Fanfic / Unintended Consequences

Altair feels someone is watching him. Desmond feels his life falling apart. A thousand years isn't any distance at all, really.
—>Synopsis on fanfiction.net

Unintended Consequences is a Assassin's Creed fanfic written by Vampire-Badger.

Starting from the ending of Assassin's Creed, the story follows Desmond as he realizes that not only he can feel what his ancestors feel through the Animus, but that the connection goes both ways. Now Desmond and his ancestors must find some way to cheat fate and stop Juno, and they'll do anything to get their happy endings.

This fanfic was completed at 2014, with 115 chapter and over 112000 words written in just two months, and features every all Assassin's Creed games up until Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. There is also a sequel, Change my Mind, which adds Unity and Rogue to the mix, and with a slightly higher word count.

Oh, and by the way? This was supposed to be a one-shot.

Beware! Unmarked spoilers for all included AC games!

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This work contains examples of:

• Almighty Janitor: The role of John from the IT is tech support. More specifically, he's is solely responsible for keeping every single machine in Abstergo Entertainment and by extension the Templars' plans up and running. When he dies, their whole operation shuts down just a couple of days later because no one could replace him.
• Amnesiac Hero: After Desmond dies, his mind is transferred to the Apple, where he loses all his memories, name included. He only gets them back after another strange Apple incident.
• Ascended Extra: The Wolf that Connor turns into in Tyranny of King Washington goes from a simple transformation to having its own mind and personality - still an animal though.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Desmond dies in the Grand Temple as per canon, but his mind is uploaded in the Apple that was inside his body, which was then separated and ended up in Ezio's possession. Therefore, the squad was able to bring him back to life by stealing the body from Abstergo and reuniting him with the Apple - albeit with amnesia.
  • On the night Edward was supposed to die, Haytham took over his body with the result being Edward's body and Haytham's mind dying. Several chapters later the apples construct another body for Edward, and in the finale all the members of the time travelling crew manage to piece together fragments of Haytham's consciousness to bring him back.
• Brain Uploading: When Desmond "dies" at the Temple, his mind is uploaded into the Apple that was inside his body, which is then transfered to Ezio. Ezio figures out later how to get his own mind in the Apple, which is how he finds out that Desmond is still "alive".
• Broken Pedestal: Adewale's opinion of Edward completely sours when he finds out that it was Edward who stabbed him and not Shay.
• Clingy MacGuffin: The Pieces of Eden get absorbed into the body of their users if they decide they like the users enough.
• Commonality Connection: A requirment for Desmond to synchronise with someone in the Animus is for them to have a point of connection. This is the main reason why for him Synching with Haytham is nearly impossible, as their mindsets - Assassin vs. Templar - are too different.
• Composite Character: The modern day protagonists of Black Flag, Rogue and Unity are replaced by pre-existing characters. Altair replaces the Black Flag one and Desmond the Rogue and Unity ones.
• Crisis Crossover: This fic brings together the protagonists of every single AC game to fight Juno. Though it takes a while before they get to that point.
• Dramatic Irony: While Desmond is exploring Shay's memories with the Animus, they run into a glitch where they suddenly end up on the rooftops of Paris with absolutely no context how they got there or what they're supposed to be doing. They go through the memory in the style of "I guess I'm chasing this guy now" and treat it mostly as good fun - especially since it's very fragmented. It's the memory of Shay killing Arno's father. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero doesn't begin to describe what follows.
• Empathic Weapon: The Pieces of Eden - specifically the Apples - best respond when the user is under stress or in an emergency.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Arno tries to do that because he feels guilty that he's not ready to assassinate someone. The others tell him that it's perfectly normal not to want to kill someone and that there's a difference between wishing someone was dead and actually doing the deed, but Arno's having none of it. It doesn't help him mental health in the slightest.
• Grandfather Paradox: The cure for the magic tea sickness. The only reason Desmond know it exists is because a future version of him told a past version of Shay who in turn told the current version of Desmond. So in essense nobody came up with it.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: The guards sent by Abstergo to investigate the Great Temple are too busy playing on their phones to notice the three Assassins and Templar in anachronistic attire sneaking right past them.
• Fix Fic: The fic goes out of its way to avert many canon deaths, starting with Ziio. Other notable occasions involve Haytham, Desmond, Adewale, Mary Read, and Elise.
• Forced Transformation: Both Connor and Haytham end up being more or less controlled by the animals inside them and transforming into them against their will.
• Foreshadowing:
  • One that's later noted In-Universe is Haytham's first instance of time travel, where he ends up on his father's ship despite Desmond never connecting to him in the Animus - or having even heard of the man at that point. They go looking for him based on that.
  • When Edward and Haytham talk to each other for the first time via Time Travel (Haytham appeared in the body of himself as a child), Edward tries to figure out which exact point in time Haytham came from. So first he asks if the "Freaky Friday" Flip has happened yet, and when Haytham comments "oh, you heard that story", Edward replies that he heard five different versions of it. Then he asks if Desmond has died yet. This foreshadows that Desmond will come back to life, as without him the "five different versions" part of his previous remark doesn't work out.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Due to Mental Time Travel this happens a fair bit.
  • Haytham and Connor end up switching bodies for months after Desmond tried using the Apple to separate them.
  • Desmond, Altair and Edward end up mixed up after they go to purge Juno from Abstergo's servers.
• Healing Shiv: The Sword of Eden, which saves Elise from dying. Arno appreciates the irony.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • After Lisbon, Shay more or less shuts down and is drifting for months after the devastation, and spends all those months brooding into increasingly dark thoughts.
  • Edward completely shuts down after he stabs Adewale to save Haytham, thinking he killed his last remaining friend. It takes a lot for the other people in Shay's body at the time to coax him out of this state and explain to him the plan to spare Ade's life.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Once, Desmond shows up outside of Altair's bedroom and barges in while he and Maria are getting busy. It kills the mood immedietely.
• In the Blood: Altair considers the Kenway stubbornness a genetic trait.
• It's a Long Story: Shay tells that to everyone else when they ask him why and how he has a cure for the magic tea sickness.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Kenways as a whole. The fic loses most of its light-hearted tone the moment Haytham shows up, and as it goes on more than 50% of the drama is directly caused by the Kenways screwing up in some fashion. The rest is caused by Juno.
• Mental Time Travel: Whenever one of the Assassins ends up in a different time period, it's either by entering the head of each other or manifesting as a ghost that only the others can see.
• Me's a Crowd: The Instruments of the First will is actually a collection of Juno "clones" - basically her Sages - who are all trying to revive Juno.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Whenever someone is possessing somebody else's body, they take on that person'a mannerism due to muscle memory - for example, Arno notes that it's hard to smile when possessing Connor because Connor is unused to it. This also extends to Eagle Vision, as they see things with the vision of the host body and who the host body considers an enemy or an ally.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Edward completely freaks out when Adewale goes to kill Haytham, so in panic mode triggered by parental instinct he stabs Adewale. He then goes to Heroic BSoD over it. It took a lot of coaxing for Shay and the others to snap him out of it so they could save Ade's life.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Shay has no issue diving into the other's heads to get what he wants or taking control of their bodies when they "aren't using them".
• Properly Paranoid: Haytham is extremely concerned about the magic tea, and is proven completely correct when Connor succumbs to its influence. He also regrets taking it himself.
• Running Gag: The statue of Altair in Ezio's basement.
• Shapeshifter Showdown: Connor vs Haytham round 2, which is Haytham in panther form trying to subdue the rampaging Connor who constantly shifts between all four of his forms. Edward, who is watching from the sidelines, is extremely confused.
• Shared Family Quirks: Apparently for the Kenways stubborness is a genetic trait. Also a later chapter highlights how identical their facial expressions are.
• Strong Family Resemblance:
  • Desmond and Altair have near identical features and overall appearances, though Desmond is quite a bit taller.
  • While not obvious at first glance due to colloration, the Kenways have near identical facial features, which is lampshades at points.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Altair feels a pang of pity for John Standish upon finding out what exactly the Sages are.
• Translator Microbes: The Apples serve as this, though they don't actually teach you the language - Ezio found out the hard way.
• Tron Lines: The skin of whoever uses a Piece of Eden forms gold geometric patterns that glow.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: The Red Willow Tree Tea gives Connor the ability to transform into a wolf, a bear and an eagle, as per canon. In addition, Haytham gains the ability to transform into a panther.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Red Willow Tea is the embodiment of this trope. You get the ability to turn into an animal, but soon the animal starts eating away at your mind and sanity until it takes over. By the end of The Tyranny of King Washington, Connor is barely clinging to himself, and fails most of the time.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Altair thinks to himself that with his newfound skill in time travelling, he could prevent anything that ever happened to Desmond, but he's disturbed by the slippery slope that could lead to.
• You Don't Want to Know: Desmond tells that to Melanie when she spots him (the dead guy), Altair (the new recruit) and Edward (the dead pirate she was studying) leaving Abstergo Entertainment headquarters in the middle of the night. Better yet, they had switched bodies at the time so from her point of view it is Edward who tells her that.

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