down like he was a vintage bottle of precious alcohol. "What's with the hood? If you're scared of getting your mug on a wanted poster, you've joined the wrong team."

He glared daggers at her. "I am not afraid of anything."

XXX Back to the present XXX

Leone stretched in the morning sunlight as her paramour paid the innkeeper, taking off on his lead when the transaction was finished. After they had their fun, the same incident that always accompanied Altaïr occurred without fail. In the dead of the night, she had been awakened by him suddenly jolting up and panting. She had kept still as he calmed himself and eventually returned to his slumber.

She never would have guessed he suffered from nightmares by the way he carried himself with boundless confidence. Part of her wanted to ask him about it, but the rest of her knew he wouldn't answer.

"I never would have guessed you had so much stamina when we first met," she said teasingly. "But I guess a guy can runs across rooftops all day has to keep a pace."

He looked at her with an expression of getting the joke but not showing if he felt amusement or irritation.

"So where we going?" She asked cheerfully as they walked back into the busy street. "Back to base?"

"After I take care of something," he confirmed, taking the way to head back to the Bureau. If the Rafiq had caught up on their rest, then surely by now the way in was open.

"You ever think of getting a new wardrobe? Or at least a dye job?" Leone asked. "Because virginal white isn't really all that subtle."

Altaïr did not offer a response, but he did ponder on her inquiry. Al Mualim and the Rafiqs all donned black, and he had seen fellow Assassins change their robe's colors plenty of times; some of his brethren stalked their targets covered in scarlet and emerald.

He shook the aimless thought process from his mind and focused on what was in front of him: wealthy nobles juxtaposed with dirt-caked beggars. Both he and Leone could see those in the latter category wanted to run up to the high rollers and directly ask for compassion and charity, but held back out of fear of physical altercation from bodyguards.

After a stroll of keeping themselves out of the potential social crossfire, the two killers arrived.

"Wait here," Altaïr said as he proceeded to climb the wall. Pulling himself up, he felt relief at seeing that the entrance gap was indeed open. Dropping down in front of the pillows and blankets provided for visiting Assassins in between missions, he walked into the Rafiq's office.

"Safety and peace," he said as he stepped through the doorway, only to have it answered with disdain.

"Your presence deprives me of both, Altaïr."

Standing behind a counter within, looking down at what could only be a map of a portion of the Capital, was the man who had once been Altaïr's friend.

"Malik, old friend," he nodded as he avoided looking at the New Rafiq's left side, which was missing its arm.

"Well, don't just stand there," Malik said. "You wouldn't come here without a reason."

Before Altaïr could respond, another voice rang in from the adjacent room. "I'm sensing a lot of tension in there."

The two followers of the Creed looked over to see Leone, reclinging on the cushioning and casually waving at them.

"Nice to see your friends keep their eyes on you," Malik observed as he reached down, grabbed a book, and let it down on the wood surface between him and the man he blamed for So much pain in his life as of late. "Now, the reason you have interrupted my morning?"

Altaïr would have yelled, scorned, or defended himself with argument, but something held him back. "I've found out when the master slaver Talal is going to be in the Capital. He will be arriving in six days."

Seeing that official Revolution business momentarily surpassed semi-passive aggressiveness, Malik opened the book, took a quill, and wrote the information he had just been told down. With that complete and documented, Malik returned to his snark. "Well done. You've managed to avoid completely ruining the operation. Before i forget, another one of your new compatriots paid a visit to me yesterday."

This caught Leone's attention; she perked up but didn't enter the small chamber housing the Assassins.

Malik saw this and continued. "You don't know? Evidently, you Night Raid people are closing in on a family of murderers. Didn't she tell you?"

Leone suddenly became interested in the wall.

Altaïr explained. "We have not seen any of Night Raid since yesterday morning."

Malik looked at the blonde, seeing between the lines. He put the book back out of sight and returned to his map. "As if you needed another distraction. Your friends, and you two, if you feel like joining in, will be infiltrating a daily of quite nobles here." He placed a fingertip on the parchment, indicating a spot within a more affuent part of the district. "Parents and a daughter..."

Leone let her thoughts run as her lover and his peer discussed things she didn't really listen. No wonder he hardly ever talks about where he came from. If this guy is his friend, I'd hate to meet his enemies.

Altaïr gave a gesture of peace and walked out.

"Let's go," he said to Leone as he grabbed the wall and went up, his partner in tow. Making it back to the roof, he offered a helping hand and pulled Leone up.

"He seems pretty angry with you," she said.

"He has every right to be."

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Closing Notes: For inspiration on the execution of this story, I watched and read a lot of heist and mystery stories, drawing on their non-linear but connected plots and several changes in character perspectives.