Part 3
Beginning: Protag leaves security
1/4 Point: Protag struggles to survive.
1/2 Point: Protag wins rescue
3/4 Point: Protag learns to live
End: Protag saves rescuer
Extra Credit:
In a world overrun by death and destruction, the boy Vanya learns what it is to be a man.
Part 5
Extra Credit: Style, my own.
- Vanya scurried from one patch of darkness to the next. The brilliant moon overhead shone down unmercifully agaist the crumbling masonry and decayed facades of the decrepit apartment buildings. A cool breeze caressed his cheek, making his heart hammer in his chest till he realized it was only the wind. Leaves rustled on the trees in the derelict park.
- Scanning the rooftops across the street, nothing moved, That I can see. Thinking of his warm home, deep with in the Warrens below Moskva, Vanya again cursed his hasty words.
- "There's a whole wide world out there, mat'" he pleaded with his mother, thinking of actually getting to see real live plants and animals other than the crippled and faded specimens in the hydroponics and farming labs.
- "It's a world of death and disease." Vanya's father threw down his newspaper on the table. The smack of paper hitting the slick, plastic surface was suprisingly loud.
- Vanya's mother looked at him with wide brown eyes. She's going to cry again Vanya thought, trying to hide his dismay. Glaring florescent lights flickered overhead, shining off the white tile walls.
- "The diseases have all burned themselves out." Vanya waved the old religious tract under his father's nose. "You are just afraid because you read trash like ..."
- "Enough" his mother sobbed, wringing a handkerchief in her long delicate fingers. "Do what your father says. He knows best." There was not a great deal of spirit left to his mother. Not after eight children and seeing all but Vanya die before their eighteenth birthday. For a brief instant, Vanya had second thoughts about the whole thing.
- "No one has ever come back from above." his father stood with a rush. Vanya looked up at his sneering face silently, trying not to earn any more of his wrath. "And no one who has gone out will!"
- "I'll not marry Katrina and live the rest of my life like a scared rabbit breeding more rabbits to huddle in the Warrens." the door handle was cool and greasy feeling under his shaking hand.
- "If you leave the Warrens, you'll never be allowed to return."
- "Good!" Vanya slammed the door behind him as he left.
- The rough stone digging into his soft palms behind his back was completely alien to Vanya, as were the distant lights of the stars and the delicate breeze lifting his fine brown hair to drift into his eyes. A sneeze made his heart stop with panic, then he realized it was his own. What an idiot Vanya calmed himself. Looking around, Vanya drank in his utterly strange surroundings. After almost twenty years of living below ground in the completely controlled environment of the Warrens, the world above was a chaos of conflicting impressions.
- The faintest whiff of onions and cabbage reached his nose, underlain with spices he had no name for or even any idea of their existance. Other odors too, impinged on his awareness, the heavy dusty scent of mildew from the building behind him, the acrid bite of burning vegetable matter, the heavy reek of pigs in an ill cleaned sty ... plus completely unfamiliar odors, ranging from the horribly rank to the almost intoxicatingly sweet. Standing utterly silent but for his own breathing, Vanya also heard the faintest intimation of someone singing off in the distance.
- Resuming his furtive advance, this time he tried to track down the odors of food. Vanya had known many of the worst of the predators above came out at night and so had tried to convince the Keepers to let him stay inside till dawn. They had insisted once he made he wishes known, he had no more to do with humans and he leave immediately. A shiver ran down his spine at the chill night air. His thin, soft, paper clothes did nothing to help keep him warm.
- Vanya almost screamed as a violent pain tore through his foot as he tried to cross a darkened alley. He did let out a yelp, shockingly loud in the otherwise almost silent night. After making it to the far wall, he stood on the other foot and leaned against the building for balance. He looked at the injured one with a grimace of pain. Blood dripped down the outside of the sole from a deep cut. It looked black in the moonlight and Vanya could see the sliver of glass still imbedded in the wound. Better do it now he pulled the shard out with another muffled scream and threw it across the alleyway. Thinking quickly, he pulled off his shirt, tore it into two pieces and bound his foot. Biting his lip against the pain of standing on his injured foot, he then proceeded to wrap his other foot to protect it as well.
- "Clever human"
- Looking up in shock, Vanya gasped as a dark winged figure flew down out of the night sky. All he could do was faint.
Part 6
Beginning: Protag leaves home against father's wishes after years of giving in to every demand of father but one.
1/4 Point: Protag refuses to cope with new world getting more and more in trouble because of his inability to stand up for himself.
1/2 Point: Protag wins rescue from substitute father figure by bravely standing up to a group of thugs abusing helpless critter .
3/4 Point: Protag learns to fight from substitute father figure to be able to defend helpless critters in the future. His activities earn the wrath of genetic father and expose his location as well.
End: Protag saves father figure from genetic father when father figure is captured as bait to lure Protag back into clutches of genetic father.