Breaking Strain: Sequel to Proof Through the Night

[Saint_007]

Awesome! And Japan's big gambit bites the dust along with the last vestiges of the Old Draka! Huzzah!

...hey wait a sec... where's Rosem...

Ah, dammit. *sigh* Guess it had to be this way. Started with Rosemont, and ended with him too. How fitting. Gonna miss him though; he was a damn great man.

All that's left is to tie Ito to Charlie dancing the foxtrot and Japan's going to either eat crow or reconsider its world domination plans all over. Personally, the smart thing would be to set everything for plausible deniability with Ito as a fall guy, but as ChaserGrey pointed out, the possibility of a plan failing is something they rarely consider, if ever. Once the epilogue comes up, there needs to be something to show the reaction of the Imperial Japanese government and the fallout from their involvement. If Ito got killed in the crossfire, good for the Japanese; dead men tell no tales, even if his mere presence there is deeply suspicious. If not, he'll have a lot of explaining to do to a very interested US Quarantine Authority and the UN. That's aside from the whole Akira Maru fiasco, not to mention that a very betrayed and angry Bohner might just decide to spoil things for the Japanese and spill the beans in a "taking you with me" move that Draka like so much ("Fenris", if you recall from Proof). Then again, he might just stay silent because he has nothing to gain and would rather let the New!Draka pay for their betrayal. Soo many possibilities...

[Pelranius]

The stories, when they began months later in Officers’ Clubs from South Africa to Iceland to the Philippines, would start out relatively modest. The men telling them, clad in green Nomex flight suits that inevitably sported a Retaliator patch, would allow that maybe three or four other guys on the planet could have pulled it off. That guy Yeager, say, was supposed to be pretty hot shit for an air force puke, maybe throw in Dessaix or Muldoon if you wanted to be internationally expansive. A few years later, one or two might even talk about Delapore, who was supposed to be the best of the new breed of Snake pilots. But not a few years after that, as they told the story over Scotch whiskey, sweet rum or sharp rice beer, those same men would swear that no other jet jockey on the planet could have taken his plane into that valley and come out alive. And decades later, in Buenos Aires and Kobe, Nova Archona and Candor Chasma, when the story had begun to pass into myth as all tales must- then, they would say that only Rosemont flying a Spirit of Rio could have done it. That somehow, for just a few moments, her control runs had become his sinews, her engines his heart, and the bombs tucked into her belly his booted foot stamping out those who would break the peace.

A great send off and an even grander legacy for a hero.

[White Haven]

Eh, point of order, Rosemont didn't come out alive. I think you might want to edit th at bit, it sounds like it's a leftover from when you were planning for him to survive.

[ChaserGrey]

Good point- that was indeed a leftover from an earlier draft. Fixed!

[ChaserGrey]

Hey, troops. Seems like I keep posting variations on the same theme, and I'm sorry. I've had to deal with the death of a very dear family member recently and am having some health issues I thought were under control resurface with a bit of a vengeance. With one thing and another, writing the sendoff Rosemont deserves and the ending this story needs just isn't something I can do right now.

How fuckin' stupid is it that I find myself wishing I hadn't killed a fictional character, because it feels like one more loss isn't something I can handle right now? But it's true.

Going to sign off before I embarrass myself further. But you all know that I do finish things, and I will finish this. I just...can't right now.

/CG out.

[Mayabird]

It's alright. I still feel bad that Bob Johnson died and he wasn't nearly as developed and lived in a spoof world anyway.
[line 2]

[Saint_007]

My deepest condolences, friend. Take all the time you need. As much as you've done a great job on Proof and Breaking Strain, your life comes first. And we're very thankful for what you've already presented.

[ChaserGrey]

Thanks, guys. Means a lot to me.

And it helps to have validation that I'm not the only one who's going to miss Rosie. Means I'm not crazy. (Well, I am crazy. But not crazy in that way.)

Epilogue has started writing itself in my mind, so it's probably only a matter of time until it escapes onto paper. Watch this space.

[Saint_007]

Well, when you've basically lived and breathed with a fictional character for a time, managed to get inside their head and seen how they think and feel, they pretty much become real, likable, sympathetic characters to you. And that's Julius "Rosie" Rosement to us; a guy who got caught up in extraordinary circumstances, found himself tarred by a rather unpleasant brush, and sought to set things right again. And in doing so, he proved himself up to the task, maybe even exceeded the bar.

That's the sign of a good piece of writing. A well written character can be liked, even if he is a complete and utter bastard, because they at least are well fleshed out, and in a way, we can understand (or pretend to understand) how they work. A poorly written character leaves no impact on us, since the writer either tries too hard or too little to show his inner workings, so we have nothing but contempt for them. And throughout his fictional life, Rosie was the former. Which is why we'll miss him.

And in a sense, that's the biggest proof that you've done a good job writing him, isn't it?

BTW, got a bit confused about the old Draka trooper's name again. There's McIlheny, then there's McWirther(sp?). Are they the same guy, or two different guys? Either way, the old guy's sendoff was also appropriate; an old war dog who was at home in combat, after he had grown so utterly alien to the newer generation of his own people. He was a being born and bred for war, the new Draka have had to go through the experience of building their nation with their own sweat and toil rather than have their serfs build everything, so they're not even close to the generations of pure warriors he knew (and of whom most had died in combat or crawled into a corner and whimpered after the US sucker-punch of 1945).

I know it's kind of late for this (since it's about something in Proof), but I think part of the reason why the Draka are so pissed at the Americans in general and at Rosemont in particular was because they had lost the war in one fell swoop when they had technically never lost a battle. Imagine a Spartan forced to yield not because he was beaten, but because of circumstances out of his control made all his victories meaningless.

[ChaserGrey]

Saint,

McIlheny is a young recondo trooper, McWhirter is the old devil dog who finally got paid put to his very long register. He's actually a canon character, Eric von Shrakenberg's senior sergeant in Marching Through Georgia, and he's even more fuckin' scary as Stirling writes him. In the canon timeline he's killed by a European partisan bomb in 1947...so in a bizarre way, he owed his life to Operation MONGOOSE. Until now, that is.

And yeah, I think that was part of why the Draka are so bitter- they essentially had things snatched away from them and all their nightmares made true in, conservatively, about 48 hours. That's going to leave some serious mental whiplash. The only reason they aren't even more consumed by it is that they can't afford to be, because they've been too busy turning Madagascar into someplace they can actually live...and we've also established that all the real fanatics died in place.

I think I've said this before, but I don't have any plans to write in this 'verse between 1945 and 1964. If you want to, though, you can do so with my blessing.

And for those hoping for a real update: sorry. I am working on it, but Real Life is kicking my butt right now and I want to get this right. (Heard that one before?) Hopefully I'll have the **** thing done before the one-year anniversary of this madness, assuming I haven't missed it already.

[ChaserGrey]

I hate leaving things unfinished. But- in the year since I last posted I've tried to write the epilogue to this. Honest. And I can never find anything that makes a better ending than Captain Guitierrez, thinking about how the future has to be better as he sheds tears for his friend.

If anyone cares how things came out, I can answer questions. But I think I'm going to call this one done, and request it be moved to Completed Stories.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, it's good.

[ChaserGrey]

Discussion of the "Proof" series has kicked off here: http://www.alternatehistory.com/discuss ... p?t=248340 . Think of it as the Director's Commentary and Special Features to all this madness.

[declan]

Thanks Chaser

Both for the story and the cameo, I must have left the story back sometime in the past, when it was on hiatus, and never came back to it until now, so I never noticed the cameo until now.

Declan

[Borgholio]

What the FUCK? This thread is 7 months old!