[ Closed ] MARCH WRITING CHALLENGE - Alternate Universe (Page 1 of 2)

Shiny! Another writing challenge!

Character: Liu Mei-Ling
In this alternate universe, Blue Sun does not kill Mei-Ling's father for poking his nose in the wrong place (whether he did so or not, I'll leave to you to decide). Thus, she never defects from the Alliance military prior to the War. Therefore, she fights for the Alliance during the War, and continues to serve in the years after. Finally, she never winds up getting lonely, nor meets the crew of the Elemental...

Just Another Job
Mei-Ling surveyed the small backwater town in the quiet valley below. The place was rather plain, just like all the other rustic towns out here on the rim. The town wasn’t much of one, a tiny community that had sprouted up around a babbling brook that ran down from the nearby mountains. It served as a central business place for the local farmers and ranchers, with a weekly mule train taking goods to a larger town miles away, where they’d be transported to a city that none of these people had ever seen. The town consisted of a saloon that also served as a hotel of sorts, if having two rooms available for rent counted. It also had a trading post, a blacksmith, a few houses and not much else worth noting.

She lay in her position, motionless and patient. Her target hadn't appeared yet, but from the last few days of study, she knew he'd show himself on the street soon enough. The man had a routine, and he had kept to it every morning.

She shivered a little as the morning dew that had condensed on her skin began to evaporate with the growing heat of the day. She was getting too old for this. But it was her duty as an Alliance soldier. She once had delusions that the end of the War would be the end of her days of killing Browncoats, but there were still enemies to track down. This one was particularly nasty. He had been an Alliance soldier once, but had gone rogue. She had been warned about him, he had some particularly effective combat training, and was very dangerous. She used extra caution to make sure she wouldn’t be detected.

The town was stirring, and down below her target had appeared. No woman with him this time, though. Odd, but of little concern. Perhaps she had slept in today, or was taking her time getting herself presentable. The man walked slowly across the town square, which was empty this early in the morning.

She put her cross hairs on the man's forehead as he stopped to observe a swaying wild flower growing in the packed dirt of the main road. Mei-Ling had expected to need to wait until he turned back and looked at the mountain, as he usually did, but now she didn’t need to risk someone else coming out and interrupting the routine. The man tensed.

The sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier shattered the morning stillness, sending a flock of birds up from a garden below. The man hit the ground with a meaty thump, a trickle of blood coming from the back of his head, and missing a good portion of his face. Mei-Ling quickly moved back from her lookout spot, climbed onto her flying mule bike, and was off planet before the citizens even started questioning what happened.

After a shower, she sent a simple, three word report to her commander: "Colton Ling - Deceased".

~~~

Note: Ash's character used with permission

Actually made me go all shivery!

Great stuff! Sadly I won't be able to participate in this one: I simply don't have the time this month. But keep writing, because I'm loving reading these stories!

-Mischa

Character: Ellie Wren
Alternate Universe: What if Ellie had been raised by Dan and not Ethan?

Some girls got fancy parties for their sixteenth birthday, Ellie Wren had been coaxed out of her normal overalls and t-shirts into a floral skirt and a cotton blouse and a pair of heeled boots that she swore the devil himself had made even if the ladies of the hotel insisted they weren't that high. Sadly though, the girls had been right. Dressing pretty meant more tips and looser tongue on the men folk.  The ginger haired girl would open the door to her employer’s office, knocking once. Rather than work upstairs, it was better to earn a living being eyes and ears, even if she would have rather been his full time mechanic.  Things didn't break often enough around here at the hotel.

“Sorry to barge in, but you’re going to want to know. There’s a new Sheriff in town. Name’s Savage. Probably in his late thirties to mid-forties, dark skin like that play Othello, and completely fresh off the boat from the Core. Londinium, is what he said,” the young woman spoke all in one breath, barely pausing to let herself form another thought.

“I met him already,”  Kelvorn Sun-Campbell said with impatience. The look of displeasure made the young woman shrink a bit.  Still, she didn’t cower. If there was anything the man hated more than lateness, it was weakness and the girl had been taught from a young age to not show it. 

“Well you didn’t get asked to lunch by him, now did you? And with a few choice words I could turn it into dinner,” the young woman shot back.  She ignored the sound of the hotel floor creaking with the weight of Dan’s frame shifting. No doubt the man’s eyes would have narrowed at her back, obviously picturing the new Sheriff and wondering what plans he had in mind.

“What are you ruttin’ doing here talking? Go and ruttin’ meet up with him,”  the owner of the hotel said, going back to his books after he nodded once.  Ellie would take her dismissal and head out. 

The heavy footsteps  that trailed after her into the hotel lobby were expected.  She sighed and turned around. 
Dan gave a small smile. The large bear of a man  reached around her neck gently and clasped a worn locket, tarnished with time and age. “That was your mother’s. Been saving it for the right time. Be careful alright?. Happy Birthday Ellie.”

“Don’t be mad father, you know I have to earn my keep too. I’ll behave as best I can. Promise. Besides, he’s Core – they are all supposed to be proper  and such right?”  ,” Ellie said softly to Dan.. She gave her old man a kiss on the cheek, knowing the way the creases around his eyes had deepen and how his jaw was set, he wasn't pleased with the way things were right now.

“It’s a wonderful gift. Try not to worry,” Ellie said, before turning away and heading out to meet the new Sheriff.

Last edited by Amanda Bond (2013-03-24 23:23:07)

Woah, and I thought Mei-Ling shooting Ling was a shocker... O_O

-Jason

AU: Dr. Shane Howard, currently on the Jericho, never adopted by Core Worlders to grow up and attend MedAcad on Londinium, but sent instead to an orphanage on Dyton attached to the prison colony her mother died in.

Dyton, September 2519.

Shane stepped off the public shuttle and stood in line for entry control, her luggage and umbrella perfectly matching the dark red suede of her shoes. The ride from Greenleaf had been uneventful, and she’d read her waves, finishing up as they docked on the highest level of the colony. The spaceport facilities were built at the top of the platform so that they might be tightly regulated, but the security was always laxer arriving in Dyton than leaving.

“You’re returning from a business trip, Miss March?” the uniformed guard asked, flicking through her papers.
“As it says in the documents”, she smiled holding her hand out for their return.
“You travel a lot”, he stated, not handing them back, “for business purposes.”
She raised an eyebrow questioningly and held his gaze. There was always one.
“Yet you always end up back here...”, he continued. “Can’t see the attraction myself.”
“What can I say? I’m a businesswoman. Roots in the community.”
She managed in her tone to imply he had no such loyalty, but he simply shrugged and scanned the social control card.

“Mother’s first name?”
“Kerenza”.
“Father’s place of birth?”
She sighed. Gorram bun tyen-shung duh ee-dway-ro.
“My father isn’t listed on my records”.
“Oh, of course, I’m sorry, you’re right. You’re listed as a bastard. My mistake”.
He handed her the papers, and turned to the next in line.
Welcome to ruttin’ Dyton. Can be... combative.
She walked on quickly; it served no purpose to retort, under the circumstances.

The smog always seemed thicker when she arrived home. It permeated the houses and businesses, the towering living complexes, the sweatshops and industrial factories, thinning only slightly in the slum areas that extended in every direction around that, until it gave way to an arid, unwelcoming wasteland. She didn’t do business in the wasteland. There were limits, after all.

She shut the door to the apartment that she’d bought outright, took off her shoes and poured a drink, drank it, poured another and sipped at it as she gazed out over the district. There were enough narcotics packed into the inner layer of her expensive looking luggage to cover expenses for six months, and maybe some to invest. Business was good; she picked her own customers from the less rough end of the city.

It wasn’t a bad life. She was lucky, she knew, being bright and learning from what she’d been through. Most had it worse, that was certain, and this was a hundred times better than the orphanage she’d survived. Now she had security, no one else to worry about, and companions she could buy in if she felt like it. Better this than some Core World existence where she didn’t know the first thing about life. Here, she knew who she was, what mattered, what didn’t matter, and why.

“Kid yourself about your behaviour, you'll never learn a ruttin’ thing”, she said, out loud, and watched out the window for a while.

------

Note: bun tyen-shung duh ee-dway-ro = stupid inbred stack of meat

Turns out I don't need to write one for my characters this month. You've all done it for me. :-D

Ash

Oh, go on then...

Colton Ling: The Elemental

In this alternate universe, Liu Mei-Ling has not defected from the Alliance military, and continues to serve in the years after the U-War, terminating threats to the Alliance through assassination.

---

Leaning over the sink, Bolton Ching spat out a mouthful of bloody toothpaste. It was always red and pink; he pressed too hard with the brush and brushed too fast, as he did most things, every day, even now. But he had done some muscle-control body conditioning first thing this morning, as he did every morning, emphasising endurance in his core and limbs, to centre himself in preparation for the day, to try to force himself to concentrate on the present, to be mindful of his physical self, of his breathing, and to try to slow himself down, to keep from rushing through every task, if only to keep unwanted attention away by not presenting as unnaturally fast. He also exercised to aspire to be in control of his body and not at its mercy.

He had settled in a rustic town that was scattered along a babbling brook that ran down from an attractive range of mountains on a backwater planet out on the Rim. There was a saloon, a trading post, a blacksmith, but except on market days when the farmers and ranchers came in to exchange wares, there was not much else.

Normally of a morning, he did his exercises with his wife. He’d moved here with her in what he’d intended as a gesture to the Alliance that he was not a threat. He’d obtained false documents with an alias mostly to allay her fears. He didn’t think for a moment that the Alliance would be fooled, but it had made her feel better, at least.

This morning, he’d awoken before her and gazed at her gorgeous face, olive skin, and high Asian cheekbones, as her head rested on the soft pillow. She’d had a rough night and deserved a lay in. She was having really severe ‘morning sickness’ and heartburn, worse at night, and was struggling with dehydration. She wasn’t really showing yet, but was approaching her second trimester.

He let himself out to take a stroll round town and collect their provisions from the trade post, sauntering across the empty town square. A burst of bright colour on the ground caught his attention, and he stooped to look; it was a delicate little wildflower. He was about to pick it when suddenly the hairs on his neck erected and his body rushed with a surge of adrenaline. Falteringly, the malfunctioning Heads Up Display that had been surgically grafted to his left eye via an ocular implant flickered to life, producing an overlay of his surroundings compiled by satellite imaging and telemetry, painting a target – a rifleman - laying in the dewy grass up on the interfluve, sights trained on Ching.

The sound of a bullet shattering the sound barrier shattered the morning stillness, sending a flock of birds up from a garden below, but Ching didn’t hear it. He hit the ground with a meaty thump, missing a good portion of his face, a trickle of blood coming from the back of his head.

Character: Dan Doherty
Alternate Universe where Ellie ‘Wren’ was raised by her father Dan, and not her uncle Ethan

Dan had always tried to do right by Ellie. When Katherine died he’d been just about destroyed, but he’d been strong enough to see off Katherine’s boorish brother who’d carried himself like his pigu didn’t fart, and in so doing Dan made sure he would be the one to care for the two-year-old child, not her uncle. Katherine and Ellie had lived with Dan for the first two years of Ellie’s life, and there was no way Dan was letting that go just because Ethan Wren had decided Dan was a wastrel and was to blame for Katherine going off the rails.

But Dan maintained that her free-spiritedness had nothing to do with Dan, or the gang he ran with. She’d been that way before and it had even been what had drawn him to her, and he missed her passion painfully.

When Ethan had had the audacity to call Dan out from the thoroughfare after Katherine’s funeral and dared tell him to stay out of Ellie’s life, Dan had emerged from his small house with his long-iron and beat the man down into the dust with the butt of it, busting Ethan’s knee in the process. When some ladies from the town church took Ethan’s side and tried to get Ellie taken by social services, Dan went to the only person in the town who he liked that knew how to play the law – a warehouse owner called Kelvorn Sun-Campbell – who hired a solicitor to fight Dan’s corner in the court, highlighting Mr. Wren’s alcohol problem and obvious unsuitability to raise a child, against Dan’s pre-existing relationship with Ellie as her father, and his noble commitment to his duty of care for his toddler daughter. The judge didn’t take long to decide the case and awarded Dan custody after only half a day in session.

Soon after, the church’s priest was defrocked in a sex scandal, and the church lost its permit in a land ownership dispute.

When Ellie was still young, Dan worked more and more closely with Kelvorn Sun-Campbell and they moved together as a group to Cydonia on Deadwood to operate a hotel. With an ongoing adversarial relationship with the local circuit judge, Jeremiah Caesar, Kelvorn arranged for the appointment of a weak Mayor who he could manipulate. Kelvorn would become a dependable ally, sometimes even to the detriment of Kelvorn’s own interests, of Mayor Henry Eastman in the face of his wife’s infidelity.

On Ellie’s 16th birthday, a new Sheriff, a Core Worlder ironically called Savage, was appointed to Cydonia. Keen to assess the man’s character and ascertain whether he could be used, sidelined, or needed removing, Kelvorn sent Ellie to a sit-down with him. The trust he was putting in her and the significance of it was not lost on Ellie, a sharp girl who Kelvorn had come to respect and value.

But despite his faith in Kelvorn, Dan was uncomfortable with this use of his little girl...

So good.

My posts don't really qualify for praise because I just basically took other people's ideas. :-D but massive kudos to Jason, Amanda, and Deborah!

Ash