Writing Explorations: Week 82, Too Much of a Quick-Shot

[The Mood is Write]

My Writing Explorations series of exercises are a chance for users to explore new concepts and practice the art of raising two fingers to Writer's Block while screaming obscenities to fickle muses: to rebel against the idea that a person requires a mythical force inside them to make new and amazing things.

No. Listen well, users: there is no being inside you waiting to be let out. You are the writer, and in this exercise, you are given a place to push not only against Writer's Block, but also against the forces of stagnation. Feel trapped in your genre? Explore a new one! Stuck with a singular archetype? Do something else! In this thread, you will not be critiqued unless you request it. Should you wish it, I will happily offer my thoughts on how it might be improved, but I will not comb looking for fixes: this isn't the place: this place is for safely trying new things and indulging a love of writing.

Shake the bars of your cell block and roar, writers!

[fieldbox=How do I take part?]You can write to one or more (or none) of the prompts, the theme in the thread title, the bonuses—hell, you can even cast aside all of what I offer if you get a different idea.

The whole point is "get writing!"[/fieldbox]

Prompts:

1. A creature incapable of speaking the local language is suddenly forced to rely on a singular person as the translation methods before no longer work, and that lone person is the only one that can almost translate for the creature.
2. The detectives thought the firefight was won by two to four shooters. It never occurred to them that it might be one shooter with four arms.
3. Distrusted by all, he has to prove he's on their side.
4. Soft chittering filled the room, and all within began to slump.

Bonus Rounds:

• Write in a random genre.
• "What is dating, and why do people thing we are engaging in that activity?"
• "I'm getting the distinct feeling I'm not welcome here."
• "I'll go with you, but I won't shoot against my own people."
• "If it were up to me, I would let you go."
• "No, no. Two pats, one slow rub, and three pats is how you say hello. Don't bother trying to make the sounds with your mouth, you'll muck it up."
• Anyone with that many weapons strapped haphazardly to themselves was dangerous.

 

[PoetLore]

COMEDY/SCI-FI

Daniel hovered over the village below trying to decide how to best accomplish his mission. He could tell he was drawing attention from below, so he flew a bit away into a large open area and landed the transport. He wasn't sure how big the Kitkuh had become so he loaded up a lot of weapons and attached them to himself in any way he could find. It was possible he wouldn't be able to return to the ship for more, so he carried as much as he could. He grabbed a few handfuls of food tablets and shoved them into his pockets, in case the food here was...unpalatable. He'd traveled enough, and been to enough planets that he knew food was vastly different from world to world and culture to culture.

He stepped up to the hatch and checked the atmosphere for compatibility. His readings and history of the planet had said that it was an oxygen rich one, but ground level was the most accurate measurement. Satisfied he'd be able to breathe, he stepped into the hatch and was lowered to the ground. When the door slid open he was a bit shocked to find himself surrounded by villagers, who did not look at all friendly.

"Um...hello...I come in peace." he said realizing they likely would not understand his words, and then realizing he had a friggin arsenal on his body. "Not very peaceful looking there Daniel." he muttered to himself.

A slender female stepped forward, "You piece?"

His eyes lit up, "YES! Peace."

"Piece what? Look not broke." Her ability to understand was extremely limited and it was frustrating to her. He was not making sense, and the others were growing restless. She turned and relayed what he said and then all turned back to him with odd expressions of disbelief on their faces and if anything looked even more angry.

"What the heck are you saying to them?" he asked seeing his ability to help them fly out the window.

His tone didn't please the villagers any and they came at him from all directions and bound him tightly in heavy chains and dragged him back to their village. He was placed in a stone building with a heavy iron door and iron bars separating him from his jailers. They railed at him incessantly and then were silent as they watched him, with their spears at the ready.

"Oh for the love of Mercury," he said as he plopped down with a loud clink of chains. "I am getting the distinct feeling I am not welcome here."

The woman who started this whole mess was brought back to try and communicate with him and he felt a groan well up in his chest. She was looking at him and the pile of weaponry they had removed from him before putting him in the hold. Anyone with that many weapons strapped haphazardly to their body was dangerous. The elders were right about that, but he did not seem dangerous. He had not fought them when he'd been chained, and even now was not fighting but looking a bit pitiful. "What want you?"

He looked at her and sighed, "I want to help you. You are in terrible danger. The Kitkuh were accidentally dropped here." Well it hadn't exactly been an accident, but they thought it was an empty planet. Still, since they HADN'T known accident applied. Sadly the expression on her face let him know she had not understood. But she STILL turned and relayed what he said and he banged his head off the wall in frustration.

"He help danger you fall Kitkuh." She said in her own language not at all sure what that meant. The guards banged their spears on the ground angrily, but she held up her hands and calmed them before turning back to him. "Why danger fall you? Help danger?"

Daniel closed his eyes. Think man, think. How can you say this so she will get it right? "I will fight danger, not help it. I didn't bring the danger." He knew how it got there though, but that was beside the point. there was NO way to make her understand that at all.

She tipped her head and turned again back to the guards, "Fight danger bring danger no." The guards looked around and at him and then back. They said a few things and then she nodded and turned back. "What danger bring?"

How to describe a Kutkuh. They LOOKED fluffy and soft, and were even cute if they were dead. he'd been taken in one time by how cute they looked and that had been enough to make him hate the things. He couldn't understand why the intergalactic federation felt the need to keep the species alive when they were so damned vicious and when the grew so fast after feeding. Sure it was true if they never fed on flesh, they stayed cute and fluffy, but the things ALWAYS found flesh to feed on. Determined predators, and damned good trackers too. They would no doubt find this village before the day was over. "Ok..the danger is called Kitkuh. It is a small animal that gives off a neurotoxin that will paralyze you and then it will eat you alive."

She blinked at him and he banged his head off the wall a few more times. She was not sure what that head banging meant, but it seemed he was in distress of some kind. She turned to the guards again, "Danger Kitkuh eat live." The guards again looked around her laughing and then spoke to her again with chuckles and grunts before almost dismissing her having heard enough. She sighed and turned back to him feeling she was somehow not getting the full import of what he was attempting to say. "Danger kills" She asked patting herself on the chest as she looked at him.

Daniel nodded, "Yes they kill."

She frowned and gripped the bars that separated them, "I set free you...I would."

Daniel nodded again, "Thank you. I know you are trying. We are not understanding one another very well." He should have grabbed that damned translator, but he'd forgotten it of course. He sat up straight and looked around when he heard it. A soft chittering filled the room and all within began to slump. "Oh hell..."

She heard the sound too and frowned looking around. She saw the cutest little fluff ball on the ground near her feet. She bent to pick it up and scritched behind its ear, but it hissed at her.

"No, no. Two pats, one slow rub, and three more pats is how you say hello. Don't bother trying to make the sounds with your mouth, you'll only muck it up." He closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer that she'd get it right. The one who approached was the leader, and if you could subdue it, the others would go docile, if not they would all be eaten alive.

She patted the little thing twice and then rubs slowly ones and then patted three times and it flopped over on its belly and wiggled his little legs at her. The chittering stopped and he rubbed its tummy gently. She looked over at him and smiled, "Danger?"

He nodded and leaned back against the wall, finally able to breathe. "You have won his loyalty, so they will not attack. Thankfully you understood me when it mattered."

She looked at him and grinned, "I have always understood you just fine. I like to mess with outsiders."

 

[Doctor Jax]

"The ballistics don't make any sense," Goreman growled, slamming the whole sheaf of papers down on the desk. Across from him, his partner Nguyen looked up from her latte, her solitaire game begrudgingly left unfinished. She sighed and set the cup down.

"What is it this time?" she asked, folding her hands over her navel and looking up at her taller partner, Goreman pacing like a German Shepherd waiting for some intruder.

They'd been working this one for weeks. It seemed like the typical sort of shooting you'd expect for Downtown, with the walls peppered in bullets, the victims largely ranging from known gangbangers to innocent bystanders. The homicide detectives had made a betting pool to see who would crack first and start drinking heavily on the ballistics team, seeing as it looked like there were two to four shooters, each with an illegal automatic weapons. From what Nguyen had seen, it took them days, if not more than two weeks, to pick every single bullet out of the side of that apartment building.

"Look at this - right here," Goreman said, putting down a scarred, knobbly finger onto the first page of the report, a diagram. "Says they call came from a source only two feet apart."

This did catch Nguyen's attention. She leaned forward to stare at the chart, flipping through it. Working "gangland" put you in touch with the ballistics department a lot, so the pages of numbers, lines, and physics explanations definitely were not strangers to her. Her brow furrowed the longer she read the file.

"Jesus, Roarke," she muttered as she stared at the improbable series of events posited there. "That's just not possible. You'd have to have two guns in each hand. And these are not rinky dink .22 pistols either."

"Yeah. Tell me about it," Goreman complained as he plopped himself down in his age-old desk chair. "You wanna know something else? I'm not getting any autopsy reports on vics 5 and 8."

"What?" Nguyen asked incredulously, leaning forward to stare at her partner in absolute disbelief. "Are they dragging their feet?"

"No. Some spooks came in when I went to the morgue to complain why it was taking so long, and they said 'not your jurisdiction'."

Nguyen stared at her partner a little bit longer, tapping the side of her face with a finger in thought.

"Go talk to Rourke again, ask how much arm strength you'd need to dual wield Uzis. You ever get eye-witness accounts?"

"No, I usually take them over last."

"Ulrich..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, they're evidence. I'll do it this evening. Elise is staying home with Reina this weekend."

Nguyen nodded and said, "Alrightie then. Don't work too hard. Ring me if you hear anything new."

Goreman gave her the 'okay' sign, heading for the door, while Nguyen leaned back in her chair. She felt a strange sense of deja vu, a kind of unconscious memory buried somewhere in the back of her mind. Yeah - 2004. Bodies under lock down in the morgue, guys in suits saying it wasn't my jurisdiction. Peter Brokovich, was one guy's name. Even... gave me his number.

Hastily, she dug around in the bottom of her desk. She vaguely remembered where she kept it, though it'd been a minute or two. To her surprise, it was right where she'd left it - stuck on the inside of the cabinet in a pocket full of other 'contact' business cards. She dialed the number and to her surprise, someone picked.

"Hello. Is this Peter Brokovich? My name is Tina Nyugen."

The line immediately clicked off. Nguyen stared at her cell phone in confusion. Perhaps it was the wrong number.

A moment later, though, a text rang her from the same number.

There are some things you don't need to know. Do not call me again.