Dominion - A Short Story

Fanfiction.net link.

I do want my return to the site to be a meaningful one, so everyone please enjoy a new story!

It's not a great tale, and I'm not happy with it - a short one-chapter action piece mainly to give Aapita a rare opportunity to air out her mortar. Also, I hate the dialogue that I've written, it sounds very expositional.

However, it is complete. And no stories are completed without actually writing, and after such a long break I felt that just getting something out there took precedence. I'd say that this is victory enough for now.

Wow, it's been so long since I set down a story on Fanfiction.net, I even forgot that I like to start them off with epigrams. I've updated the story with a Kipling quote that doesn't seem all too distant from a handler and his cyborg.

Welcome back to the fold, and thank you for reminding me why I used to drop what I was doing to read your stuff.

More thoughts to come.

Good Read RF.

Nice to see your absence has not dulled your sense of poetry.

Oh HELL YES. 

Giant explosions in GSG fic! WHOOOOO! 

And that aside, great writing, Rob. Your usage of juxtaposition was particularly skillful near the end, I'm really jealous.

A triumphant return from your enforced absence! A veritable tour de force! Victory! Magnificent! Fan-*OOF*

John: *rubs knuckles* "The dumbass means he liked it."

Ok, so... more thoughts:

...sounding all the world like a dented mess tin swinging from an amateur hiker's overstuffed Bergen.

Work life making its impression on your writing?

"Conditioning hasn't nuked your head so much that you can't walk and chew gum, Agapita. Keep moving." Avise masked filling his straining lungs with the indulgent sighs prompted by a trying subordinate..."

It's good to see Avise back.

With the bank breathing down his neck, the farmer wasn't going to inquire too closely about the groups of young men who came out here for "long weekends" several times a year...

Having the whole works blown up and being paid-out is probably going to be the best thing that ever happened to him...

...condescending to himself as much as his cyborg as he felt the prick of cynicism bite into himself too.

Nitpick: but two "himself"s in one sentence; feels kind of off to read.

...has melted the police here contemptible wet rags...

"...has melted the police here to contemptible wet rags..."?

But still: ahh, the politics of remaining funded and supported. I always enjoy those little inclusions.

...to charge in on a thunder run and limit the impact of the enemy's fire lanes by presenting a narrow target, before fanning out around the complex and using the vehicles themselves as cover - like a line of naval ships showing their stern before coming about the beam to deliver a broadside.

Well, I guess it worked for Nelson...

While perfectly survivable, even a cyborg wouldn't much enjoy getting walloped with a half-inch shell...

New Trino may scrub the "perfectly" off that...

"Shoot at me, you fucking raghead? Me, you insignificant little squit? Me, you fucking sandnigger!"

Is it bad that I find Avise incredibly amusing when he's forgotten himself and is at his most racist and jingoistic best?

Sensing it, Agapita rolled off, her face apologetic, and helped his handler up.

"her"?

Avise hadn't seen destruction so concentrated since the day F-15s had obliterated the roadblocks obstructing his column during that day at Constitution House. Even the Bolzano Remembrance Day mortar attack had been discreetly concealed behind a curtain of smoke, whereas here it was laid bare.

I always like how you have Avise refer back to his military days (though, I believe that second is "Hunters in the Dolomites"?), it tell us a lot about his personality and his way of thinking without needing to lay it out in an explanation... not to mention avoiding pages of "build the character's history".


Nicely done as always mate. As I said before: good to see you back in the saddle... now just don't go disappearing off into the ether again.

Weeeeeell... a few weeks of the vapours, maybe, but I'm back again.  

Having the whole works blown up and being paid-out is probably going to be the best thing that ever happened to him...

Funnily enough, I read that the 2011 riots was the best thing that happened to UK anime - the warehouse holding their inventory burnt down so it let our publishing companies claim on insurance the full value of thousands of copies of dross that never sold!

But still: ahh, the politics of remaining funded and supported. I always enjoy those little inclusions.

Democracy's a game, and it's the sharps who walk away with the pot. It's always seemed a funny little irony to me that when the Agency is called in to handle something "discreetly" it invariably involves guns and murder. Isn't it weird how violence and killing actually turns out to be a lot more quiet and unobtrusive than leaving messages on answerphones and having conversations in cafés where some passerby is waving his iPhone?

Is it bad that I find Avise incredibly amusing when he's forgotten himself and is at his most racist and jingoistic best?

I wasn't really trying to present Avise here as racist. We can assume that the enemies are Europeans here - outliers like Nihad notwithstanding I doubt you'll find too many dusky folk in the ranks of Padania, of all organisations - but as he's still snarling about them in those terms anyway it was meant to show that regardless of whether they're Padanians in Italy or Mahdi Army in Iraq, they have a tendency to blur into one amorphous blob of "terrorist" for Avise.

I always like how you have Avise refer back to his military days (though, I believe that second is "Hunters in the Dolomites"?), it tell us a lot about his personality and his way of thinking without needing to lay it out in an explanation... not to mention avoiding pages of "build the character's history".

Yeah, I've never believed that it's necessary, or even desirable, to know every little minutiae about a character. I have to admit I'm baffled by people who complain that they're confused when they don't proceed from step one - unless you're in season 4 of the Wire I don't think that these things are that hard to pick up, and many times it's more interesting to discover as you go alone - and I find it a bit dismissive of the reader's intelligence (as much as it is frustrating for the writer) to think that you have to provide a character bible before you even start reading.

Thanks again for the comments everyone.

Cool story!