Anna, on the other hand, blatantly refused to climb. She could outrun Ezio, especially since she was in the habit of knocking anything and everything into his way (up to and including people) but she refused to climb. Even with threatening, cajoling, bribing, and more blatant threatening, she refused to climb anything higher than herself.

Ezio was just about frustrated enough to just grab her about the waist again and drag her with him up a building, forcing her to either climb down or keep going. But he still had a bite mark on his hand from last time, thank you. No need to repeat that again. So he had to think of a different tactic, most likely involving Iris somehow. Something had to work eventually.

Altair was rather proud of his impromptu student. She did what he asked (eventually) and got better. Her running skills could use some improvement, but that would come with time.

So he decided to try getting her to run across roofs next. That was an essential skill for an Assassin, after all.

Anna glowered at Ezio more often than not, especially when he tried to manhandle her. Because damn it all she would not be bullied around into doing something she was freaking terrified of doing. Not that Ezio needed to know that little tidbit, though.

Iris noticed that Anna refused to climb, and had already figured out a tactic of her own. It may or may not work, but it was worth a shot.

"Anna, dearest," she said sweetly, going into her personal bag (that she'd acquired recently). She pulled out a small wax-wrapped bar with a French stamp on it. "Look at what I got my hands on." Because of course France was the only place to get good chocolate in the fifteenth century. She grinned a bit. "Come on up to the roof with me on break and we'll share it."

Hey, it might work.

Anna looked at the chocolate. She hadn't had decent chocolate in... far too long. But now the big dilemma: chocolate vs. heights.

"Iris," she said quietly, looking down off to the side. "You know I don't like heights." If "don't like" actually meant "have a rather serious fear of". Hey, they were interchangeable. And she'd figured out that the two Assassins listened in on their conversations sometimes and she did not want to admit to that fear in front of them.

"Just to the roof," Iris wheedled. "It's not that bad up there, and there's plenty of flat space." She knew about Anna's fear of heights, but the roof was safe enough. It wasn't like that god-forsaken church steeple Iris had to climb the day before.

Anna crossed her arms. She did not like climbing, and she didn't like heights. But she could cheat to get up to the roof. She'd discovered how to get up to the rafters, and from there she could go out the window and be at the roof, so that wouldn't be so bad.

"Fine," she gave in with a grumble.

Iris grinned. She had a hunch the chocolate would be what did it.

"Remind me later that we need to see about raiding Switzerland or Belgium, once we're considered big girls and allowed to go out on our own," she said. "The French have half-way decent chocolate, but I'd give a lot for a bar of Lindt. And oh god, Lindor truffles."

Anna snickered. "Yeah, I know. It probably won't be the same, but it'll be better than this." Because she was sure the French chocolate would at least taste like chocolate (if probably too dark for her tastes) but it was chocolate none the less.

"So when are you heading up there?"

"Whenever we can slip away from our lethal babysitters," Iris replied. She knew Ezio and Altair were probably both watching and listening, so she couldn't resist that little tease.

Anna snorted, just imagining the indignant look on Ezio's face. They deserved that one. Definitely.

"Well, yon lord and master hasn't come in demanding anything yet, so why don't we go head up there now?"

Iris grinned in a bit of a challenge.

"Bet I could beat you up there," she said, stashing the chocolate bar back in her bag for the moment. She couldn't climb with it in her hand and still have it survive the trip.

"I bet you could too." Anna rolled her eyes. Climbing was not her thing, and even with her cheating she doubted she'd beat Iris up to the top. "Since you've turned into a freaking lemur."

Iris rolled her eyes.

"Hush, you," she said. "I still claim it's not my fault." Although she would admit that climbing was fun. Like she'd heard in a movie forever-ago, nobody ever bothered looking up.

Anna snorted and got up, stretching briefly before she headed for the stairs. "I'll see you up there. Try not to scare too many pigeons."

"I wouldn't scare them if they didn't show up in the first place," Iris replied as she opened the window and slipped out. She liked climbing the building. She tolerated running, but she enjoyed climbing. It didn't take her long to scale the back of the building so that nobody saw her, and she was waiting on the roof when Anna got there.

Anna had taken her time, just walking up to the top floor and then climbing (very carefully) up onto one of the rafters to get out the window and up onto the roof. Then she plopped down across from Iris.

"Okay. I'm up here. Now gimme chocolate."

Iris snorted a bit, but pulled out the small chocolate bar and unwrapped the wax paper. Breaking the bar in half, she handed Anna one piece and kept the other for herself.

"I can't help but think of those one-pound Hershey bars you could get for five bucks," she commented as she nibbled on the chocolate. "Literally all the chocolate you could eat in one sitting for what amounted to pocket change."

Anna snorted and nibbled on her own chocolate. Definitely too dark for her tastes. But at least it was chocolate.

"Seriously. We need one of those. Plus then it wouldn't be so damn bitter."

"Dark's better for you, though," Iris replied. "Antioxidants and all that. Kinda like black tea." She nibbled on her chocolate again. "But you're right, this stuff is almost too dark." She thought for a moment. "Maybe if we melted it and mixed it with sweetened milk? Primitive hot chocolate."

"That would work. We'd probably need really sweet milk, though. And this is going to take a while to melt. But it should work." Anna shrugged, nibbling off a bit more of her chocolate before setting it on her knee. Too dark for her to eat more than a little bit at a time.

"Melt it into the milk, maybe," Iris suggested. She paused for a moment. "I wonder if we could find a French pastry chef to experiment for us."

Belle snickered. "Oh man. Can you imagine? They'd either love us for our ideas or hate us for being nitpicky." She grinned. "But that would be a lot of fun. See, why couldn't we have landed in France with someone nicer?" She raised her voice a bit at that, knowing that Ezio and Altair would be listening in. Those two really had nothing better to do.

Altair smirked, looking over at Ezio to see his reaction that. Ezio had been having problems. To say the least.

To his credit, Ezio hadn't said anything yet. But his glower clearly stated that he would have his revenge. Oh yes he would.

Iris snickered a little.

"The French don't like anyone else, remember?" she pointed out to Anna. "Neither to the English, come to think of it." She paused. "Although the Scottish wouldn't have been bad. I could have gone to find my clan. That would have been neat."

"That would have been fun. Hey, I wonder if Henley on the Thames exists yet..." Anna grinned, settling into her musing easily.

Altair managed to not quite snicker at the look on his face. Not quite. But it was close. Figuring they'd had enough time to talk nonsense and relax, he slipped up onto the roof, moving over to them silently.

Anna looked up at him before snorting and putting her piece of chocolate away somewhere where it wouldn't melt. "Yeah, yeah, we're taking too long. Go find someone else to loom over."