Writing: Deviant -- Jaydn's Resolve and Jase Drouais

    As I promised, I am back after writing my email. I'm going to attempt to jam this all into one long post, but it might end up as two, and if it does, make sure to read part one (I'll edit the title if need be) then part two, or you'll be really discombobulated.

    There isn't really a lot of explanation for these bits as they explain themselves pretty well. But for age reference, Jaydn is nineteen in the first bit, twenty-four in the second and third, twenty-five in the fourth, and twenty-eight in the fifth. Jase is within a year of her age, maybe a wee bit older, if you were curious.

    Also, a non-serious warning that the notorious, stop-in-the-middle-of-a-tense-moment part of me struck in the fourth bit, and a serious WARNING for the mentioning of sensitive themes in the third bit in a bit more detail than my last Deviant Jade scrawl that I posted. So if you're skittish around that stuff, you might want to skip the third segment of this series of scrawls.

    I think you all have figured out Gogamian fairly well by not, and if you haven't, well, I'm going to make you do the legwork. The most recent language reference is located in the last Deviant Jade scrawl I posted.


    Jaydn leaned back against the couch, rubbing Merri's back absently while the two year old snoozed against her chest, as she’d been doing for the past half hour. A couple of feet away, Jhidek sat tinkering with her comlink that had been damaged which she and Imo had been on a mission two days prior.
    She didn't hold out too much hope that he'd be able to fix it, but was willing to let him give it a shot before she just grabbed another one from their cache of replacement gear.
    Stretched out on the couch behind her, Raina was absorbed with a book, the only thing truly capable of keeping her still for more than five minutes. The relative quiet was soothing to the nineteen-year-old.
    Imo and Ha'imo had gone out to meet with one of Ha'imo's old hunter friends about a possible Gogamian threat an hour earlier. Jade had been more than glad to stay at home with her siblings, still low on energy and motivation to do much in the wake of the longer job she and Imo had been gone on up until the prior day.
    Brown eyes were distant as she drifted through her thoughts even while she made sure to keep an eye on Jhidek so he wouldn't zap himself or cause the comm. to overload by accident. Merri shifted and Jade glanced down to see if she was awakening, but she resettled and the young woman smiled faintly.
    There had been an ultimatum weighing on her mind for some time, since the pirates had found them and she'd been stabbed, but now Jade made up her mind.
    No one else but them.
    Jade didn’t delude herself. Imo and Ha’imo wouldn’t live forever. Time was a bitter foe mankind had fought for a millennia and lost to for just as long. If nothing happened to them sooner, it would take them both and she and her siblings would have to rely solely on each other. They’d watch out for and protect each other.
     No one else but them.
     She would never leave her siblings, not unless Death was the one who came and then she would fight against it with everything she had left to stay with them a little longer.
     And Jade knows this means she will never have a family of her own. A new family means her priorities will have to shift. Her children would have to be protected as well, because this life is not one she will ever be able to leave behind and they would have to be shielded from that danger.
     The hollowness at this thought is something she’s aware of. Her baby sister’s quiet breaths as she slumbers remind her of what this choice will mean for her, but she closes her heart off from it.
     Jade knows that her parents will have a hard time accepting her decision and while she’s always wanted to do what makes them happy, her mind has been made up.
    This is my decision, my choice, my resolve.
    She watches Jay work, is aware of Raina behind her, and brushes her fingers over Merri’s soft cheek. Maybe one day she’ll be able to keep an eye on their children.
    Auntie. Jade tests the word inwardly, and nods to herself.

    ~~*~~

    Maybe it was because she was so tired, worked into the dirt and ready to be home again. Maybe it was the low lights, pounding music, and dancing people reminding her that she was still only twenty-four.
    He didn’t belong there, in that setting, any more than she did.
    The strobe lights that flashed across the bar area of the club brought out the stormy blue of his eyes, illuminated his midnight black hair.
    Jade moved her gaze onwards before he noticed, watching the rest of the room while she waited for Imo to return from upstairs. He sat down two stools away and ordered something she didn’t hear the name of.
    The glance was seen in her peripherals, lingering a beat too long to be cursory, not long enough to be interest, but the correct amount of time to make deductions, before his eyes moved on as well.
    She wondered if he was as aware of her as she was of him, but it didn’t matter either way.
    No one else but them. Her decision from five years earlier.
    Another man approached on the other side of the stormy-eyed stranger. She caught the name uttered in greeting.
    Jase.
    Even if Jade hadn’t wanted it to, her acute mind committed it to memory, sealing away the storm blue, the raven black, the name Jase.
    The newcomer sat down next to him and their voices were covered up by the bass that made the very air shiver as if alive. Her drink was cold in her hand. Non-alcoholic but high in caffeine.
    It set her nerves on edge and that was fine.
    The second man stayed for only a few minutes. Imo would be back soon. Jade didn’t look forward to the rain they’d had to trek through to get here. Istilanda was beautiful in the summer, but the winters brought constant downpours, although the temperature didn’t drop below fifty.
    That much was a relief, at the very least. All the same, she’d just starting to dry out.
    I miss Ha’imo… It’d been a long three days constantly on the move.
    The beverage helps to calm her again.
    He hasn’t moved. Jade doesn’t think it’s right to call him by his name without permission even in the privacy of her mind. That’s when she decides she’ll need to sleep at the first available opportunity. If Imo’s conversation pans out as they hope it will, they can go home.
    Her eyes slipped shut as she leaned her arms against the bar.
    “Jade.” Imo’s voice.
    Did it carry?
    The young woman straightened and rose, already having settled her bill with the bar-tender. Imo started walking and she followed, ready to be out of the club, away from the music, the people.
    Whether he glanced after her she doesn’t know. Jade knew she wouldn’t see the man with the stormy blue eyes who didn’t belong again, and that was okay.
    No one else but them.
    And Imo probably wouldn’t have liked him anyways.

~~*~~

     Jade lounged in her starfighter, finishing up with her calls to the various contacts and information hoarders she knew and could trust to keep their mouths shut.
    That way, there was a low chance of either Imo or Ha’imo hearing about her researching, at least from them. They were already aware that something was up, but hadn’t asked yet and Jade wasn’t sure what she would say if they did ask.
    There hadn’t been many search results in the public records for the name Jase, blue-grey eyes, and black hair; even less when she initially searched through solely Istilanda’s records.
    Drouais, Jasen. Twenty-five years old. Parents deceased. Three siblings.
    Istilanda’s ‘secure’ files listed him as an active bounty hunter. But Kahn’s secure profile on him was far more interesting.
    Bounty hunter, yes, but also former assassin.
    The calls Jade had put out to her contacts were to learn more about that time of his life.
    They hadn’t known much. Vesper had said he was a loner, though mostly because K-Sec had him on a tight leash and there weren’t many hunters that wanted to work too closely with K-Sec. He’d done hard time for a few years, only for K-Sec to offer him a deal that would never have flown if put through the proper channels.
    The scandal of it all was the gossip of the contacts who did know about Drouais, and even those who didn’t. They’d let him out of jail decades early and cleaned up his public profile in exchange for him doing some dirty work.
    Even Jaydn, used to the sometimes illicit activities of governments, was a bit surprised by that turn of events.
    She watched out of the hangar bay’s entrance at the stars, mind turning over the data she had collected.
    It wasn’t matching up.
    People would say assassin and she saw someone who pulled the trigger for money, who had a cold, feeling-less edge to everything they did, and there had been none of that in the man she’d seen at the club.
    He’d had two kills, both on Istilanda, both in the city where he’d lived. One had been a high-profile crime syndicate boss and the other had been a senator whose corruption had run deeper than his pockets.
    And those two targets had been too close while being too far away to be part of a paid job. So Jade looked into the possibility of personal motive.
    It wasn’t because of his parents; his father had been Istilandan Police and had been killed during a raid on a completely different syndicate. From the sound of it, his mother hadn’t ever recovered from his loss and had succumbed to illness the year following.
    Both the brothers were businessmen for an upright and reputable real estate company, with nothing fishy to be found within a hundred miles of either them or their bosses.
    Which left the sister.
    She’d looked over everything public records had on his family, though, and besides Jase’s activities, there was nothing to be concerned about.
    Jade drummed her nails on the arm rest. I’m missing something. She reopened the file on the sister on the datapad in her lap, dark gaze narrowed in thought.
    Drouais, Danica. Twenty years old. Her picture revealed a woman who could’ve been Jase’s twin.
    Even if she hadn’t borne eyes that made Jaydn want to sit and just memorize the way they looked, she would’ve said Danica was stunning.
    Her natural, breathtaking beauty brought a thought back to the forefront of Jade’s mind. That senator—
    Scrolling back through the news report she’d found ten minutes prior, her suspicions were confirmed by the long list of crimes he’d committed that had only been discovered in the wake of his assassination.
    Apparently, the dirt-bag had kept girls on his private estate for his sick pleasures and if Danica Drouais had fit his profile…
    Jade had to shake her head as the pieces began to fall into place in the mental picture she had been constructing.
    Raina leaned into their small hangar space at that moment, saying that Aunt Sarris and Uncle Novarr had arrived with Ruusan and Ha’imo wanted them to join them.
    She acknowledged her sister’s call and swung from the cockpit of her starfighter.
    Thoughts swirled through her, continuing to put the puzzle together, but she was fairly certain of one thing as she locked up the bay behind herself.
    He’d been willing to give up his future with his family to protect his sister and probably his brothers as well by killing two men; Jade was still fitting the crime syndicate boss into the series of events, but was positive that he played an important part in everything that had occurred.
    It might’ve been horrifying to other people, normal people, but Jaydn had killed her first man at six years old to protect her mother, and countless others in the seventeen years since in defense of her family. His actions, though extreme, were ones that she could relate to.

~~*~~

    Her heart was pounding in her throat as she darted through the closing doors of the underground metro, making it with a moment to spare. A couple of people glanced up as the doors sealed shut and she leaned against them, taking in controlled breaths to bring her racing pulse back under control.
    Jade wasn’t a fan of Kahn’s countless subterranean metro lines – affectionately called “the tube” by long-term residents of the planet – the enclosed space a bad one to be caught in.
    The choice had been taken from her today though as she’d had to outmatch several pursuers. Speaking of which…
    Retrieving her comlink from the inner pocket of her coat, Jade keyed a message to Imo, telling him they needed to rendezvous at an alternate location. He had Jhidek and Raina with him and while she wasn’t sure their meeting spot hadn’t been compromised, they couldn’t take that risk.
    The comm. vibrated once to indicate her message had been sent and Jade went to study the map of the stations that was displayed on the wall, keeping an eye on the other occupants of the transit car.
    It took a few moments to calculate a path to the second rendezvous point as she plotted a winding, backtracking trail through an upcoming hub of activity that would be bursting with people right now. Jade determined the station where she would switch lines then settled with her back to the rest of the car’s inhabitants to wait.
    The tube itself was almost soundless, with only a faint whistling from outside to indicate the rapid speed at which they traveled. Inside, though, was alive with the quiet voices of the travelers, talking with each other and on their comms. The latter was practically unheard of on Uhric, with the majority of the planet’s inhabitants following an unspoken rule of politeness to refrain from conversations over comlink.
    That was just one of several reasons why Jade preferred Uhric to Sinjaro Kahn, despite Kahn’s tolerance of bounty hunters coming and going.
    A man entered the compartment through the connecting passages located at the ends of the cars, and Jaydn watched him in the reflection of the doors which she stood before. The tension in her shoulders loosened when he gave no sign of searching the faces of the other passengers.
    There had been no way for her to ascertain whether her pursuers had made it onto the metro as well, and she wills the train to hurry and reach her destination.
    Minutes seemed to crawl pass. Jade received confirmation from Imo about the change along with a bidding to be careful. That drew a brief smile from her.
    Two stops came and went, and she was beginning to think that she’d managed to lose them at the station where she’d gotten on when a commotion at the other end of the car drew her attention.
    The third one was nowhere to be seen, but the two older men were making their way through the compartment, their experienced gazes going over the inhabitants. Jade made sure her back was towards them, eyes flicking to the door, which had closed moments prior, sealing her into the tube until the next stop. But now there were several other passengers standing in the car, getting themselves settled.
    She used them as a cover, making sure to keep her movements easy and sure. Nothing brought attention like slinking around. There was a call.
    “Stop right there!”
    Shak.
    Jade kept moving, jamming her elbow into the locking mechanism for the door as she got to the other side. It wouldn’t keep them for long, but it would buy her enough time to pass through this car and get to the next.
    Focus from years of similar situation kept her calm, her pace easy despite its length. Her pursuers had security uniforms on; if the rest of the passengers caught wind that she was their target, they would aid the false officers, and not herself.
    Seven strides away from the next car. Jade would keep walking, slowing them with locked doors until the train stopped again and she could escape into the station.
    I hate traveling on the tube.
    This car had more people, with quite a few standing and holding onto the hanging handholds. She was almost to the next connecting door when a hand caught her arm and jerked her to a sudden halt.
    Instinct burst through her that Jaydn had to quell to a simple, but tight, grip on the wrist of her assaulter – male, her mind informed –, her brown eyes flicking to where he stood near the wall on the left.
    Stormy grey-blue met her gaze and her initial surprise gave him the edge he needed. Jade found herself towed out of the middle of the car, moved between Drouais and the curving wall of the train as there was an impatient banging against the transparasteel window in the access point she’d passed through moments earlier.
    She had half a minute, tops, and her mind was blanking on what to do. She had yet to let go of his wrist, but he twisted out of her hold with a simple movement and caged her in with his arms.
    Jade stopped breathing at his proximity, the sharp, clean, distinctly male smell that filled her senses. She flattened herself back against the wall. What are you trying to do? She wanted to ask, staring up at him, but she couldn’t trust her voice right now.
    Drouais’ gaze narrowed, then he bent his head so his words came next to her ear, quiet but intense. “Play along if you don’t want to be caught, Vhander.”
    Imo, what do I do?
    Jade longed to be able to turn to one of her parents for help at that moment and instead had only herself to rely on to make the decision.
    It was either him or her pursuers and right now, the ex-assassin that she’d seen once in a club was the better option. She glanced to the side at him, only seeing his ear and part of his jaw, and nodded once. Her forehead bumped into his shoulder with the short motion.
    Jase Drouais slid his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. Jade felt fear rise up in her throat, tensing to attack him if she needed to. He pinched her and the message was clear. Relax.
    While the young woman had never participated in this style of detection avoidance, she was aware of the theory behind it. Sometimes the best way to hide was in plain sight and Jase was offering – forcing? – her to take that route.
    There was a hiss as the door slid open, almost undetectable, then the angry murmurs of the two men registered in her hearing and Jade knew she had moments.
    Turning her head the other direction so they wouldn’t glance over and see her face, Jade leaned hesitatingly into the taller hunter whose frame seemed to envelop her. Arms. What did one do with their arms at this point?
    Jase’ free hand moved down her shoulder to her elbow, pulling it up so one of her arms went around his waist. She mirrored that position with her other limb, clasping her fingers together at the small of his back and wondered if he could feel the faint tremble in them.
    She was aware of how he pulled his unzipped coat forward to hide her away within it as well. The collar of it brushed her nose and Jade resisted the urge to wrinkle her features in response.
    This is not what I had in mind when I wanted to learn more about him.
    And Drouais had apparently done his research on her and Imo in return. Jaydn supposed whether that was a good thing or not would be determined in the next few minutes.
    The young woman could hear them approaching, their boots falling heavily on the train’s patterned floor. The voice overhead began to announce the next station. And it was all overlaid with the steady beating of Jase’s heart beneath her ear.
    He was shorter than Imo, and slimmer. Hugging him was strange and Jade didn’t know how she would ever explain this to the rest of her family if they found out.
    Hopefully they wouldn’t though, because this didn’t matter. It couldn’t. Her jaw tightened a fraction. No one else but them.
    The two men were closer. Jade squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her face closer to Jase, mentally planning a counter-offense if they discovered her. All it would take was one question to one of the other passengers who would’ve seen her coming through here. Unless they were particularly unobservant, they could blow the whistle on this deception in a moment.
    The overhead called the name of the station again, approximating half a minute until arrival.
    The heavy tread came nearer.

~~*~~

    Jade sat on the beach, running her fingers through the sand as the salty breeze sifted through her loose hair.
    The overcast skies allowed the choppy waves a gray hint to their blue depths, bringing similarly shaded eyes to her thoughts.
    It had been years since their last encounter on Kahn in the metro, and she had heard little about him or his activity in the hunter world since.
    Jaydn had told herself numerous times in that time that she didn’t want their paths to cross again, that she didn’t notice that shivering, tentative connection between the two of them, even though her subconscious had told her otherwise in many vivid ways.
    A small family registered in her peripherals, strolling along the beach, nearer to where the ocean licked at the shore. The two children raced ahead, their bare feet kicking up sand and their laughter carrying on the wind.
    Her brown gaze followed their progress, lost in thought, before she closed her eyes and just breathed in sea air, so different from anywhere else she had been.
    All the planets that she’d seen after leaving Gogam eighteen years earlier were captivating, each in their own way, but some of them were more entrancing then others.
    Istalanda was one of them, with its endless oceans and smooth sands that were so unlike the coarse grit found everywhere on Gogam’s rough surface.
    The children’s excited calls drifted to meet her ears again, despite their having almost disappeared around a bend in the coast a few hundred feet to her left. Jade contemplated how much time she had until she needed to get moving. Her errand was successfully completed and Ha’imo wanted her back to accompany her on another job.
    All in a day’s work…
    A soft swish of a footfall in the sand caused her eyes to open again, going to the side to see who was approaching.
    Somehow, Jaydn wasn’t surprised to see him standing there, stormy blue eyes considering her for a long moment.
    Jase looked older than he had three years ago in the tube, and maybe a bit taller, but Jade supposed the time had worn a bit on her as well.
    After a bit, she glanced to the empty space beside her. A silent invitation, and then she looked back out to the sea to try and calm the way her heart had sped its pace.
    The other Hunter accepted wordlessly, dropping easily to sit at her side and he leaned back on his hands, seeming perfectly at ease where he was. Jade envied him that calm.
    In the corner of her eye, she saw the wind toy with his hair like it did hers and the quiet reigned for several minutes longer. She was the one to break it, her arms looped loosely around her knees.
    “Visiting your siblings?” It was a gamble, beginning with this, one that depended on just how clueless he believed she was.
    There was a pause from the man before he replied. “…Just checking up on them.”
    Jade was glad that he hadn’t severely underestimated how much she’d discovered. It would’ve been just about insulting, had she been one to take offense over such things, and anyways, didn’t they know each other better than that by now?
    “Job?” Jase returned after a beat.
    “Contact,” she corrected easily, taking in a quiet breath and wishing that this didn’t hurt quite so much.
    “Aa…”
    Jade had questions, and while she would’ve liked to ask them, she was very aware of the internal battle that was being fought over his very presence right now. She knew the effect Drouais had on her, but she also knew of her decision, made almost ten years prior that had never been threatened before she’d met him.
    She had to know, though. The answer had been taunting her, remaining just out of reach due to a lack of insight. “The senator wanted her and that’s why you killed him. What part did the crime lord play?”
    At first, Jaydn didn’t think Jase would answer, judging by the way he stilled.
    But the Hunter spoke, slowly and with a subtle edge that Jade was mostly certain wasn’t directed at her.
    “The senator hired him to kill my brothers and deliver Danica to his estate.” Short, succinct, but telling much.     Kill only one, and there would’ve been the other to contend with later. Kill both and solve the problem. She nodded once. One of her theories had included this, but she hadn’t been able to find connections between the politician and the criminal to prove anything.
    “I’ve heard about you and your family. For people relatively hard to find, you tend to stir up a lot of chatter.” Jase commented and Jaydn couldn’t decide if he was fishing for something or just saying it for the sake of saying it.
    “Does that mean you’ve been looking?” Jade countered, her voice quiet as she turned her head so she could look at him and found that gaze that had haunted her for years already watching.
    “Would it matter?”
    Jade paused. Would it?
    The reply that came to her immediately was a resounding ji. It wouldn’t because it couldn’t.
    I won’t leave them alone in the years to come. Merri especially.
    But the other part of herself that would take these brief respites on Istilanda and that could’ve sat and just stared at Jase’s eyes, trying to memorize the way they looked, wanted to say ey, yes, it would.
    The struggle must’ve shown on her face because he sat up, slowly, carefully, with another faint swish of sand so that their gazes were level, the expression on his own features one of patience.
    “…I can’t leave them alone, Jasen.” Jade said at last, addressing him by name for the first time and looking away in the same moment, back towards the waves that broke upon the beach. “My siblings. Merri is only eleven and with the life we lead, something could happen any day, to any of us. If something happens to—to our parents, I can’t have any other priorities but to protect them.”
    Whatever his reaction was, she didn’t see it.
    But she did hear his reply, the sincerity in his voice. “I understand.”
    Jade frowned as he stood, but instead of leaving, held out a hand to help her up. After a hesitation, she took the offer and let him hoist her to her feet. His gaze was steady, looking into hers, as he released her and put his hands in his pockets.
    “I would ask something, though,” Jase continued, watching her, now with a hint of guardedness.
    Jade brushed the sand off her clothes and nodded for him to go on, even while she tried to guess what was going through his mind.
    “That if these crop up,” he glanced around at their surroundings, the empty beach and the looming clouds, then back to her. “We keep them.”
    Understanding dawned in her mind and Jaydn studied him, thinking through what the request might have to offer, what it would mean, and what that might end up doing to her.
    Ji.
    I can’t lead him on.
    And so Jade shook her head once, choosing not to speak and letting the action speak for her.
    His eyes – was she going to see them again after this? – were unreadable. Jade wondered if her decision had hurt him, because she could feel the hollowness in her chest growing.
    Then Jase nodded and he was gone a moment later, pacing along the beach away from her.
    She left as well, because Ha’imo was waiting for her and emotion was rising in her throat, choking and suffocating and she’d never felt this way before.


    And thus ends Jase and Jaydn (sorry for the proximity of name spellings; not sure what possessed me when I named him that) for the next seven years. She's searching him out for all the kidnapping stuff though, for his expertise and experience in dealing with slave-traders and the such. Which is, of course, seven some years down the road.

    At this point, I don't know if they're going to work out. They could, but they could just as easily not work out. This whole business with Ruu could either push her closer to him or cause her to draw even farther away. We'll have to see.

    At any rate, I hope you found these interesting, and isn't baby Merri just so adorable? I'm ready to just steal her and cuddle her, myself.

    Please feel free to leave a comment with feedback or if you need anything explained. I enjoy helping clear up the confusion I cause. Thank you for reading!

    Ad astra per aspera.
    To the stars, through difficulties.

    P.S. This is my fiftieth post already. Two landmarks in one day! You all are amazing for sticking around this long, honestly. Have an amazingly good day, everybody. *twinkle*

Writing: Deviant Jaydn: "Years"

    As always, life; it eats me. As does schoolwork, but what else is new in the life of a sophomore highschooler, huh?

    I was revisiting my deviant documents just now and realized I had a short series of scribbles for Jaydn that didn't need any editing.

    They're basically brief glimpses at the first nine years of Jade's life on Gogam, with an added little blip on the end that kind of wrote itself when I was scrawling down the various years.

  Gogamian Translation:
    Imo = father
    Ha'imo = mother (or, literally, sub-father)
    Virke-yset = green eyes
    Shikhan = somewhat fluid, chieftan/acknowledgement of someone higher in rank than yourself


   At one year, Jaydn is learning very, very quickly how angry her parents can be if provoked, and teaches herself to keep quiet, to play out of sight, and not to cry no matter how badly it might hurt.

   At two years, Jaydn is realizing that it’s not just her that her parents get so angry with. Imo yells at his warriors and Ha’imo shouts at him. In the chaos, Jade hurries off to sit by herself to avoid any potential danger that may arise.

   At three years, Jaydn now knows to never speak back to her mother. Her face will hurt for weeks and the world hasn’t stopped spinning yet. And then Virke-Yset is there and she hardly knows what’s going on but when a day passes without these strangers causing her any harm... Jade knows a glimmer of hope.

   At four years, Jaydn has seen so much and has never known happiness like this. Virke-yset and Shikhan want to be her new Ha’imo and Imo and Jade couldn’t be more excited to be able to call them as such.

   At five years, Jaydn is expanding her borders. Imo gave her a little gun and taught her how and who to use it on while Ha’imo explained that she always had to be ready to protect herself if ever a time should arise that she and Imo couldn’t. This left Jade confused, but she was glad that she could be like Imo and Ha’imo now.

   At six years, Jaydn is just beginning to grasp the dangers of the world she lives in and she uses her gun for the first time on a man who was trying to hurt Ha’imo. For once, Imo’s quiet praise didn’t make her want to jump around in glee. Jade is finally starting to understand.

   At seven years, Jaydn is taking a much keener interest to what occurs around her and she actually begins to listen to that which her parents speak of. Despite the danger, though, Jade is happy because she knows she can protect her family and that they’re not going to hurt or leave her.

   At eight years, Jaydn is trying to wrap her mind around the concept of leaving Gogam. She sits with Ha’imo and asks questions about the rest of the galaxy, then regrets it whenever that sad wistfulness enters into the green eyes that Jade finds to be so very captivating. But her curiosity is kindled and she asks as many questions as Ha’imo will answer for her.

   At nine years, Jaydn is unable to believe she’s actually leaving home. Yes, her parents make up most of that sentiment, but she can’t imagine a world not covered in sand that is watched over by a brutal sun. The ship that will carry them away scares Jade but she hides that fear, because Ha’imo, beneath her unease, is excited. She is the one going home now.

   Jade awakens and knows it is early not so much by the gray light, but by Imo’s presence, where he lays behind Ha’imo, an arm around her waist and his nose in her hair. The sight calms her nerves, because no matter what the day might bring, it’s going to be all right.
   They’re going to leave Gogam, probably never to return, but it would be all right because they are a family and nothing is going to break them apart.


   My updating schedule will most likely be sporadic until I can get caught up in schoolwork, which my dad wants to be by the end of April, and while that'll take a bit of doing, I hope to be able to pull it off.

   Aaannnddd, because I'm feel either benevolent or guilty or maybe both, a deviant Ruusan blip.


   Some might accuse them of being too hasty, to spend more time together before their lives were irrevocably tied together. After all, they might've known each other when they were kids, but it had barely been five months ago that they'd met again as adults. And several of those months had been spent in silence, waiting and wondering what would be next.
   But this feels right.
   No, it won't be perfect. But when is anything perfect these days? It doesn't have to be perfect to be real.
   And warmth still lingers within from his kiss when she'd leaned close and whispered I love you for the first time and that's how she knows they'll be okay. We're going to last.
   There's never been someone else like him in her life and she doesn't want there to be.
   He's the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.
   There'll be arguments and fights, but there will be apologies and make-ups to match. Neither of them are perfect, but both of them are dedicated to working through their differences.
    I've never wanted to take care of someone like I want to take care of Jhidek. I want to know him better than I've ever known anyone in this galaxy. I want to be here for him when he comes back from putting his life on the line for a galaxy of people who don't even realize he and his family are. I want to be able to soothe his pain and put him at ease.
    We still have a lot to learn about each other and I'm okay with that.
    I don't mind learning late at night when we're still awake as opposed to across a table over dinner like normal people. Neither of us have ever been normal.
    Which is why I don't need a ceremony and an expensive dress, because there's never going to be someone else. The words binding us together can be said in front of the people who matter the most to us. There doesn't have to be a pastor with a Bible because we both know what this means.
    In sickness and in health, through every storm that tries to break us, overcoming every person that tries to stand between us, every day for the rest of our lives, until we draw our last breaths and death do us part.
    Ruu lays on her back and stares up at the ceiling, humming along with the violin piece that plays through her radio on the bedside table as she drifts through her thoughts.
    Less than a day.


   And with that, I believe that's all I've got for the evening.

   Once again, I apologize for the touch-and-go schedule these days. Such is life, yes?

   Thank you both for your patience and for reading!

   Have an amazingly awesome day, ne?

   Ad astra per aspera.
   To the stars, through difficulties.

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.