Friday, July 30, 2010

Non-Nolanverse Batman (comics?  DCAU?  The Batman?  Other?) finds himself in the Nolanverse post-TDK.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A story with very relevant POV which keeps switching- eventually the reader learns that the true POV is of an alien hopping from one mind to another, or a mindreader.  And possibly that they're actually the bad guy everybody's been talking about.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

God of Life

Character: personification/god of Life.  Very creepy.  Sees it as a game between humans and himself, which he always wins (as in, they die).  "Whenever the gods are playing chess, the only human move is to change the rules. Everything else is defeat."

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Something with Xander and Rambo- not, I think, as his costume.
BtVS timeshifted back- after high school, Xander gets drafted (why the name change?).  By the time he gets back, Sunnydale's a crater and he has flashbacks.  Explains the apparent preference for bow and arrow.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Xander is Jack Carter

Xander took on the name of Jack Carter as his alias for when he wanted to pretend to be normal.  He's obviously actually a US Marshall, so maybe that's what demon-fighting falls under or he liaises or something (to be figured out).  And he gets married, has Zoe, and gets divorced.  Then he gets sent to Eureka, which is the same old thing except with science instead of magic and demons.  Eventually a supernatural problem comes up, and he solves it easily while everybody else is still panicking over violations of the laws of physics.  Nobody in Eureka knew about his other life, even Zoe.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Criminals after the apocalypse

After an apocalypse, the survivors band together and don't make a big deal about who did what beforehand- and some of them were Bad People, before.  But it's not worldwide/somebody somewhere has the resources to help, and when the aid starts coming in the outsiders get all "criminals!" about some of them.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Changes

Although you expected the Great Reveal to happen sometime soon, it still comes as a surprise. Every Immortal you know has been bracing for it for years, knowing that it was inevitable, but there is a difference between being prepared for it in theory and being prepared for it in practice. This isn't just a minor, easily predictable change, but one which changes everything. You don't know the forms that change will take, much like Immortals couldn't have predicted the Game when the Bronze Age began, simply that they will be profound.

Oh, you can predict some of the immediate consequences of the Great Reveal: a good deal of talk and debate about Immortality by people who know very little about it, followed by responses by the various governments in the form of laws and legislation. Some responses will be reasonable, but others will be intolerable. The most you can do is hope that your family and friends will be able to withstand the initial storm; eventually you will all become accustomed to the new world, but that will take a while, and the beginning is usually the most dangerous.

Immortals tend to follow the laws in the same way that a man with a body in his trunk will drive under the speed limit: not for any inherent respect for the law, but because being suspected of anything could easily lead to worse crimes being discovered. On the whole, Immortals are law-abiding, but few- if any- of them believe that any government should have anything to do with the Game, whereas governments will no doubt feel it is their duty to end the Game- or at least regulate it.

Thanks to a large number of Immortal politicians and journalists in America, it's one of the first to give an official response to the Great Reveal, behind only a few dictatorships which don't have to wait for their response to pass through the slow workings of Democracy, and is the first to respond in a way that Immortals like.

Oh, there aren't enough Immortals in Congress to make Immortals entirely happy; they have to compromise on some things. But a policy of non-discrimination towards Immortals and not interfering with the Game so long as the rules are adhered to are more than most Immortals had dared to hope for, especially since the United States wields so much influence on other countries. The only thing any of them have to complain about is the Visible Weaponry Law- the law which will come into effect on the New Year mandating that Immortals must not conceal their primary weapon whenever they're carrying one. After lifetimes of hiding what they are, showing the world what they are feels like walking around naked and vulnerable, but it's a small price to pay. Anybody who doesn't like it can leave; the world is a big place, and Immortals are skilled at finding places to hide- there are always places with no real government in which to hide, deserted islands and deep in the wilderness. And from the beginning America institutes a policy of offering asylum to Immortals from countries with less enlightened policies.

Canada is, unfortunately, one of those countries, much as you'd predicted. A string of beheadings twenty years ago- ironically, by a mortal serial killer who had been stopped using his own methods by an Immortal headhunter- is the first thing to spring to the minds of the politicians, and unfortunately sets the tone of Canada's new Immortal laws- they don't want any Immortals in the country, and are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that the country is comprised of only mortals, short of execution.

The day the announcement is made, you turn in your resignation before Inspector Thatcher can begin the official tests for Immortality, dressed in civilian clothes with your sword at your hip. The VWL hasn't taken effect yet, but already it's become the style for Immortals to wear their swords visibly in America. You're soon to be American; you might as well adapt now. And it helps prevent questions; Inspector Thatcher looks shocked and upset, but she doesn't ask any questions or try to talk you out of leaving. How could she? This time you've been declared persona non grata not just by the RCMP, but by Canada herself.

Friday, July 2, 2010

The Saucy Job

AU as of The Inside Job

"Rebecca was happy before all this. She had plans- medical school to become a pediatrician, but she threw it all away to join this SWCI, hang out with people who wear enough leather that you'd swear they're a biker gang. I tried to convince her not to, but I'd never been able to convince her to do anything she didn't want to do. It just made no sense; she had such a bright future." Their latest client took a shaky drink. "For a year she just kept sounding more and more beat down, but she wouldn't tell me why she sounded so bad. Then she called and told me she was going to go to college. I thought everything was going to be all right, but a week after that call she was dead. They claimed it was a car accident, but I've been a medical examiner for twenty years. Those were knife wounds, and the scars on her body weren't there a year ago. She was only eighteen."

"Did you go to the police?"

"They didn't do anything. The Cleveland Police stopped listening the second I said SWCI, the state police and FBI dropped it after a day each."

"What do you want out of this? We can't bring your daughter back…"

"I just want you to make sure they can't do that to another girl."

***

The team went upstairs to Nate's apartment. Eliot was first in the door, and when he stopped suddenly they were too close behind him to avoid running into him.

"Eliot, what?" Nate asked.

"Company," Eliot grunted. The team fanned out to see a man with an eyepatch sitting in a chair facing the door, whittling something with a large knife. He looked up at them and made the knife and wood disappear into thin air as well as any of them could. Nate glanced at Eliot, silently signaling for him to take the man down before he tried anything, but Eliot was staring at the man without even a glance at Nate.

"The security alarm wasn't tripped," Hardison said. "Why wasn't the alarm tripped?"

"'Cause he didn't want to trip it," Eliot growled at Hardison. "What are you doing here?" he asked the intruder.

"I heard that you were taking a job from Becka's mom. Don't," the man said. When he stood up, they could see that he leaned heavily on a cane, his left leg bandaged and in a brace. "Eliot will tell you why. Parker? Marcie's waiting for you to call her. Good to see you, man," he said to Eliot, giving him a one-armed back-slapping hug and not seeming to care that he didn't reciprocate. Then he slipped out the door before any of the rest of them could react.

"Eliot?" Nate prompted, the team turning to him for answers.

"You know why the cops didn't do anything? He's a white hat, as white as they get."

"That doesn't excuse him for that girl's treatment and death."

"Look, I've met the guy twice. The first time, we were after the same item and fought. He won, and he was holding back. If he'd wanted to kill me, he could have. The second time, he threatened to bludgeon me to death with a shovel if I hurt one of his girls. I believed him. If there are people getting hurt and killed in his organization, it's necessary. I won't take a job against him."

"He knows Marcie," Parker blurted out. They all turned to look at her. "I don't want Marcie to assassinate you." They stared, trying to make sense of it.

"Why would Marcie assassinate us?" Hardison asked her. "And why not you?"

"Marcie likes me. If you con an assassin's friend, you shouldn't expect to live."

"How do you know an assassin?"

"She taught me how to be a better thief even if she only steals when she's really bored and she usually puts it back. I asked her why and she said she didn't want to lose her day job." Parker's face was confused, but she shook it off. "I have to go call Marcie."

"Nate, we can't run a con on somebody who knows who we are, with only three of us," Sophie said.

"Make that two of you," Hardison said. "If that guy beat Eliot I don't want to go up against him and get killed."

Nate sighed. "I guess I'll go tell the client we can't take her case, and explain what I can," he said.

"A shovel, really?" Hardison asked Eliot.

"For easy disposal of the body," Eliot said, and took some measure of pleasure in Hardison's shudder.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Contest

Of the five of them, Hardison was the least fucked-up. Yeah, he was a criminal, and some people might say that's a little bit fucked-up right there, but they were all criminals so it didn't really count. And besides that, he seemed to be well-adjusted. The rest of them? Not so much.
He wasn't sure Sophie even knew who she was anymore, her aliases and cons bleeding together and overwriting who she really was. Whoever the real Sophie Devereaux was, she was lost in the sea of personalities she'd assumed in her life.
Nate had been normal once, a normal guy with a normal life. He only got fucked-up because his son died. If he didn't cling to his grief so tightly, letting it rule his life, he could have been a normal citizen again. But he was as fucked-up as he wanted to be.
There was something wrong with Parker, but he didn't think it was something that could be "fixed"; whatever it was, it had been there for a long time, if not her whole life.
And him. He knew they thought he wasn't too fucked-up. Maybe a little angry, but other than that normal. They probably thought Eliot Spencer was his real name, too.