Assassin's Creed

It was January 1st 2011. It was my best friend Jenna's birthday. Since I wasn't able to go to her birthday party, I decided to go over to her house with a chocolate cake and her present - a brand new copy of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Assassin's Creed had been her favourite video game series, though I had never played and only heard of it once from my friend Phillip, I was excited to watch her play. I remember when Phillip first showed me Assassin's Creed 2 via Skype video call, he was controlling Ezio and making him go up a very tall building. Ezio got to the top, and Phillip asked "Alright, you ready for this?" I said alright, not knowing what he was gonna do. Suddenly Ezio thrusted himself off of the building, diving towards the ground. Being the kind of gamer who HATES to die, I yelled "Why the hell'd you do that?!" at him. I got a chuckle in response as Ezio very gracefully landed in a pile of hay unharmed. I was amazed. That was the last I had seen of the game, and that was July 2010.

So, let me go back to Jenna's house. I drove on over, knocked on the door, everything was fine. Her mom opened the door and told me Jenna was downstairs in the basement like usual. I kicked off my shoes by the door, closed the door, and went down the stairs to the basement like I always did. Jenna's basement was where we always hung out. I went down the stairs and the lights were off. I figured she was playing a video game so I decided to leave them off. The floor was kinda slick like always, and it always had a liquidy look to it like it had either been recently waxed or someone had just spilled water on it. But whenever I walked on the floor it was never wet. I walked in and turned to the left, where Jenna was. She was sitting on the brown couch on the left side of the room towards the big TV across from it. There was another couch on the right side of the same wall, and there was a bed next to the TV across from the other couch. Jenna, her sister Brooke, and I would always play video games on the brown couch until one of us fell asleep at 6am and Brooke went to go sleep on either the other couch or up in her room, and Jenna would sleep on the bed until Jenna's mom would come down and yell at us to get up at 9am even though she knew we had been up all night.

Jenna turned her head and smiled as I yelled "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" and placed the cake on the side table by the couch. It was late, about 9pm, and she was playing Halo 2 or something like that. I handed her the box which contained the game, she smiled, gave me a hug, thanked me, and popped the game into the Xbox 360. We played all night and got like a third of the way into it, and crashed about 6am. We were very happily woken up by Jenna's mom screaming at us because we didn't turn the game off when we fell asleep. I was half asleep so I didn't really know what was going on, but Jenna seemed a bit upset. We got up, ate some cake, and proceeded with our gaming. About an hour later we went upstairs and ate some breakfast, and Jenna's mom told me that they had to go somewhere at 2, so I had to leave by then. I was fine, it was 10:30. We had 3 and a half hours left to play. We went downstairs and played some more and eventually got stuck. We spent like an hour and 40 minutes in one part and then realized it was 10 minutes to 2, so I hugged Jenna goodbye, went upstairs, grabbed my shoes, and drove home. From that day on, I was hooked on Assassin's Creed. (CHEESY PARAGRAPH ENDING YAY.)

I didn't have an Xbox 360 due to me going into a massive rage and smashing mine at one point, but I got another one in early April. This was late January. What I did have was my grandfather's (I live with my grandparents) PS3. I drove on over to Blockbuster and picked up the last copy of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. I then played for a while but completely forgot about it. The Blockbuster I got it from was closing, so I had to return it three days after I got it. I was kinda bummed, but it wasn't a big deal. I just started replaying one of my old Zelda games. Pretty soon, I had forgotten all about Assassin's Creed.

Early April rolled around, and my mom finally gave in to my constant whining, and gave me the Xbox 360 Elite with 250 gigabytes memory she had gotten from her boyfriend's roommate. I was quite pleased. I didn't have much money on me, but I went on over to the Gamestop near me to check out the games. I looked around, and I didn't really see anything that looked cool. There were a couple games I kinda wanted, but they weren't in stock at that store and I was too lazy to drive 22 miles to another Gamestop to get them. I was on my way out when I noticed they had a bin with games on clearance by the door. I thought to myself 'Fuck it, why not?' and looked around. There wasn't much. Just some Deal or no Deal for Wii, Glee Karaoke, and some other games I didn't care about. I looked around and at the very bottom, there was a copy of Assassin's Creed. It was on sale for about 18 dollars. (And living in Oregon, we have no sales tax. HA.) I shrugged, went up to the cashier, and asked how important playing the first game in the series was. I knew it wasn't from the viewpoint of Ezio, but from Altair. The cashier explained what I needed to know, sold me the game, and I went on my way. I drove home, turned on the 360 for the first time. I didn't have the internet cord so I couldn't download any updates, thus I couldn't make myself an avatar thing which I thought was weird. But, I made myself a profile to join the ones already on there - Faggot, Poopyundies, PoopyundiesJR, and 69. The previous owner of the Xbox must have either been an idiot, a 12-year old, or drunk. Maybe all three. None of the profiles had any points (I don't know what to call them but you get them from achievements, or you buy them.) and none had any avatars. My profile was named Rena (I cosplay Rena Ryuugu from the anime Higurashi no Naku Koro ni so Rena is a common nickname for me). I signed in, and an avatar popped up. Which was weird, because I was never given the option to make one. The avatar was all black, bald, and looked male. No face, no clothes, nothing. I shrugged it off and figured since I made my profile after all the other ones were made, I was given the blank excuse for an avatar.

I went to the settings editor part of the console, and noticed the date and time were both off. The date was 9/22/2005 - which struck me as a bit odd because I was pretty sure the Elite wasn't out in 2005. The time was 9:46am, too. I changed them so they were accurate - 4/12/2011 at 8:19pm. I was done exploring the console (there wasn't much to explore seeing as I didn't have the internet cord) so I put the game in and began to play. Everything was cool, I really loved the game. Nothing had gone wrong. I finished it in like a month and a half (I don't really play video games for more than a few hours straight and I got frustrated and stopped playing for a while, got bored and stopped playing for a while, and went on vacation.) and to be honest I was really angry at the last fight. I thought it was gonna be cool and intense but no. I got a fist fight with an old fat guy - and he didn't even fight back. I beat him in about 4 minutes, more or less.

I'm not in school, and haven't been since April 4th due to a complicated situation (before you say anything, no I didn't drop out. Things happened and my mom pulled me out for the rest of the school year.) so I get bored REALLY easily and use video games to pass the time. I was quite anxious to get Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, but I had my mind set on another game I was going to get three days after I finished the second installment in the Assassin's Creed series. My mom asked me on Facebook if I wanted to borrow my uncle's copy of Brotherhood, and I said not right now. After trying to convince me to borrow it, she said alright and she stopped bothering me. About twenty minutes later my grandma came in and handed the copy of Brotherhood to me. I was kinda like "uh, I told mom I didn't wanna borrow it." and looked at her weird. She just told me that my mom told her that I did want it. I rolled my eyed and took the game, sending her off. I figured if I had it in my possession, I may as well play it.

So I put in the game and began to play. Honestly, it kinda sucked. I was expecting a lot more. I wasn't too far into the game (about...halfway?) when I was just really bored with it and began to go around getting all the recruits I could to join my assassin guild, and to get all possible viewpoints. I was completely ignoring the next objective of the game. (For those of you curious, I'm pretty sure I had just finished sequence 5 and the first memory of sequence 6.) That's when things got weird. I went on top of a Borgia tower to get the viewpoint before I climbed up it again to burn it. I went on the little perch where you hit Y and it went duhhhhhh-nuhhhhh-nuhhhhhhhhhh (awesome impression, no?) and you heard CAAAAWWWWWW as the camera zoomed out and panned around the city...then you swan dived into the hay or river or whatever was under you. So I hit Y, synchronized, and right when I was about to jump down the screen flashed white and it cut to the little cutscene thing that showed the tower on fire and beginning to crumble as Ezio threw a lit torch onto the ground and just walked off like nothing happened and everyone around him is like WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED OH GOD OH GOD.

I didn't really think anything of it. I thought I may have pressed B on accident which caused it to ignite the tower. So anyway, I kept walking. I checked on my map to see where the nearest Borgia tower was, and it wasn't too close. I decided to give it a shot and go destroy it. I walked a little and remembered in this game I could steal someone's horse and ride off with it. I waited for a while for someone to ride past until someone finally did. I pressed B to hijack the horse, and then I realized I had just attempted to steal it from a guard. I uttered a curse to myself and ran away at full speed. I occasionally looked back to see if I was being chased, which I wasn't. But the red arrow at the bottom of the screen indicated that the guard was still after me and aiming to kill. I ran for a bit, and eventually ended up at the Colosseum. I figured the guard wasn't chasing me. I walked over to the tunnel thing you could go into and travel somewhere else in Rome really fast with. I approached it, pressed Y like usual, but it didn't take me to the screen that let me choose where to go. It was the pop-up that you saw when the nearby Borgia tower owned everything. But this time it didn't say "This is owned by the nearby Borgia tower." or whatever. It said "This tunnel has been purchased in loving memory of everyone you have killed." I stared at the screen in confusion. I had never EVER seen that happen before. Without pressing anything, the pop-up disappeared and the guard I had pulled off the horse was behind me, and he looked PISSED. Like, more detail had been put into his face than I had ever seen in a video game. I screamed, hit the button in the middle of the controller to pause it, and approached the console itself. I hit the power button and turned it off. I went into the kitchen to get something to drink, sat down at the table, and sighed.

I went back to the living room after like an hour and turned the Xbox on again. I took a deep breath and went to go sign into my profile. Everything was the same, I had the same empty shell of a character, and the same number of points I had gotten from completing things in the same. I clicked on my profile to sign in, and a thing popped up that said "Would you like to install the new update?" and before I had a chance to select if I wanted to or not, it just clicked yes on its own. I spent like 20 minutes editing my avatar to make it how I wanted it, then went back to the main menu thing. I noticed something. It was signed in as the first profile - "Faggot". Faggot now had an avatar, and it looked sad. It had tattered jeans and a t-shirt on, slicked back blond hair, and a very sad expression. It was very tall, and VERY skinny. It had wrinkles and you could kinda see its cheek bones. I logged out of Faggot and went through the profiles. There was one more. It was named "Playagain" and it had the same pants as Faggot. Same hair, same expression. Well, not quite the same expression. This one looked more...pained, I guess. It was wearing no shirt and it looked like you could see its ribs. It was also very skinny and frail, and sometimes it would kind of cringe. The Poopyundies and PoopyundiesJR profiles didn't have an avatar, and 69 had a blank one like I had originally started out with. I signed back into Rena and went back to the Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood screen. I got to the list of files, which was normal. Just Rena on top followed by 'Empty' twice. I clicked on Rena and it went back to the tunnel. The guard wasn't there anymore, but the red arrow thing was still at the bottom of the screen. I walked around the outside of the Colosseum and decided the guard wasn't there anymore. I started to walk to the Borgia tower I was originally going for. I heard this painful screech for a few seconds and I very faintly head the sound of a horse galloping for a couple seconds after that before the guard from before rode up to Ezio and slashed his head off. I stared at the screen, mortified.

Normally when you die in Assassin's Creed, there are white lines everywhere (that's a shitty way to describe it. If you wanna see for yourself just look it up on YouTube or something.) and it says "DESYNCHRONIZED". Then it loads for a few seconds and brings you back to the last point you saved at. But this time the screen just went all static and said in broken text "OVER". Then it kicked me out to the Xbox main menu again. I went to check if I was signed in as Rena, which (not surprisingly) I wasn't. I was greeted by yet another new profile. This new profile was named "Secondchance" and it too had the avatar I was given when I started out. Blank. I signed out of that one and back into Rena, starting Brotherhood back up again. I selected the save file named Rena again and it just went to a bird's eye view shot of Ezio on the ground, all sprawled out, headless and bleeding. People were running around in terror. I pressed every button possible in a panic, to no avail. There was no music, but there was the delightful sound of screams of terror and feet stomping around. After about 40 seconds of me blankly staring at the screen, there was a cutscene of Ezio's sister (At least, I'm pretty sure it's his sister? It's that Claudia chick or whatever.) on her knees by Ezio's head, sobbing. His mother took Claudia into her arms and held her for a few moments. I felt pretty bad for Ezio's mom. I mean, her husband and all of her sons were dead. Pretty soon after that, a few whores (If you want me to put it nicely, courtesans) picked up the head while making revolted faces and uttering "ew..." every once in a while. Ezio's jaw was wide open, and his eyed were closed. I was kinda grossed out, honestly.

I saw Leonardo Da Vinci very sadly walk up to the group with a pained expression. He looked upset. Like all of his hope was lost. He had a big box in his hands which was very beautifully decorated. It was a deep blue with golden jewels around in some kind of design. It looked very skillfully done with lots of time and dedication. He opened it. The inside had red velvet trim, and kinda looked like the inside of a box for an engagement ring or something. The whores put the head inside the box and Leonardo thanked them. They had those disgusted expressions as they scrambled to wipe their hands on their rather revealing dresses. Leonardo closed the lid on the box and he went on his way. The crying Claudia and her mother also left Ezio's sprawled out body and went away too. I was stuck staring at the lifeless body for a couple minutes before two guards went to drag it away. They walked for a bit with the body before throwing it into a river. The screen went into that static frenzy again and said "RESTART?". It began counting down from 60. At about 25 I finally found the right button to push - the 'select' button. I pushed it, and it brought me back to where Ezio took the guard off of the horse.

Ezio pulled the guard off the horse and instead of running, I decided to fight. I mean, it couldn't be too hard. He didn't have much armor on. I swung at him with my sword a few times only to have him block my attacks. I hit the B button to grab him, but he just ducked and stepped back. I hit the A button to kick him in the crotch, but he just jumped over my foot. "You're kidding me..." I groaned to myself. I hit LB and called the 10 members of my assassin guild to assist me in killing the guard. They all came one by one, and all looked horrified and dropped to their death one by one. I stared at the screen shocked for a few seconds before the guard hit me with his sword again, taking three health squares from me. I ran around aimlessly for about 30 seconds before I came across a group of whores. I quickly hit Y to hire them and targeted the guard, sending them after him. They got kind of close before making that horrified face and dropping dead. "What the hell...?" I muttered, thinking out loud. I ran around some more before the guard started laughing mechanically and reaching for a box on the ground. The box looked exactly like the one Ezio's head was placed in before but was longer. He reached in and grabbed the Staff of Eden that I had last seen at the end of Assassin's Creed 2. I uttered "...What...?" as he grinned, laughing louder than before. He whacked Ezio over the back of the head, knocking him forward. He writhed in pain as I tried to get him off the ground to no avail. The guard kept whacking Ezio in the face with the staff, causing his face to bleed horribly. The guard took the end of the staff and thrust it into Ezio's right eye socket, Ezio screaming in pain and jerking his pelvis forward.

The guard kept smacking Ezio's forehead with the bloodied staff. It started to split open. Ezio just shrieked in pain and called for help. Nobody came. Ezio became unconscious and the guard kept whacking at him. He began to whack at Ezio's throat until it was smashed into the ground. Blood was everywhere. The guard dropped to his knees and started laughing mechanically again. That piercing laughter sent shivers down my spine as the guard began to search Ezio's clothing. He grabbed the gun-thing that was built into Ezio's gauntlet and fastened it around his wrist. He explored it for a couple seconds before grinning widely and pressing it to his forehead. He pulled the hidden trigger and shot himself. The Staff of Eden he held was dropped onto Ezio's corpse as he dropped to his death with the assassin.

I stared as the screen went white and said "OVER." in black text. I turned the console off and back on again. All login profiles were gone except for Rena and a new one named "Check". Check had no hair, dots for eyes, a straight mouth, and a small nose. He had a tuxedo on, and no shoes. I signed into Rena and started Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood up again.

It was really nothing. It was just a view of the decaying corpses of Ezio and the guard. I shook my head, closed my eyes, and got up to turn off the console. I hit the power button, but it didn't turn off. It just kept showing their dead bodies laying on the ground. I tried turning off the TV but it didn't work. I kept shaking my head, and went into my room to sleep.

The next day I woke up, had breakfast (which nowadays consists of pasta and ice cream), and looked at the TV. It was still on from last night. I realized I hadn't really looked at what time it was. I normally get up at like, 3 to 5 in the afternoon. I looked at the clock. It was about 7am. I hadn't gotten up that early since March. Especially not on my own. I wasn't quite sure what time I went to bed, but I imagined it was pretty early like midnight or something. It was late enough for my grandparents to be asleep but early enough to get up at /seven/. The screen was the same as as I left it, the same view as the night before. I felt uneasy, my stomach hurt.

I sat there for a bit, trying to think of a way to get out of it. After like 20 minutes of sitting on the couch, idly staring at the TV across from me, deep in thought, it let out a horrible screeching sound and the screen went white. This went on for about 40 seconds until it kicked me back to the Brotherhood menu where I would select if I wanted multiplayer or story mode or whatever. I hit story mode and clicked Rena. Luckily, neither Ezio nor the guard were dead, and lucky for me, Ezio had yet to pull the guard off the horse. I sighed in relief as I ran the opposite direction at full speed. I went to the nearest tunnel to travel to the whore-house (whatever you wanna call it.), but again it said "This tunnel has been purchased in loving memory of everyone you have killed.". I gave the TV an odd look as I made Ezio turn around and begin to walk away.

Alright, I'd just like to explain that I'm not a TOTAL pussy for being afraid of the dark, I have my reasoning. I'd never been afraid of the dark until a few weeks ago. Let's just say I have a love for reading and a vivid imagination. I'm not going any further than that. I've always been really bad at video games because I hate when things pop up at me, and that's one of the reasons why I love Assassin's Creed - because you can see how many guards are around and how many are chasing you. You never have to wonder. It's all very straightforward. Because of that, I never got past the first area of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (The only Elder Scrolls game I had ever played), and I can't play and Zelda games alone. So I don't do the Shrines of Romulus or whatever in Assassin's Creed unless I have to. They're creepy. ANYWAY.

I walked around for a while and decided to get that viewpoint at the Borgia tower I was after before. I also decided I would walk the trip. I made my way over, killed who I needed to kill, made my way up the tower and hit Y to synchronize. But instead of letting me back up to set the tower on fire, Ezio thrust himself off of the perch and into the haystack. Instead of getting out or waiting or anything, Ezio crawled deeper inside of the hay and ended up in the first Shrine of Romulus. I cursed at the TV. I hated this. I sincerely hated this. It was darker than the first /three times/ I had been here (Remember, I watched Jenna play once, started to play on the PS3 once, and then I went through it on this game), I certainly knew that. I walked and jumped through, did what I should, and ended up in the last room. The big room. The annoying one with the pillars and you had to scale the walls to get around to the treasure room. I got there and all of the lights went out. I squealed. The torches on the walls flickered and lit again, and the ground was littered with dead bodies. The bodies of the men and women I had killed, guard, citizen (sometimes I'd killed them when trying to kill a guard. Oops.), beggar (I...have a bad temper), or the royalty (I guess they were royalty? I don't know...) I had been sent out to kill. They were all on the floors, piled on top of each other, bloody and rotting.

The bodies were decaying and gross. I couldn't walk without stepping on one. I tried looting them and picking them up but it didn't work. I noticed the throne that was normally there had been replaced with another one. This new one was nicer, newer, and looked more expensive. Above it was a plaque. Ezio ran across the bodies, making disgusting squishing and cracking sounds when he did. He made his way to the plaque, and I hit Y to examine it. It read "In loving memory in everyone you have killed...". I stared as the screen faded black and said in red "Game over. Thank you for playing.". I hit the A button and it booted me back to the main Xbox menu. It wasn't signed into any profiles. Everything was normal - my profile named Rena had an avatar, and she was joined by the Poopyundies profiles, 69, and Faggot - none of whom had avatars or points like before. I went back to the Brotherhood menu and hit A repeatedly so it went to the story mode menu where you selected one of three save files to begin playing. My save file was gone - and all three read 'Empty' like it had when I first borrowed the game. I sighed, got up, and turned the console off. I went back to sleep for a couple hours and got up at about 10:30. I took a shower, put the game in its case, and drove the 3/4ths of a mile to my uncle's apartment to return the game to him. He asked how the game was, I shrugged, and went on my way. The next day I drove the 22 miles to pick up the game I was going to play three days after I beat Assassin's Creed 2. I started playing, was quite happy with the game, and got frustrated and bored. So, knowing me, I got on Facebook and didn't get off my computer for quite a while after.

And that brings us up to right now. I googled the ending to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, so I'm all caught up for when the next game comes out in November (It's November, right?). I'm now playing Resonance of Fate and I'm quite happy with it so far, and I don't intend on finishing Brotherhood on my own. Jenna keeps bothering me to go over to her house to play it with her because she likes playing with me more, but I keep insisting she finish alone. So it's 5am, I've been typing the story for a while now... My back hurts, I should probably eat soon, and I should sleep after I eat. Hey look, Lauren's on Skype. Maybe I'll talk to her. Typing all of this up reminded me about how horrible this experience was. I really just wanna forget all of it now. Is that really so much to ask?

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Oh man that ending sucked.

Part of this story was true! (You guess which part.)

Thank you very much for reading!