Re: World-Valencia

[Sydney Underhill]

It seemed, for a brief moment, that Mercilus had won by using the Admiral's greatest weakness against him - his memories, quite possibly - but in the end, the Admiral was still victorious.

And now, as Sydney saw Mercilus place the saw against his wrist, she remembered his metal hand...

[Ulysses Septimus]

Blood gushed wildly from the first cut, while a rather sickening sound of flesh tearing echoed through the cell. Even Ulysses had to allow a low grunt from his throat.

A spine chilling hiss of metal sounded when the instrument struck bone.

Mercilus placed some more effort into the sawing, not stopping until the hand fell with a sick flop, completely severed from the wrist.

He reached out, clamping down on Ulysses' throat, "Are you going to give up yet, Septimus?"

A streak of blood running down the corner of his moth, the Assassin scowled, hissing, "Never!"

That was when the flash returned.

Now Ulysses stood on the edge of a tower, his back facing nothing but a drop of at least 90 feet off the tower they were in. He faced the rogue, as well as a team of at least 50 guards. He had wrapped a shred of fabric around the stump of his left wrist, while his remaining hand held a sword he had obviously taken from a guard.

"Why are you so stubborn, Septimus?"Mercilus called, "you have no chance, yet you still fight?"

"Because I have what you don't have, fool."Ulysses growled back, "I have loyalty, honor, and will, while you are nothing but a sniveling coward who had to retort to dishonorable means... And when there are no chances for me, I will bet on it."

He threw the sword onto the ground... And jumped, right off the edge of the tower as though he was performing his Leap of Faith again.

[Sydney Underhill]

Sydney stepped forwards on instinct, before once again remembering that this was only a memory. Even so, she could not help but wonder how this would unfold.

[Ulysses Septimus]

The golden flash brought her about three minutes into the future, next to Ulysses' bloodied, unconscious form: he was lying in a small creek, with the water around his body colored red from all the blood he had bled.

There was a long gash ripped into the side of his face from the fall, which would explain the scar he currently had in the real world.

"There!" A pair of white robed Assassins rushed up to the prone from of Ulysses. "He is still alive," one of the men reached out, testing the obviously weak pulse in the wounded Assassin Grand Master, "get Mentor Auditore!"

Moments later, Cristobal appeared, a sleek sparquebus in one hand. "Take him back to the base." He glanced around, as though expecting for some sort of enemy to turn up.

The Assassins nodded, lifting Ulysses' body up onto their shoulders...

(Flash)

Ulysses, now obviously having recovered, sat at one of the worktables in Cristobal's workshop.

He watched while the Engineer finished the last touches on his mechanical hand. "At last..."

"Careful, you suffered a rather nasty concussion from that fall, this doesn't mean you've recovered from that as well."The older Assassin warned.

[Sydney Underhill]

So he did sustain injury.

This wasn't an enormous shock to her, but Sydney found herself slightly caught off guard knowing that even with all the skills that the Admiral possessed, he still had vulnerabilities.

[Ulysses Septimus]

This wasn't the last of the memories, as this one faded out a moment later, bringing her to a much recent one, one that for once wasn't Ulysses' memory.

She was back at Skull Island this time, but inside a darkened alleyway, standing next to a figure dressed in a long black cloak that hid them from head to foot.

The figure cautiously raised his head, revealing black voids set in a pale mask devoid of all emotions, a mask that belonged to none other than the Musketeer Albinus Crassus.

Albinus peered out of his hiding spot, like he was waiting for someone...

[Sydney Underhill]

Sydney's heart nearly skipped a beat, as she recognized the musketeer in this memory.

He had been found when they had fought Mercilus, he was damaged, he was broken unjustly, the beautiful thing.

[Ulysses Septimus]

Albinus shrunk back into the shadows a moment later, muttering profanities in Latin, the language of the clockworks. "Dammit, where is Secondus?!" He loaded his rifle, cursing, for he had seen none other than the rogue Assassin Atticus Mercilus, " and how did that one know about this meeting?!!"

He prepared himself to leave the scene... Only to be stopped a moment later when the rogue seemingly appeared out of nowhere right behind him.

"Hello there, clockwork fool."Mercilus growled, a sword in hand, "didn't expect to see me here, did you?"

Albinus cursed again, firing once with his rifle aimed at the rogue's head... Only to watch as Mercilus deftly sidestepped, swinging his sword in a wide arc in an attempt to knock the gun from his grip.

[Sydney Underhill]

Sydney felt a surge of adrenaline rush through her as she realized - this was when he had captured Albinus.

"How...dare...he...!" She hissed, digging her fingernails into her palms hard, hard enough to draw blood.

[Ulysses Septimus]

The rifle flew from Albinus' grip, clattering onto the ground several feet away... Too far for the musketeer to pick it up in time to fend off the rogue.

"Damn!"Albinus muttered, reaching for the knife strapped to his leg; this was a last minute resort, and usually not used unless absolutely have to.

Gripping the foot-long blade in his right hand, the clockwork spy barely managed to sidestep the rogue's next hit. 

Albinus slashed hard at Mercilus' right side, catching him off guard and leaving a long, bleeding gash in his wake.

"Fool!"Mercilus snarled, spinning around to deliver a powerful kick right into the musketeer's abdomen, sending the clockwork man tumbling to the ground. "I cannot be defeated! No men alive can!"

He reached down, clamping one hand across the clockwork's throat.... Only to yank it back moments later with a curse and a weeping wound on his wrist.

Albinus, it turned out, wasn't just equipped with a blade as a last resort fighting implement: a long, thin blade extended from the underside of his left forearm, from the depth of his sleeve.

A Hidden Blade.

[Sydney Underhill]

Had Sydney not known of his actual fate, her chest would have swelled with pride at the sight of him, always resourceful, never defeated.

[Ulysses Septimus]

Snarling, Mercilus picked up Albinus by the collar of his uniform catching him unaware, then brutally slammed his head against the wall, using his own hands to pin the clockwork's thin arms at the base of his back.

Crack.

Again and again the rogue did so, until the entire left side of his face/mask had been covered by spider cracks.

Albinus dropped into a limp pile on the ground, his knife sliding from his grip.

Mercilus snarled, examining the gash the clockwork had inflicted, before striding over to Albinus' prone form to deliver a harsh kick into his side.

"Tartarus forsaken accursed machine!"The rogue muttered, "wait... What?"

He suddenly bent down; Albinus' uniform had ripped enough to reveal what looked like a tattoo on his shoulder, marked into his perfectly white flesh-metal skin.

It was a winged triangle containing a wide open eye, the same symbol on Ulysses' coat collar.

[Sydney Underhill]

"NO!" Sydney could not stop herself from screaming, and she tugged at her white hair in rage, staining it red with her own blood that was oozing from the cuts on her hands.

It was torture, seeing such a beautiful, perfect creation destroyed, shattered, fragile as they were.

And she could not do anything.

[Ulysses Septimus]

"So you are with that bastard Septimus, huh?"Mercilus grinned devilishly, his fingertips tracing the tattoo in the clockwork's shoulder. "Haha, even better now!"

He easily picked up the musketeer's limp form, slinging him over his shoulder as he made his exit of the scene...

(memory ends, starting Albinus' memory 2)
In this new memory, the clockwork was chained to a wall by thick manacles around his arms and legs, like what Ulysses had been forced to endure so many years ago.

Albinus was in a REALLY bad shape as well: gashes riddled his torso and sides, profusly weeping clockwork blood...

[Sydney Underhill]

Sydney felt as if her blood had turned to wriggling maggots inside her very flesh - it was revolting from the inside out.

She could not bear to see this, to see him tortured and broken, just like Quintus had very nearly been.
They did not deserve this pain, this fate.

[Ulysses Septimus]

"Give up, or no?"Mercilus stepped in from the darkness once more, his whip in one hand. 

Albinus looked up, an air of defiance strong around him. "Dream on, fool, I would never betray my creator. You can break me, do whatever you want, but never shall I give you the information." 

Finally... The memory faded, bringing her back into reality...

[Sydney Underhill]

Sydney blinked quickly as the deck of the Interceptor slowly came back into her view, with the Admiral still standing right in front of her, the Apple in the palm of her right hand.

Looking down, she saw that the nails of her left hand had buried themselves in the flesh of her palm, blood pouring from the crescent-shaped marks.

[Ulysses Septimus]

"Commodore, you might want to get that cleaned up." Ulysses murmured, placing the Apple of Eden back into its sanctum inside his elaborate black coat. "We can talk about what you've seen... Later."

Ulysses, being someone trained to read even the most subtle of emotions, needed no one else to tell him that she had seen some very unpleasant things...

[Sydney Underhill]

Decimus then led her below decks, through the narrow hallways until she found herself suddenly alone in a small room with a single cot, chair and table, along with numerous bottles of chemicals and what looked like other medical supplies lining the glass cabinets mounted on the walls. She hadn't even seen the clockwork walk away, her vision was clouded red to such an extent.

Trying to distract herself, Sydney quickly read through the markings on the bottles, snatching one that was labeled "Hydrogen Peroxide", a well-known and common disinfectant, before pouring a copious amount of it directly over her open palm without any regards to spillage or the stinging pain that seemed to smack her entire arm.

Twisting a bandage tightly over her palm, she tied it harshly before beginning to walk back the way that she thought she came.

They hurt him.

Just like Quintus.

Quintus still remembers, doesn't he?

He still remembers how I was almost not able to...

[Ulysses Septimus]

She had unknowingly entered the room where Albinus was staying, laying on the one bed in the room; compared to the almost sorry state he was in when they first found him, he almost looked normal now, minus the fact he still carried the spider cracks on the side of his face/mask, and the few cuts in his sides.

"Commodore,"Decimus, who had been standing across from Albinus, quickly saluted her. "Is there something wrong?"

Like Albinus, Decimus was also a creation of Ulysses, bearing the same mark except his was at the base of his neck, hidden by his white locks.

[Sydney Underhill]

If her face had any color to begin with, it would have gone white at that moment. The Commodore felt her breathing constrict abruptly, and she stumbled back, suddenly slamming her left shoulder blade against the door frame.

"No...no, no, no, no...I can't..."

Everything in her mind seemed to collide all at once, and she could see herself then, watching her from her own memories, her black-haired, repressed self, repressed from her true instincts and brought to failure because of that.

She wheeled around on her heel and ran out of the door and down the hall at a breakneck speed, not paying any particular attention to where she was going.

[Ulysses Septimus]

Ulysses raised a questioning eyebrow when she reemerged on the main deck. "Commodore? Is something wrong?" He stood from the chair he had been sitting on, slightly worried.

[Sydney Underhill]

"Al...Albinus...he was hurt, he was shattered...and I couldn't do anything..." She mumbled, shaking her head as her crazed state began to die off slowly.

She forced herself not to look at Quintus, who happened to be standing right next to Septimus.

[Ulysses Septimus]

"Commodore, relax, he is alright."The Armada Admiral spoke, calm and collected, "we are close to Cadiz now, and will reach there within a max of ten to fifteen minutes: I will take him to Bishop to finish the repairs... I also assure you, this will not happen again... Not after we destroy that traitor, and the filthy Resistance."

Despite his calm appearance, however, Ulysses was still infuriated at Mercilus for committing such an atrocity; silently, he swore to himself he would make an example out of him... To show that no one who messes with the Armada will receive a good end.

"Commodore, this is not your fault.. The Resistance is responsible: think about it, would he have to endure such agony if it wasn't for the Resistance who hired that spineless traitor?"

[Sydney Underhill]

"Yes, that's right, that's right..." Sydney repeated, almost as if it was a mantra, although her voice seemed distant to her own ears.

Don't you worry...he'll be killed, destroyed, and he will never lay a finger on them again...

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