I did not forget about the deviant Jade bits, don't worry, I just meant to put this before I went on to those ones.
The title explains most of what this bit is about. Original storyline Ruusan went back to Uhric with Connor, she and Jhidek's second child, after her mother was in an accident and ran into an old acquaintance who is a few fries short of a happy meal from her ERTP days.
Also, this scrawl -- or at least this version -- has been voided due to Jhidek's insistence that Ruusan take his younger brother, De'keth (fifteen or thereabouts, but a Vhander and thus not to be taken lightly) along with her.
I just thought it was an interesting look into some of the things Ruusan dealt with while she was an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, a borderline psychopath being one of them.
Ruu hummed to her son absently, glancing at the time on the spaceport’s display screen, the digits glowing blue in the warm morning light. Despite the hour – 0715 -- the port bustled with life.
There weren’t many families, the multitude being mostly made up of single business workers, suits almost seeming to glint in the sunlight. She sat in an otherwise empty row of seats near one of the large windows that gave an excellent view of Uhric’s capital city.
Their flight left in half an hour and she was ready to be home. After the past week with her parents, all that they’d talked about, Ruu felt drained. She wanted to be back with the rest with her family, to be able to actually see Jay as opposed to the visual communicator they’d been using for the past few days.
“Momma’s kind of pathetic without Daddy, isn’t she, sweetheart?” Ruusan murmured to the child who slept in the sling on her front, a bemused smile touching her features.
The hand that appeared on her shoulder made the woman jump because she hadn’t seen anyone in her vicinity for several minutes now, and the chances that anyone knew her here were slim.
A man swung into her vision and Ruu felt coldness wash through her.
“Ruusan! You haven’t changed in the slightest. Do you remember me?”
Delusional. Obsessive. Borderline psychotic.
She could remember every detail of the fateful day she got assigned the case that led to her save Patrick Wile’s life. He had scared her then and that hadn’t changed.
“Mr. Wile, what are you doing here?” Ruusan asked, telling herself to keep calm as she put her arms around her son protectively.
He took it badly if he knew you were unnerved by his presence. Don’t show fear. Remain serene.
“I came to get you!” The curly-haired man dropped into the seat at her side, resting his arms along the backs of the chairs. “They said I would find you here. I didn’t believe them at first, but now I do.”
"Mr. Wile, I’m leaving Uhric soon. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to catch up right now.”
It was as if her words went right through him. Patrick leaned over to look at the child in the sling, and Ruu leaned away out of instinct, her guts clenching at the thought of this man being near Connor. Right now, every fiber in her being was telling her to get far, far away from this man and to not look back.
The frown that appeared on his face due to her shift away from him made Ruu’s pulse speed up with fear.
Stay calm.
“Don’t be like that, Ruusan. I’m not going to hurt you. I just can’t let you get on that flight, you see.” His tone was matter-of-fact but she knew that could change in a heartbeat.
She could still see his face from all those years ago, the way it had been pleasant and then turned so very black when something didn’t go as he wanted it to. Her team had been informed that he’d been put away in a care center. Obviously, that hadn’t worked out.
“I have a husband now, Mr. Wile. This is our son. If I don’t get home on this flight, he will come and find me and you won’t like how he will take your presence.” Ruu’s mind went to every other antagonist who had appeared in their lives and she badly wished this was one of those moments, when she’d look over and Jay would be standing there, ready to protect her again.
But he was light years away, at home with the girls and waiting for her to come home to him.
Patrick was unbothered by her words. “They said he was wrong for you, Ruusan; that he doesn’t take care of you like he should.”
Anger bubbled through her fear in a moment, rising to the surface and bringing sharp words with it. “Jhidek has never done anything other than take care of me, Patrick Wile. Talk about him like that again and you’ll regret it dearly.”
His easy posture didn’t change but he slanted her a hard look that made Ruu want to run.
So she decided to do just that.
Collecting her tote bag and pulling it onto her shoulder, Ruusan stood up and took hold of the handle of her rolling suitcase. The light metal was cool beneath her hand as she made sure Connor was situated before starting to walk away.
Patrick was on his feet in a moment, striding after her and grabbing her wrist to wrench her around to face him again. Ruu was unable to help the gasp of surprise and she twisted her hand, yanking it away from his tight grasp. She used both her arms to support her child who still slumbered despite the proceedings. It would have been humorous in any other situation.
“I can’t let you leave, Ruusan. They said, no matter what, you can’t leave Uhric.” His green gaze was pleading as he reached for her again.
The Norsha’acite took a step back to avoid his touch, her throat tight. She wanted to be done with all this. She wanted to be home, with Jay, and Vivi, and Ellora, and blast anyone who tried to stop her at this point.
I’m an ERTP and I’m a Vhander. I’m stronger than this.
Her voice was uncompromising. “I don’t care, Patrick Wile, what they told you. If you touch me again, there are a dozen security guards within shouting distance so don’t you dare take another step.”
It was strange to Ruu, playing this role. The strong one, the one who employed the threats.
Jhidek usually covered this bit when it was needed.
Patrick’s gaze hardened in a way that spelled disaster. His hand disappeared into his jacket and returned with a gun clearly designed for stealth and secrecy. The cameras would be unable to pick it up, at that size.
“You see, the problem now, Ruu—“
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted before she could help herself, earning a dark look from Wile.
“Shut up. I’m talking now. Your turn is done. As I was saying, the problem is that I love you, and another man’s child doesn’t fit into that equation.”
Ruu stilled, heart racing with fear as it exploded through her. No, Lord, please, no. I can’t handle this. Please, Lord.
“I’m not the paramedic here, though. What do you think even a low-level stun round would do to a child his age, Ruusan?” The was a deceptive note of lightness that might’ve worked if the circumstances had been different.
If he hadn’t been talking about killing her son to force her into doing what he wanted. Because it would kill Connor. She knew too much about the effect weapons had on children to consider otherwise. She had too much experience to be able to think otherwise.
Ruusan’s hold on the baby sleeping against her chest tightened in an effort to protect him, at least in her mind. “He’s going to kill you, Patrick. You’re going to die if you don’t stop right now. So just leave us alone and maybe things will work out better for you.”
“But I’ve got friends, Ruu,” Patrick announced smugly. “Friends who can hide us away where no one will be able to find us! It’ll be perfect, I promise. You’ll love it. Away from all these people who—“
“No.” She bit out, taking an unsteady step backwards. “No. Patrick, no. I’m not leaving with you and even if you force me to, my husband will find me and then you’ll regret ever considering something like this, I can promise you that.”
“I don’t care about this husband of yours. He’s one man, while I have so many friends in the shadows who know how to hide things.”
“Jhidek Vhander specializes in finding things, as does his family and my parents too.” All her strength was bravado now. Trying to intimidate him into releasing her before any further harm could be done.
Patrick shot her a flat look. “We’re done here. You either come with me now, and your son might be okay, or you can continue to resist, and he won’t make it out of the spaceport. Am I making any sense here?”
Ruu wished her comm. weren’t buried at the bottom of her tote where she’d stuffed it in her hurry to leave that morning. She could feel the hot sting of tears at the corners of her eyes, but strove to ignore them.
Jay’s going to find us. He will. That’s what he’s good at. She repeated that to herself over and over as she took her suitcase by the handle and followed Patrick’s instructions, always aware of the weapon he still held discretely in one hand.
I may or may not like kidnapping Ruusan, although it never really got that far in the original while Penny and I were TGing, so it was probably an uneventful trip to and from Uhric with Connor and De'keth.
Now I shall move onto the Jade bits, although I may send an email first, so there will be a slight delay.
Thank you for reading!
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Showing posts with label Jhidek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jhidek. Show all posts
Monday, March 18, 2013
Writing: Original -- Ruusan, Vivi, and Life
Honestly, half the time I don't even know how to title these things because the contents are so hard to define in a few words.
But, the three original Ruu bits I have decided aren't too awful to look at take place about ten months apart, although the last two will require a bit of explaining. As does this first one, I suppose, though it needs less than the others.
The first scrawl takes place about a year after Ruusan and Jhidek are married in the original storyline, putting Vivian at three years old, as you will read. I am contemplating not explaining the reasons behind Ruu's odd physical health until the very end of this post, so you smart readers who figure it out can congratulate yourselves on not needing to be told what was going on.
Actually, you know what, I'm going to hold on and let you guys see if you can work it out, just for kicks. Also, as a warning, this one's a bit on the old side and probably needs a bit of cleaning, but I'm not in a current mindset to do so, so you'll have to wade through the un-edited-ness. My apologies.
Ruusan puttered through the apartment, humming along with whatever was coming through the radio. Jhidek was off-planet working, so she and Vivian had been left to their own devices for a few days.
The three year old was caught up in an alphabet video, and her vocabulary had been expanding by the day. Ruu had been surprised though, that her daughter didn’t ask a hundred million questions, preferring to observe and learn for herself what something did.
She picked up a pair of socks and added them to the laundry basket on her hip, pausing to watch Vivi’s video for a moment.
The animated characters on the screen were in the midst of singing the alphabet song, and Vivian’s brow was lowered in concentration.
Ruu continued her foray for dirty clothing, getting the towels from the kitchen and bathrooms then went to the washer. She started a load, bent retrieve the dry clothes, and reached out to steady herself when she straightened. The world went black for a moment, and Ruusan hurriedly sat down, fighting a sudden bout of nausea.
Her heart pounded as she tried to control the urge to throw up.
Ruu worked to rationalize. We haven’t been anywhere; I haven’t been exposed to anything. So what’s going on?
When her stomach settled enough so she could stand again, Ruusan left the laundry and went on unsteady legs to sit on the couch near Vivian.
Her daughter’s green eyes turned her way when she came back into view. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
“Mommy just feels funny,” Ruu said, smiling a bit to put the child’s worries to ease. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
Vivian watched her for a moment, and then came over to sit beside her on the couch. She didn’t comment further, drawn in once more by her video, but Ruusan reached out to smooth her curls that were going wild.
After a few minutes, the nausea and dizziness faded entirely, leaving Ruu wondering what had happened as she contemplated returning to her work.
“When’s Daddy going to be home?” Vivian asked, looking away from her show.
The woman tucked the child close and kissed her forehead. “He said tomorrow, but we can watch for him tonight as well.”
“At bedtime?” Vivi checked, brow furrowing.
“Yes, at bedtime,” Ruu said, getting to her feet and carrying the child with her. “Are you hungry?”
Vivian thought for a minute, gaze returning to her movie and Ruusan knew she’d lost her.
“Alright, you stay here; I’ll scrounge up something to eat. Mommy’s starving all of a sudden.”
She went to the kitchen, and began to go through the fridge, looking for something that seemed at least remotely edible. The music of the alphabet movie shut off and Vivian appeared in the doorway.
“Vivi, does something smell funny to you?” Ruusan questioned, wrinkling her nose as she took a whiff of a Tupperware in the fridge.
“No,” the three year old said simply, coming in to sit on one of the stools.
“Huh.” Ruu murmured, frowning. “I think your father brought home something the other day and decided to share it, Viv.”
“Share what, Mommy?”
The blue-eyed woman smiled, and held out an orange to her daughter. “A bug, sweetheart. Mommy feels kind of off.”
“You said you were okay,” Vivian said, seeming put out.
She ruffled the mop of curls and picked out a couple of apples.
Alright. That is that. Feel free to leave a comment if you figured out what's up before I revealed it at the end. :P
Oh, crud... I just realized that the next two bits are going to spoil my surprise. How very frustrating. Oh well. Kudos to you if you figured it out before getting down to these next scrawls.
They take place, again, after about ten months, and in that time, several things happened. Namely, Jhidek being in an accident with a chemical (I think...) called tefloidite that caused him to go blind, followed promptly by the birth of his and Ruusan's first daughter, Ellora, the following day. There was a bunch of drama around all that as well, considering Ruu came pretty close to dying and such, but she was fine in the end.
It takes a month to locate a doctor who (Ha. Anyone else see that?) can fix Jay's eyes, and two days after that, he's already gotten a job. To say the least, Ruusan was not pleased over that, but he distracted her pretty well after allaying her fears.
These bits take place during the week that Jhidek is gone working, one mid-week, the other the day before her gets back, although they seem a bit disoriented, in that, the first doesn't seem to have any effect on the second.
You'll see what I mean. But, on their own, I rather like both the bits and I hope you will as well.
The darkness poured in then and she couldn’t see anything, could barely breathe, and this couldn’t be happening, not again, not to her, please Lord don’t do this to me.
Ruusan woke to more darkness interrupted only by a pale splotch that was her mother’s face. That was the only thing that saved her from panicking.
The sheets were tangled tight around her legs, and her heart was pounding from her dream; no, her nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.
Ruu drew in a shaking breath and croaked, “Momma...” She sat up with Sarris’ help that came in an arm across her shoulders.
“You were... crying, Ruu,” she replied, voice hushed in the stillness of the room as the Warrior drew a cool hand across the younger woman’s forehead.
“Did either of the girls wake up?” Ruusan asked, wiping the evidence of tears from her cheeks with a trembling hand.
Focus on the girls, don’t think about it, she told herself.
“No. Ellora almost did but she fell back asleep.” Sarris informed her, easing down onto the bed at her daughter’s side. “Do you need your comlink?”
The reminder of Jay brought tears back to Ruu’s eyes, but she blinked them away and shook her head. “No, I’ll be okay.”
Silence reigned for a long moment before Sarris murmured, “You were screaming, Ruu. It was like someone was killing you.”
Years of learning this woman, her mother, had taught Ruusan how to read the hidden emotions in her voice and on her face and right now there was a tinge of pain to her words. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, leaning into the Warrior. “It was a nightmare about Jay and... and Cameron too.”
The details of it felt like they’d been etched into her mind; the blood, the distorted scream of pain – not her own – and then the silence that had been the part to truly terrify her. He’d been motionless, not responding, then Cameron had been there – she’d known it was him from the moment he took her arm in hand – dragging her away. He’d pulled Jay’s arm around his shoulders, dragging him way into the darkness and he didn’t look back once.
Ruu didn’t remember screaming in the nightmare, but she must have. Her skin prickled and she shook her head to try and dislodge the memories. Sarris rubbed her upper arm, resting her chin on the top of her daughter's head.
Some of her bubbling fear slid away at the soothing touch, and Ruusan slumped against her mother, exhaustion pouring into her. “Sorry about this, Mom... you should be sleeping since your flight is tomorrow, not dealing with a nightmare.”
“It’s fine. I can sleep on the way home.” The Warrior said dismissively.
Did I mention Sarris visited? Calling her "the Warrior" is a reference to her being a Uhrician Elite Force Warrior, just as a reminder, and I'll go more into Ruu's nightmares after the next bit.
The apartment was dark and quiet, moonlight peeking through the shades over the windows. Ruusan lay on the couch with Ellora sleeping on her chest. Vivian had been asleep in her room for hours already and she had no wish to know what the time was now.
All that she needed to know was that it was late – or early - and even though she felt weariness weighing her eyelids down, Ruu didn’t want to get up and go back into the bedroom and the empty bed to be found there.
Ruusan studied the pale light that illuminated the living room, noting how much larger it felt right now and wishing it didn’t appear that way.
He’ll be home soon, the woman reassured herself, rubbing El’s back absently, unperturbed by the small puddle of drool staining the tank-top of her pajamas.
Jay had said he would be back tomorrow afternoon, so she just had to hold out until then, but it felt like the time between now and then was a month, not a matter of hours.
Her attempts to hide how much his absence had affected her this time from Vivian had failed rather dismally. The four-year-old could be more than observant at times, and Ruusan had already fielded a question of, “Are you sick, Mommy? You’ve got black things under your eyes.”
A quiet sigh escaped her as blue eyes went to the roof, contemplative.
As much as she missed him while he was gone, Ruu knew Jay was happy. With the device implanted into his eyes to help him see again, he was back to flying. And she was here with Vivian and Ellora, waiting for him to come home.
That was the way it was supposed to be, right? That was how it had been since the beginning, and that was how it would continue to be.
Ruusan laid an arm across her eyes, her other hand on Ellora’s back. I miss him more than I thought I would. I guess I just got used to having him around after El was born. Now though... It hurt.
A quiet breath left her. The first year of Vivian’s life had been like this, only ten times as worse. There'd only been a sleeping child and a bed devoid of a warmth she needed to be there during the heavy hours of night.
Ruu knew Jay was all right. He was out there, doing his job, doing what he loved. But when she would be just waking up in the mornings, still between sleep and awareness, and she’d reach out to find him... feeling that emptiness where he should be made her heart stop. Then she would wake fully, and remember that he was fine, just working, you don't have to be afraid.
And that is that. What doest you all think?
I mentioned explaining Ruusan's nightmares, so allow me to digress briefly on the matter. For some reason, after Cameron's death in the Original and after a rather difficult situation with a very close family friend in the Deviant, Ruusan is often subjected to nightmares when she has a lot of negative emotions swirling around inside her.
For instance, with the second bit, she'd been majorly worried about how Jay was doing, adjusting to his eyes being functional again while working at the same time, and that translated over very strongly into her dreams. She dreamed he'd died and that Cameron had dragged him away.
Also affecting her at that point were the similarities between that week and basically any point after Cam died, before she married Jay. Having a small child and waking up alone in a bed when she'd been expecting to find her husband there with her. The reminders of the devastating days following Cameron's death weighed really heavily on her mind.
And those are just a couple of emotions that her subconscious can be affected by; stress can get to her, feeling alone, even though she knows she's not, general worry over things occurring in her life, etc.
I find it, personally, to be a very interesting trait of hers. Thus far, it has cropped up more in the Original than in the Deviant, although I believe that, with all this kidnapping business, her four months completely cut off from her family and Jhidek in difficult conditions are going to have some pretty bad aftereffects on her mental state.
(I absolutely cannot wait. #sadisticwriter)
And, with that, I am finished with this post. Next, I want to do those Jaydn and Jase scrawls that I mentioned, although I can't decide whether or not to split them up into two different posts, because the bits are of some length and there are at least four of them, possibly five.
At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into another aspect of Ruusan and thank you for putting up with all this randomness! (And muchas gracias for reading, my amazing followers and random visitors. I adore you all to bits.)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
P.S. This forgetful writer almost forgot to let you know what Ruu was suffering from in the first bit, although you all probably know due to the following two bits. It was that evening that, with a bit of help from Jay, Ruusan realized she was pregnant with their first child. It was all quite adorable, let me tell you.
But, the three original Ruu bits I have decided aren't too awful to look at take place about ten months apart, although the last two will require a bit of explaining. As does this first one, I suppose, though it needs less than the others.
The first scrawl takes place about a year after Ruusan and Jhidek are married in the original storyline, putting Vivian at three years old, as you will read. I am contemplating not explaining the reasons behind Ruu's odd physical health until the very end of this post, so you smart readers who figure it out can congratulate yourselves on not needing to be told what was going on.
Actually, you know what, I'm going to hold on and let you guys see if you can work it out, just for kicks. Also, as a warning, this one's a bit on the old side and probably needs a bit of cleaning, but I'm not in a current mindset to do so, so you'll have to wade through the un-edited-ness. My apologies.
Ruusan puttered through the apartment, humming along with whatever was coming through the radio. Jhidek was off-planet working, so she and Vivian had been left to their own devices for a few days.
The three year old was caught up in an alphabet video, and her vocabulary had been expanding by the day. Ruu had been surprised though, that her daughter didn’t ask a hundred million questions, preferring to observe and learn for herself what something did.
She picked up a pair of socks and added them to the laundry basket on her hip, pausing to watch Vivi’s video for a moment.
The animated characters on the screen were in the midst of singing the alphabet song, and Vivian’s brow was lowered in concentration.
Ruu continued her foray for dirty clothing, getting the towels from the kitchen and bathrooms then went to the washer. She started a load, bent retrieve the dry clothes, and reached out to steady herself when she straightened. The world went black for a moment, and Ruusan hurriedly sat down, fighting a sudden bout of nausea.
Her heart pounded as she tried to control the urge to throw up.
Ruu worked to rationalize. We haven’t been anywhere; I haven’t been exposed to anything. So what’s going on?
When her stomach settled enough so she could stand again, Ruusan left the laundry and went on unsteady legs to sit on the couch near Vivian.
Her daughter’s green eyes turned her way when she came back into view. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
“Mommy just feels funny,” Ruu said, smiling a bit to put the child’s worries to ease. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
Vivian watched her for a moment, and then came over to sit beside her on the couch. She didn’t comment further, drawn in once more by her video, but Ruusan reached out to smooth her curls that were going wild.
After a few minutes, the nausea and dizziness faded entirely, leaving Ruu wondering what had happened as she contemplated returning to her work.
“When’s Daddy going to be home?” Vivian asked, looking away from her show.
The woman tucked the child close and kissed her forehead. “He said tomorrow, but we can watch for him tonight as well.”
“At bedtime?” Vivi checked, brow furrowing.
“Yes, at bedtime,” Ruu said, getting to her feet and carrying the child with her. “Are you hungry?”
Vivian thought for a minute, gaze returning to her movie and Ruusan knew she’d lost her.
“Alright, you stay here; I’ll scrounge up something to eat. Mommy’s starving all of a sudden.”
She went to the kitchen, and began to go through the fridge, looking for something that seemed at least remotely edible. The music of the alphabet movie shut off and Vivian appeared in the doorway.
“Vivi, does something smell funny to you?” Ruusan questioned, wrinkling her nose as she took a whiff of a Tupperware in the fridge.
“No,” the three year old said simply, coming in to sit on one of the stools.
“Huh.” Ruu murmured, frowning. “I think your father brought home something the other day and decided to share it, Viv.”
“Share what, Mommy?”
The blue-eyed woman smiled, and held out an orange to her daughter. “A bug, sweetheart. Mommy feels kind of off.”
“You said you were okay,” Vivian said, seeming put out.
She ruffled the mop of curls and picked out a couple of apples.
Alright. That is that. Feel free to leave a comment if you figured out what's up before I revealed it at the end. :P
Oh, crud... I just realized that the next two bits are going to spoil my surprise. How very frustrating. Oh well. Kudos to you if you figured it out before getting down to these next scrawls.
They take place, again, after about ten months, and in that time, several things happened. Namely, Jhidek being in an accident with a chemical (I think...) called tefloidite that caused him to go blind, followed promptly by the birth of his and Ruusan's first daughter, Ellora, the following day. There was a bunch of drama around all that as well, considering Ruu came pretty close to dying and such, but she was fine in the end.
It takes a month to locate a doctor who (Ha. Anyone else see that?) can fix Jay's eyes, and two days after that, he's already gotten a job. To say the least, Ruusan was not pleased over that, but he distracted her pretty well after allaying her fears.
These bits take place during the week that Jhidek is gone working, one mid-week, the other the day before her gets back, although they seem a bit disoriented, in that, the first doesn't seem to have any effect on the second.
You'll see what I mean. But, on their own, I rather like both the bits and I hope you will as well.
The darkness poured in then and she couldn’t see anything, could barely breathe, and this couldn’t be happening, not again, not to her, please Lord don’t do this to me.
Ruusan woke to more darkness interrupted only by a pale splotch that was her mother’s face. That was the only thing that saved her from panicking.
The sheets were tangled tight around her legs, and her heart was pounding from her dream; no, her nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.
Ruu drew in a shaking breath and croaked, “Momma...” She sat up with Sarris’ help that came in an arm across her shoulders.
“You were... crying, Ruu,” she replied, voice hushed in the stillness of the room as the Warrior drew a cool hand across the younger woman’s forehead.
“Did either of the girls wake up?” Ruusan asked, wiping the evidence of tears from her cheeks with a trembling hand.
Focus on the girls, don’t think about it, she told herself.
“No. Ellora almost did but she fell back asleep.” Sarris informed her, easing down onto the bed at her daughter’s side. “Do you need your comlink?”
The reminder of Jay brought tears back to Ruu’s eyes, but she blinked them away and shook her head. “No, I’ll be okay.”
Silence reigned for a long moment before Sarris murmured, “You were screaming, Ruu. It was like someone was killing you.”
Years of learning this woman, her mother, had taught Ruusan how to read the hidden emotions in her voice and on her face and right now there was a tinge of pain to her words. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, leaning into the Warrior. “It was a nightmare about Jay and... and Cameron too.”
The details of it felt like they’d been etched into her mind; the blood, the distorted scream of pain – not her own – and then the silence that had been the part to truly terrify her. He’d been motionless, not responding, then Cameron had been there – she’d known it was him from the moment he took her arm in hand – dragging her away. He’d pulled Jay’s arm around his shoulders, dragging him way into the darkness and he didn’t look back once.
Ruu didn’t remember screaming in the nightmare, but she must have. Her skin prickled and she shook her head to try and dislodge the memories. Sarris rubbed her upper arm, resting her chin on the top of her daughter's head.
Some of her bubbling fear slid away at the soothing touch, and Ruusan slumped against her mother, exhaustion pouring into her. “Sorry about this, Mom... you should be sleeping since your flight is tomorrow, not dealing with a nightmare.”
“It’s fine. I can sleep on the way home.” The Warrior said dismissively.
Did I mention Sarris visited? Calling her "the Warrior" is a reference to her being a Uhrician Elite Force Warrior, just as a reminder, and I'll go more into Ruu's nightmares after the next bit.
The apartment was dark and quiet, moonlight peeking through the shades over the windows. Ruusan lay on the couch with Ellora sleeping on her chest. Vivian had been asleep in her room for hours already and she had no wish to know what the time was now.
All that she needed to know was that it was late – or early - and even though she felt weariness weighing her eyelids down, Ruu didn’t want to get up and go back into the bedroom and the empty bed to be found there.
Ruusan studied the pale light that illuminated the living room, noting how much larger it felt right now and wishing it didn’t appear that way.
He’ll be home soon, the woman reassured herself, rubbing El’s back absently, unperturbed by the small puddle of drool staining the tank-top of her pajamas.
Jay had said he would be back tomorrow afternoon, so she just had to hold out until then, but it felt like the time between now and then was a month, not a matter of hours.
Her attempts to hide how much his absence had affected her this time from Vivian had failed rather dismally. The four-year-old could be more than observant at times, and Ruusan had already fielded a question of, “Are you sick, Mommy? You’ve got black things under your eyes.”
A quiet sigh escaped her as blue eyes went to the roof, contemplative.
As much as she missed him while he was gone, Ruu knew Jay was happy. With the device implanted into his eyes to help him see again, he was back to flying. And she was here with Vivian and Ellora, waiting for him to come home.
That was the way it was supposed to be, right? That was how it had been since the beginning, and that was how it would continue to be.
Ruusan laid an arm across her eyes, her other hand on Ellora’s back. I miss him more than I thought I would. I guess I just got used to having him around after El was born. Now though... It hurt.
A quiet breath left her. The first year of Vivian’s life had been like this, only ten times as worse. There'd only been a sleeping child and a bed devoid of a warmth she needed to be there during the heavy hours of night.
Ruu knew Jay was all right. He was out there, doing his job, doing what he loved. But when she would be just waking up in the mornings, still between sleep and awareness, and she’d reach out to find him... feeling that emptiness where he should be made her heart stop. Then she would wake fully, and remember that he was fine, just working, you don't have to be afraid.
And that is that. What doest you all think?
I mentioned explaining Ruusan's nightmares, so allow me to digress briefly on the matter. For some reason, after Cameron's death in the Original and after a rather difficult situation with a very close family friend in the Deviant, Ruusan is often subjected to nightmares when she has a lot of negative emotions swirling around inside her.
For instance, with the second bit, she'd been majorly worried about how Jay was doing, adjusting to his eyes being functional again while working at the same time, and that translated over very strongly into her dreams. She dreamed he'd died and that Cameron had dragged him away.
Also affecting her at that point were the similarities between that week and basically any point after Cam died, before she married Jay. Having a small child and waking up alone in a bed when she'd been expecting to find her husband there with her. The reminders of the devastating days following Cameron's death weighed really heavily on her mind.
And those are just a couple of emotions that her subconscious can be affected by; stress can get to her, feeling alone, even though she knows she's not, general worry over things occurring in her life, etc.
I find it, personally, to be a very interesting trait of hers. Thus far, it has cropped up more in the Original than in the Deviant, although I believe that, with all this kidnapping business, her four months completely cut off from her family and Jhidek in difficult conditions are going to have some pretty bad aftereffects on her mental state.
(I absolutely cannot wait. #sadisticwriter)
And, with that, I am finished with this post. Next, I want to do those Jaydn and Jase scrawls that I mentioned, although I can't decide whether or not to split them up into two different posts, because the bits are of some length and there are at least four of them, possibly five.
At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into another aspect of Ruusan and thank you for putting up with all this randomness! (And muchas gracias for reading, my amazing followers and random visitors. I adore you all to bits.)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
P.S. This forgetful writer almost forgot to let you know what Ruu was suffering from in the first bit, although you all probably know due to the following two bits. It was that evening that, with a bit of help from Jay, Ruusan realized she was pregnant with their first child. It was all quite adorable, let me tell you.
Writing: Deviant -- Jaydn on Ruu's Kidnapping
As the title suggests, I have kidnapped Ruusan by a band of slave-traders and this is a small glimpse into Jade's thoughts on it all a couple of months after she disappears.
I don't have a lot of lead-up to tell about it aside from that, when Ruu was kidnapped, she and Jhidek had been married maybe five months, six at the max. As one might expect, he is not taking her absence well, and that shows up in this bit with Jade.
Also, please take WARNING that there are some sensitive themes mentioned in this scrawl, and while they're nothing explicit, they're enough that it might make someone uncomfortable. So please be aware before you head on into this scribble of mine.
Gogamian Language Review:
Imo = father
Ha'imo = mother, or, literally, sub-father
Shak = a curse (don't try this at home, kids.)
Ji = no
With that, please enjoy and I will have more news down below.
Jade collapses onto the couch, exhaustion causing her head to ache and her limbs to feel weighted. She can’t recall the last time she’s had more than a couple hours of solid sleep. They’ve been on the go since two and a half months ago, constantly on the move, searching, questioning, following up leads, and breaking down the proverbial doors on more slave-trading rings than she cares to remember.
It’d taken them just a few weeks to run down any enemies in either their pasts or Aunt Sar and Uncle Novarr’s pasts that might still be alive and holding a grudge and because there had been no ransom demand, they can only assume that it means she’d been taken by a slave-trading operation.
Ordinarily, she might feel a quiet sense of pride over what they’ve accomplished in such a short time, how many syndicates and crime gangs they’ve brought down, but their goal was never the human trafficking.
Despite her weariness, Jaydn is aware of the helpless frustration churning inside her. There is nothing. No whispers. No crumbs. Nothing to lead them to Ruu.
Jay looks worse and gets quieter by the day and Jade wishes that they would just find something, anything at this point that will give him, and the rest of them, hope.
There’s been too much time to consider what may have befallen her, because although Ruusan is strong, she’s not strong in a way that will protect her from the malevolent side of this galaxy, and that’s what Jade’s truly afraid of.
Not that Ruu will be found dead, although that is her second greatest fear, but that she will be dead inside, a shell of her former self, broken down with her good heart crushed into dust.
She’s seen it before in the past, and countless times in these recent months. Women who have had everything taken from them. Bruised, beaten, abused, destroyed until there’s nothing left of who they were before.
Jade shifts onto her back, letting her arm fall over her eyes to block out the faint light from the rest of the room. Her mind is full of images she wishes she could erase and she makes her tensing form relax once more, although her fingers remain clenched into a fist.
That can’t happen to her; not to Ruu.
We just need one sign, one bread crumb to show us where to go. Everyone is looking, talking to their people. Aunt Sar is edging the line of abusing her authority as a grandmaster searching for Ruu and Uncle Nov disappears for days at a time to search.
We’re doing everything we can.
And it’s not. enough. She swallows back the emotion that tightens her throat, feeling hot water flood her eyes. What do we do, Imo? Ha’imo? I can’t bear seeing Jay like this. I can’t bear seeing any of us like this, but Jhidek especially.
Her brother’s pain drives her to the point of distraction sometimes, unable to fathom what it is he feels every time they come out with nothing again. Raina’s being affected by it as well. Shak, everyone is.
Jade sits up without warning and hastily sheds herself of her gear, dropping her weapons on the coffee table before she gets up to go to her room.
Shower. She needs a shower because otherwise she’s going to break down.
Ji. I can’t.
The door slides shut behind her and Jaydn goes about divesting herself of her clothes, stepping out of her boots, throwing her jacket on her bed, and she tries to ignore the fine tremble that’s setting into her hands.
The cold water is a shock to her system. Jade forces herself to remain under the icy rain from the showerhead, leaning her forehead against the wall.
Dear God… help us…
So that's pretty much the situation with Ruusan in the deviant storyline currently. I'd had one idea how things go down with Ruu while Jay and everyone else is looking for her, but my sisters got to me and I decided to take another path, one that will have far more serious repercussions on Ruusan.
It's all deliciously dramatic and just a wee bit angsty.
Just a little awkward, "Is she alright?", sadistic!writer moment there for you all.
News, news. Well, I hope to sit here on the computer and post several more various scribbles from different points in both the Deviant and Original storylines this evening while I am avoiding math and Latin.
Beyond that, I don't have any plans, but I do have a good-sized stack of randomness that I'd like to share with you, including deviant stuff including Jaydn and this hunter with stormy blue eyes who goes by the name Jase Drouais.
Unfortunately, the course of love (true love?) never did run smooth, as I am very fond of proving in my characters' love lives.
Ah well. They shall survive.
With that, I shall cease talking your ear off and go put together a few more posts for your perusal.
As always, thank you ever so much for reading! (And I hit 1000 views today, which is incredibly exciting, and I thank you all for that as well!)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
I don't have a lot of lead-up to tell about it aside from that, when Ruu was kidnapped, she and Jhidek had been married maybe five months, six at the max. As one might expect, he is not taking her absence well, and that shows up in this bit with Jade.
Also, please take WARNING that there are some sensitive themes mentioned in this scrawl, and while they're nothing explicit, they're enough that it might make someone uncomfortable. So please be aware before you head on into this scribble of mine.
Gogamian Language Review:
Imo = father
Ha'imo = mother, or, literally, sub-father
Shak = a curse (don't try this at home, kids.)
Ji = no
With that, please enjoy and I will have more news down below.
Jade collapses onto the couch, exhaustion causing her head to ache and her limbs to feel weighted. She can’t recall the last time she’s had more than a couple hours of solid sleep. They’ve been on the go since two and a half months ago, constantly on the move, searching, questioning, following up leads, and breaking down the proverbial doors on more slave-trading rings than she cares to remember.
It’d taken them just a few weeks to run down any enemies in either their pasts or Aunt Sar and Uncle Novarr’s pasts that might still be alive and holding a grudge and because there had been no ransom demand, they can only assume that it means she’d been taken by a slave-trading operation.
Ordinarily, she might feel a quiet sense of pride over what they’ve accomplished in such a short time, how many syndicates and crime gangs they’ve brought down, but their goal was never the human trafficking.
Despite her weariness, Jaydn is aware of the helpless frustration churning inside her. There is nothing. No whispers. No crumbs. Nothing to lead them to Ruu.
Jay looks worse and gets quieter by the day and Jade wishes that they would just find something, anything at this point that will give him, and the rest of them, hope.
There’s been too much time to consider what may have befallen her, because although Ruusan is strong, she’s not strong in a way that will protect her from the malevolent side of this galaxy, and that’s what Jade’s truly afraid of.
Not that Ruu will be found dead, although that is her second greatest fear, but that she will be dead inside, a shell of her former self, broken down with her good heart crushed into dust.
She’s seen it before in the past, and countless times in these recent months. Women who have had everything taken from them. Bruised, beaten, abused, destroyed until there’s nothing left of who they were before.
Jade shifts onto her back, letting her arm fall over her eyes to block out the faint light from the rest of the room. Her mind is full of images she wishes she could erase and she makes her tensing form relax once more, although her fingers remain clenched into a fist.
That can’t happen to her; not to Ruu.
We just need one sign, one bread crumb to show us where to go. Everyone is looking, talking to their people. Aunt Sar is edging the line of abusing her authority as a grandmaster searching for Ruu and Uncle Nov disappears for days at a time to search.
We’re doing everything we can.
And it’s not. enough. She swallows back the emotion that tightens her throat, feeling hot water flood her eyes. What do we do, Imo? Ha’imo? I can’t bear seeing Jay like this. I can’t bear seeing any of us like this, but Jhidek especially.
Her brother’s pain drives her to the point of distraction sometimes, unable to fathom what it is he feels every time they come out with nothing again. Raina’s being affected by it as well. Shak, everyone is.
Jade sits up without warning and hastily sheds herself of her gear, dropping her weapons on the coffee table before she gets up to go to her room.
Shower. She needs a shower because otherwise she’s going to break down.
Ji. I can’t.
The door slides shut behind her and Jaydn goes about divesting herself of her clothes, stepping out of her boots, throwing her jacket on her bed, and she tries to ignore the fine tremble that’s setting into her hands.
The cold water is a shock to her system. Jade forces herself to remain under the icy rain from the showerhead, leaning her forehead against the wall.
Dear God… help us…
So that's pretty much the situation with Ruusan in the deviant storyline currently. I'd had one idea how things go down with Ruu while Jay and everyone else is looking for her, but my sisters got to me and I decided to take another path, one that will have far more serious repercussions on Ruusan.
It's all deliciously dramatic and just a wee bit angsty.
Just a little awkward, "Is she alright?", sadistic!writer moment there for you all.
News, news. Well, I hope to sit here on the computer and post several more various scribbles from different points in both the Deviant and Original storylines this evening while I am avoiding math and Latin.
Beyond that, I don't have any plans, but I do have a good-sized stack of randomness that I'd like to share with you, including deviant stuff including Jaydn and this hunter with stormy blue eyes who goes by the name Jase Drouais.
Unfortunately, the course of love (true love?) never did run smooth, as I am very fond of proving in my characters' love lives.
Ah well. They shall survive.
With that, I shall cease talking your ear off and go put together a few more posts for your perusal.
As always, thank you ever so much for reading! (And I hit 1000 views today, which is incredibly exciting, and I thank you all for that as well!)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
A Summary of Storylines
This post is going to be entirely dedicated to the explaining of three storylines that myself and my best friend, Penny Kearney, have developed over the past six years of our lives. Well, one of them is six years old; the other two are under one.
There is the Original Storyline, the Steampunk Storyline, and the most recent Deviant Storyline. I've give brief intros to how they each began before each summary.
Also, there is a great chance these will be really confusing to you guys and I'm incredibly sorry for it, but there were just a million things that went on during all that time, so please just leave a comment if you need clarification on something and I'll get back to you with something more understandable as soon as possible.
...And let me warn you that my "summaries", as you will soon see, might as well be novels. I am no good at summarizing, although, in my defense, I am summarizing 20+ years worth of multiple character's lives. At least for the Original Storyline.
One more thing to note: both the Original and Deviant storylines take place in the Zephron Galaxy, which includes several planets, among them Sinjaro Kahn, Uhric, Norsha'ac, Gogam, Karon, Tigersoon, Tiloon, and Klowdarr.
Original Storyline:
Began: Oh, heavens, years ago. Penny and I started talk-gaming (character developing? What do regular writers call that?) with a taciturn Uhrician Elite Force Warrior and a green-eyed intruder who are about as night and day as Penny and I are. I think Sarris and Tara are kind of a testament to our own friendship, in how highly unlikely it is and yet it still happened.
General Summary: Sarris Nadir (Gogamian, UEF Warrior) and Tara Benson (Norsha'acite, bounty hunter) met under rather unlikely circumstances and became dysfunctional friends, though Sarris didn't admit to it for years. Literally, years.
Tara met Nuridarr Vhander during a brief, accidental stint on Gogam, which he helped her get through alive and in one piece and then they both were rescued from the planet by Tara's brother, Luke Benson (bounty hunter as well). Immediately after, Tara, Nuridarr, and Luke took a sudden leave of absence from the galaxy for two years, during which time Sarris an acquaintance through Tara by the name of Novarr Schaefe. (My apologies for similarities between Novarr and Nuridarr's names. Mostly accidental, and you never get them mixed up once you know them.)
After that, Tara and Luke find three of their younger siblings. Their entire family has been missing for several years, and they do find them somewhere between finding Ron, Andro, and Mara and Luke 'dying'. Except he didn't actually die. (Don't ask me, not my characters, and I can't recall anyways.) Following Luke's death by a couple of months, Tara married Nuridarr. Sarris and Novarr are just... living during this time. Not a lot is going on for them.
Tara and Nur's first daughter, Raina, was born a handful of months later, followed closely by Sarris and Novarr's adopted, newborn daughter, Ruusan. And Jhidek/Jay (Tara and Nur's son) came along a bit after that. (Don't worry, that was the end of the baby boom for seven years.) Sarris, a Ronin in the Uhrician Elite Force's ranking system, went into "the reserves", in a way, during all this that way she could be at home to look after Ruusan.
There was another kind of blank seven years, where life just went on and the Vhanders and Schaefe's raised their respective children/child. Jaydn and Merri were adopted/born about the same time. Jaydn was five when Novarr whisked her away from an inevitably bad situation after her parents died/were killed. (The details are still kind of sketchy at that part.) In the following eight years, there were a passel more Vhander children, while the Schaefe household remained safely at two. The two families are far from strangers, to the point where the parents are all "aunties" and "uncles" to each other's offspring.
Jaydn follows in Novarr's footsteps, taking up bounty hunting and eventually turning into something of a loner, which is her downfall in the end. Ruusan, after being lost for a time, decides to become an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic, which means that she's in the ambulance, at the scene of the crash. She attends medical school and takes up a job as an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, where her parents live. It's in the hospital that she meets Cameron Armstrong, a fairly average guy who is dying from a non-contagious, but uncurable, disease. When he asks her to marry him, she does.
Cameron's death ten months later coincides with the birth of their daughter, Vivian. Two months pass, and Sarris works with Tara and Nuridarr to find an apartment near the Vhander home on Norsha'ac for Ruusan and Vivian. Staying on Kahn is only a constant reminder of Cameron for Ruu, and the vote is unaninmous that she needs some time away.
Over the course of two years and through a series of author-caused events to cause a little heart-pounding anxiety and to strengthen bonds, Ruusan falls in love with childhood friend and never-before-romantic-interest, Jhidek. And he falls in love with Vivi, and Ruu too. (What? Vivian's an angel. Anybody would fall in love with her first.)
So they get married, and Ellora, the first Ruu/Jay bundle of adorableness, is born fifteen months later. Jaydn dies from her injuries after her ship is shot down by space pirates, much to the trauma of her family.
Here, I shall end. (Though there is a lot of unaccounted drama, let me assure you.)
Steampunk Storyline:
Began: Sometime in early 2012, Penny and I had been curious as to how Jaydn and Nuridarr would get along, as they've both got the same blood running through their veins and all. We couldn't come up with plausible trouble for them to get into in the original storyline, so we picked them up and moved them to Penny's steampunk world (a city named Sanbourne) which she has with a friend of hers, Katana. It really only served to show Jade's true colors.
General Summary: Nuridarr, now Nathaniel, and Jaydn, shortened to Jade, meet when she's ten-ish and he's eighteen-ish and she's an orphan and he's thrown himself out of his Gogamian crime....syndicate/gang/tribe/thing. Ten years later, and the two of them have, quite successfully, made their living on bounty hunting. Life is good, Jade is happy, and I kind of want her radio that she's got.
Insert Natasha Bennet, a rather fiery woman they nab, who ends up biting Nathan ("Shikhan, should you take something for rabies?" "I've had worse.") before they take her to meet the person who hired them to find her. It turns out to be a Gogamian that Nathaniel knew back when he was still with them. Also a man that Nathan isn't going to hand Tasha over to, so he sends Jade and Tasha off while he faces their client and his goons.
To summarize the rest, because this was an incredibly difficult storyline to write and it's hard to capture everything that happens, Nathaniel falls in love with Tasha, and it doesn't go over well with Jade. She moves out, starts working on her own, and goes to great pains to avoid seeing Tasha.
A lot of things occur in the next year or two.
Jade locates Tasha's missing family with the help of her contact, Charles, and an ex-assassin-turned-bounty-hunter named Jase Drouais gets mixed up in everything through a former connection to the kidnapper and the disappearance of his brother, Markham. Unfortunately, Jade gets laid up with an injured leg and is out of commission for the actual rescue.
Later, there is the appearance of a government official bent on killing all lowlifes. He's sees them as a taint upon the clean-blooded people of higher society in Sanbourne. Jade, Nathan, and his daughter with Tasha, are on the hit-list due to their heritage. After a really close call which Jase, the ex-assassin who she now works with, saves her from, they go to make sure that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are safe and the three of them end up leaving town. Jade, Jase, and Tasha's brother, Lucas (Luke, originally) work together to try and locate, then bring down, the government official, Horace Scott. It is thought for a time that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina perish in a train wreck, which makes life difficult, to say the least.
After that, Penny and I never actually finished talk-gaming it. And I know it sounds like Jade's perfectly balanced through all those events, but she really isn't, and after it turns out that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are alive, she skips town for four years, staying away as long as she needs to so she can screw her head on straight again. A lot happens to her while she's gone, including a couple of near-death experiences, a semi-relationship with a guy named Sato, and a friendship with a woman named Kensey during her last year
who ends up dying from sickness. After that, she goes back to Sanbourne to see if she'll be welcomed back after practically abandoning the people there that cared about her. And while things were far from what they'd been years prior, Nathan and Tara were willing to let her back into their lives to start rebuilding what she'd crumbled.
Deviant Storyline:
Began: Back in August or thereabouts of 2012, with Penny's curiosity over what would've happened if Luke had been unable to locate Tara on Gogam and save her, and by extension, Nuridarr, from the planet. Initially, I was a spectator, interested in the idea for itself and the effect it would have on Sarris. I didn't really become involved until the characters got their revenge for Penny and I wondering if Jaydn might've been an antagonist all along that we'd been trying to make into a protagonist. The question came up of how Jade might've turned out different had she been raised up with good, strong morals while still on Gogam. If that hard setting that she was born for was where she needed to be in order to be instilled with a good heart. The idea caught on quickly, and thus it began.
General Summary:
Tara's transponder is damaged during her initial days on Gogam, so instead of being rescued by Luke, she and Nuridarr are forced to remain on the planet, living on the run from his tribe who've branded him a traitor. She has gives up hope of ever getting off Gogam quickly and they just survive for a year or so. They're negotiating for supplies with an tribe that's an enemy with Nuridarr's old tribe when the tribe is attacked. In the chaos, Tara rescues a three-year-old baby girl named Jaydn after her motherr is killed. (Please don't feel bad, her parents were a far cry from what parents should be.)
For a small amount of time, the plan is to drop her off with another tribe, but Tara falls in love pretty quickly and while Nur was initially opposed to the idea of keeping her, he gets attached as well and they adopt Jaydn as their own.
Over the course of the following six years which are spent constantly moving, fighting to survive against both the planet and other Gogamians, Jade is brought up included in every process, being given her own duties and responsibilities, and she's taught that they all protect each other. Not every man for himself, as the rest of Gogam does.
While Tara gave up on leaving, Jaydn's addition to their family gave Nuridarr a newfound motivation to get Tara and Jade off of Gogam and to a better life out in the rest of Zephron. And he does, joining a pirate gang in order to get them passage on a ship headed off Gogam.
Jade is nine years old when the time to leave comes, and they realize that Tara is pregnant either while on the ship, or shortly after they escape into the rest of the galaxy.
While all this has been happening on Gogam, Sarris has spent the six years searching the galaxy for Tara, not even having a place to start, but refusing to quit until she finds Tara, living or dead. Novarr, only an acquaintance at this point, keeps in touch with her and does some of his own searching, while Luke, unable to get to Tara on Gogam, breaks off his efforts early on to continue looking for their missing family.
After this point, events get fairly fuzzy, as Penny and I haven't even talk-gamed their leaving. But Raina and Jhidek are both born within a couple of years of their getting of Gogam and Jade settles into her role as Imo's (Daddy's) wing mate and big sister with
ease, much to our relief.
Merri follows seven years after Jhidek, when Jade is seventeen, Raina eight, and Jay seven.
In the deviant, their focus as hunters is trained much more on the Gogamians who leave their home planet to terrorize the rest of Zephron and either turning them back or finishing them off. The effect on them as a family is a much more trained, orderly, and possibly an even tighter and closer dynamic than the original. They protect each other and carry out their missions together once Raina and Jhidek get older. (Not sure how they worked the Merri angle when she showed up later.)
Meanwhile, Sarris and Novarr slowly drifted toward each other, Tara's return to their worlds drawing them back together. He's there to help support Sarris as she deals with the guilt she feels over not finding Tara sooner, but eventually it turns to something more.
Ruusan does not go forgotten either. Sarris helped rescue her from a hostage situation on Sinjaro Kahn when Ruusan was ten and on her way back to Norsha'ac following a failed adoption attempt. Always a decisive thinker, Sarris decided that she didn't want to let Ruu go back to the orphanage and worked with the social service system on Kahn to legally adopt her. I'm not sure what her relationship status was with Novarr at the time, but they might've been on the edge of getting married when Sarris picked up Ruu and that was the turning point.
For a few years, the Vhander and Schaefe households would get together, so Ruusan wasn't strangers with Raina, Jhidek, and Merri, but when they got older, the visits dropped off some, possibly because the Vhanders, now with the kids of a safer age to aid in the fight, got busier with missions. Not positive on that account either.
Ruusan headed to med-school on Sinjaro Kahn from Uhric at eighteen, taking a more intensive course and finishing in four and a half years to return to Uhric where her parents and Jensen lived.
(Sarris became a Grandmaster while Tara was gone, which equates to a general or some such, and Jensen is a Ronin [equivalent = colonel] who works as her aide and was with her when she helped to rescue Ruusan. He started as a trusted aide and friend and was basically adopted into the family after a couple of years. Ruu sees him as an older brother and close confidante.)
The unintended silence between the two families came to a rather abrupt end when Jhidek, injured in an explosion while he and Raina were on a mission, dropped in, quite literally, to Ruusan's apartment. Things were touch-and-go, but she saved his life and
things just take off from there. I won't bore you with those details, but suffice it to say, after a couple of spontaneous visits, a close encounter with the bad sort of Gogamian for Ruu, a few months of silence to protect her on Jay's part, a tought fight that ended with a "missing, perhaps dead" news report on the Vhanders, and a conniving Tara, Ruusan and Jhidek worked out what they both wanted. Not without a bit of drama, of course, but they were married just under a month later.
And the rest of the story, as they say, has yet to be told.
And that's all of it! For the moment, at least. The only really "finished" storyline is the Steampunk storyline. The other two kind of go through stop-again-go-again expanding. Currently, Penny and I are caught up in the Deviant again, although we're at the tail end,
instead of the beginning.
To clarify that, we're talk-gaming at two points in the storyline. The first point is with Nuridarr, Tara, and Jaydn on Gogam and Jade is currently seven. The second point is twenty-five-some years down the road, with Ruusan and Jhidek, although I don't think we
truly intended to pick it up as agressively as we have. (It's only mostly my fault; I was curious if Ruu and Jay would work out in the Deviant as they did in the Original.)
Once again, please feel entirely free to either leave a comment here with questions or on my OYAN profile, where I can be found as PenWielder62. These storylines are ones that Penny and I have invested a lot of time and thought into, and they're actually quite
important to me, so I would greatly enjoy helping you clear up whatever it is that I've confused you with.
And thank you so much, as always, for reading. Knowing that there are people who actually enjoy what I write means a great deal to me.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
There is the Original Storyline, the Steampunk Storyline, and the most recent Deviant Storyline. I've give brief intros to how they each began before each summary.
Also, there is a great chance these will be really confusing to you guys and I'm incredibly sorry for it, but there were just a million things that went on during all that time, so please just leave a comment if you need clarification on something and I'll get back to you with something more understandable as soon as possible.
...And let me warn you that my "summaries", as you will soon see, might as well be novels. I am no good at summarizing, although, in my defense, I am summarizing 20+ years worth of multiple character's lives. At least for the Original Storyline.
One more thing to note: both the Original and Deviant storylines take place in the Zephron Galaxy, which includes several planets, among them Sinjaro Kahn, Uhric, Norsha'ac, Gogam, Karon, Tigersoon, Tiloon, and Klowdarr.
Original Storyline:
Began: Oh, heavens, years ago. Penny and I started talk-gaming (character developing? What do regular writers call that?) with a taciturn Uhrician Elite Force Warrior and a green-eyed intruder who are about as night and day as Penny and I are. I think Sarris and Tara are kind of a testament to our own friendship, in how highly unlikely it is and yet it still happened.
General Summary: Sarris Nadir (Gogamian, UEF Warrior) and Tara Benson (Norsha'acite, bounty hunter) met under rather unlikely circumstances and became dysfunctional friends, though Sarris didn't admit to it for years. Literally, years.
Tara met Nuridarr Vhander during a brief, accidental stint on Gogam, which he helped her get through alive and in one piece and then they both were rescued from the planet by Tara's brother, Luke Benson (bounty hunter as well). Immediately after, Tara, Nuridarr, and Luke took a sudden leave of absence from the galaxy for two years, during which time Sarris an acquaintance through Tara by the name of Novarr Schaefe. (My apologies for similarities between Novarr and Nuridarr's names. Mostly accidental, and you never get them mixed up once you know them.)
After that, Tara and Luke find three of their younger siblings. Their entire family has been missing for several years, and they do find them somewhere between finding Ron, Andro, and Mara and Luke 'dying'. Except he didn't actually die. (Don't ask me, not my characters, and I can't recall anyways.) Following Luke's death by a couple of months, Tara married Nuridarr. Sarris and Novarr are just... living during this time. Not a lot is going on for them.
Tara and Nur's first daughter, Raina, was born a handful of months later, followed closely by Sarris and Novarr's adopted, newborn daughter, Ruusan. And Jhidek/Jay (Tara and Nur's son) came along a bit after that. (Don't worry, that was the end of the baby boom for seven years.) Sarris, a Ronin in the Uhrician Elite Force's ranking system, went into "the reserves", in a way, during all this that way she could be at home to look after Ruusan.
There was another kind of blank seven years, where life just went on and the Vhanders and Schaefe's raised their respective children/child. Jaydn and Merri were adopted/born about the same time. Jaydn was five when Novarr whisked her away from an inevitably bad situation after her parents died/were killed. (The details are still kind of sketchy at that part.) In the following eight years, there were a passel more Vhander children, while the Schaefe household remained safely at two. The two families are far from strangers, to the point where the parents are all "aunties" and "uncles" to each other's offspring.
Jaydn follows in Novarr's footsteps, taking up bounty hunting and eventually turning into something of a loner, which is her downfall in the end. Ruusan, after being lost for a time, decides to become an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic, which means that she's in the ambulance, at the scene of the crash. She attends medical school and takes up a job as an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, where her parents live. It's in the hospital that she meets Cameron Armstrong, a fairly average guy who is dying from a non-contagious, but uncurable, disease. When he asks her to marry him, she does.
Cameron's death ten months later coincides with the birth of their daughter, Vivian. Two months pass, and Sarris works with Tara and Nuridarr to find an apartment near the Vhander home on Norsha'ac for Ruusan and Vivian. Staying on Kahn is only a constant reminder of Cameron for Ruu, and the vote is unaninmous that she needs some time away.
Over the course of two years and through a series of author-caused events to cause a little heart-pounding anxiety and to strengthen bonds, Ruusan falls in love with childhood friend and never-before-romantic-interest, Jhidek. And he falls in love with Vivi, and Ruu too. (What? Vivian's an angel. Anybody would fall in love with her first.)
So they get married, and Ellora, the first Ruu/Jay bundle of adorableness, is born fifteen months later. Jaydn dies from her injuries after her ship is shot down by space pirates, much to the trauma of her family.
Here, I shall end. (Though there is a lot of unaccounted drama, let me assure you.)
Steampunk Storyline:
Began: Sometime in early 2012, Penny and I had been curious as to how Jaydn and Nuridarr would get along, as they've both got the same blood running through their veins and all. We couldn't come up with plausible trouble for them to get into in the original storyline, so we picked them up and moved them to Penny's steampunk world (a city named Sanbourne) which she has with a friend of hers, Katana. It really only served to show Jade's true colors.
General Summary: Nuridarr, now Nathaniel, and Jaydn, shortened to Jade, meet when she's ten-ish and he's eighteen-ish and she's an orphan and he's thrown himself out of his Gogamian crime....syndicate/gang/tribe/thing. Ten years later, and the two of them have, quite successfully, made their living on bounty hunting. Life is good, Jade is happy, and I kind of want her radio that she's got.
Insert Natasha Bennet, a rather fiery woman they nab, who ends up biting Nathan ("Shikhan, should you take something for rabies?" "I've had worse.") before they take her to meet the person who hired them to find her. It turns out to be a Gogamian that Nathaniel knew back when he was still with them. Also a man that Nathan isn't going to hand Tasha over to, so he sends Jade and Tasha off while he faces their client and his goons.
To summarize the rest, because this was an incredibly difficult storyline to write and it's hard to capture everything that happens, Nathaniel falls in love with Tasha, and it doesn't go over well with Jade. She moves out, starts working on her own, and goes to great pains to avoid seeing Tasha.
A lot of things occur in the next year or two.
Jade locates Tasha's missing family with the help of her contact, Charles, and an ex-assassin-turned-bounty-hunter named Jase Drouais gets mixed up in everything through a former connection to the kidnapper and the disappearance of his brother, Markham. Unfortunately, Jade gets laid up with an injured leg and is out of commission for the actual rescue.
Later, there is the appearance of a government official bent on killing all lowlifes. He's sees them as a taint upon the clean-blooded people of higher society in Sanbourne. Jade, Nathan, and his daughter with Tasha, are on the hit-list due to their heritage. After a really close call which Jase, the ex-assassin who she now works with, saves her from, they go to make sure that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are safe and the three of them end up leaving town. Jade, Jase, and Tasha's brother, Lucas (Luke, originally) work together to try and locate, then bring down, the government official, Horace Scott. It is thought for a time that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina perish in a train wreck, which makes life difficult, to say the least.
After that, Penny and I never actually finished talk-gaming it. And I know it sounds like Jade's perfectly balanced through all those events, but she really isn't, and after it turns out that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are alive, she skips town for four years, staying away as long as she needs to so she can screw her head on straight again. A lot happens to her while she's gone, including a couple of near-death experiences, a semi-relationship with a guy named Sato, and a friendship with a woman named Kensey during her last year
who ends up dying from sickness. After that, she goes back to Sanbourne to see if she'll be welcomed back after practically abandoning the people there that cared about her. And while things were far from what they'd been years prior, Nathan and Tara were willing to let her back into their lives to start rebuilding what she'd crumbled.
Deviant Storyline:
Began: Back in August or thereabouts of 2012, with Penny's curiosity over what would've happened if Luke had been unable to locate Tara on Gogam and save her, and by extension, Nuridarr, from the planet. Initially, I was a spectator, interested in the idea for itself and the effect it would have on Sarris. I didn't really become involved until the characters got their revenge for Penny and I wondering if Jaydn might've been an antagonist all along that we'd been trying to make into a protagonist. The question came up of how Jade might've turned out different had she been raised up with good, strong morals while still on Gogam. If that hard setting that she was born for was where she needed to be in order to be instilled with a good heart. The idea caught on quickly, and thus it began.
General Summary:
Tara's transponder is damaged during her initial days on Gogam, so instead of being rescued by Luke, she and Nuridarr are forced to remain on the planet, living on the run from his tribe who've branded him a traitor. She has gives up hope of ever getting off Gogam quickly and they just survive for a year or so. They're negotiating for supplies with an tribe that's an enemy with Nuridarr's old tribe when the tribe is attacked. In the chaos, Tara rescues a three-year-old baby girl named Jaydn after her motherr is killed. (Please don't feel bad, her parents were a far cry from what parents should be.)
For a small amount of time, the plan is to drop her off with another tribe, but Tara falls in love pretty quickly and while Nur was initially opposed to the idea of keeping her, he gets attached as well and they adopt Jaydn as their own.
Over the course of the following six years which are spent constantly moving, fighting to survive against both the planet and other Gogamians, Jade is brought up included in every process, being given her own duties and responsibilities, and she's taught that they all protect each other. Not every man for himself, as the rest of Gogam does.
While Tara gave up on leaving, Jaydn's addition to their family gave Nuridarr a newfound motivation to get Tara and Jade off of Gogam and to a better life out in the rest of Zephron. And he does, joining a pirate gang in order to get them passage on a ship headed off Gogam.
Jade is nine years old when the time to leave comes, and they realize that Tara is pregnant either while on the ship, or shortly after they escape into the rest of the galaxy.
While all this has been happening on Gogam, Sarris has spent the six years searching the galaxy for Tara, not even having a place to start, but refusing to quit until she finds Tara, living or dead. Novarr, only an acquaintance at this point, keeps in touch with her and does some of his own searching, while Luke, unable to get to Tara on Gogam, breaks off his efforts early on to continue looking for their missing family.
After this point, events get fairly fuzzy, as Penny and I haven't even talk-gamed their leaving. But Raina and Jhidek are both born within a couple of years of their getting of Gogam and Jade settles into her role as Imo's (Daddy's) wing mate and big sister with
ease, much to our relief.
Merri follows seven years after Jhidek, when Jade is seventeen, Raina eight, and Jay seven.
In the deviant, their focus as hunters is trained much more on the Gogamians who leave their home planet to terrorize the rest of Zephron and either turning them back or finishing them off. The effect on them as a family is a much more trained, orderly, and possibly an even tighter and closer dynamic than the original. They protect each other and carry out their missions together once Raina and Jhidek get older. (Not sure how they worked the Merri angle when she showed up later.)
Meanwhile, Sarris and Novarr slowly drifted toward each other, Tara's return to their worlds drawing them back together. He's there to help support Sarris as she deals with the guilt she feels over not finding Tara sooner, but eventually it turns to something more.
Ruusan does not go forgotten either. Sarris helped rescue her from a hostage situation on Sinjaro Kahn when Ruusan was ten and on her way back to Norsha'ac following a failed adoption attempt. Always a decisive thinker, Sarris decided that she didn't want to let Ruu go back to the orphanage and worked with the social service system on Kahn to legally adopt her. I'm not sure what her relationship status was with Novarr at the time, but they might've been on the edge of getting married when Sarris picked up Ruu and that was the turning point.
For a few years, the Vhander and Schaefe households would get together, so Ruusan wasn't strangers with Raina, Jhidek, and Merri, but when they got older, the visits dropped off some, possibly because the Vhanders, now with the kids of a safer age to aid in the fight, got busier with missions. Not positive on that account either.
Ruusan headed to med-school on Sinjaro Kahn from Uhric at eighteen, taking a more intensive course and finishing in four and a half years to return to Uhric where her parents and Jensen lived.
(Sarris became a Grandmaster while Tara was gone, which equates to a general or some such, and Jensen is a Ronin [equivalent = colonel] who works as her aide and was with her when she helped to rescue Ruusan. He started as a trusted aide and friend and was basically adopted into the family after a couple of years. Ruu sees him as an older brother and close confidante.)
The unintended silence between the two families came to a rather abrupt end when Jhidek, injured in an explosion while he and Raina were on a mission, dropped in, quite literally, to Ruusan's apartment. Things were touch-and-go, but she saved his life and
things just take off from there. I won't bore you with those details, but suffice it to say, after a couple of spontaneous visits, a close encounter with the bad sort of Gogamian for Ruu, a few months of silence to protect her on Jay's part, a tought fight that ended with a "missing, perhaps dead" news report on the Vhanders, and a conniving Tara, Ruusan and Jhidek worked out what they both wanted. Not without a bit of drama, of course, but they were married just under a month later.
And the rest of the story, as they say, has yet to be told.
And that's all of it! For the moment, at least. The only really "finished" storyline is the Steampunk storyline. The other two kind of go through stop-again-go-again expanding. Currently, Penny and I are caught up in the Deviant again, although we're at the tail end,
instead of the beginning.
To clarify that, we're talk-gaming at two points in the storyline. The first point is with Nuridarr, Tara, and Jaydn on Gogam and Jade is currently seven. The second point is twenty-five-some years down the road, with Ruusan and Jhidek, although I don't think we
truly intended to pick it up as agressively as we have. (It's only mostly my fault; I was curious if Ruu and Jay would work out in the Deviant as they did in the Original.)
Once again, please feel entirely free to either leave a comment here with questions or on my OYAN profile, where I can be found as PenWielder62. These storylines are ones that Penny and I have invested a lot of time and thought into, and they're actually quite
important to me, so I would greatly enjoy helping you clear up whatever it is that I've confused you with.
And thank you so much, as always, for reading. Knowing that there are people who actually enjoy what I write means a great deal to me.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
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