Andromeda Promptathon

[scribblemyname]

Prompts can be:

1. Quotes from the beginning of the episodes
2. Quotes from the actual episodes/characters
3. Prompts for the characters/world
4. Prompts for fusions/crossovers
5. Prompts for original characters in the Andromeda world

Comments

[scribblemyname]

Brother as AI ship, siblings as crew or other remaining occupants scenario

[(Anonymous)]

This is because I mentioned how Alik could really be a robot if he was AI, isn't it?

[scribblemyname]

pre-series Maru, Harper's exactly like an annoying kid brother

[(Anonymous)]

I tried to do this and got very... I suppose the word for it is sidetracked. The lead-in is longer than the actual part and still not pre-series because I just got a few lines of dialogue between current Beka and Harper. :(

[scribblemyname]

Stay away from my slipstream drive and no one will get hurt.

The Right and Wrong Salvage

[(Anonymous)]

So, this could be an origin story, maybe. How a new member joined the "crew."

I figure Reventes for Nietzcheans. It was that or something close to Vedrans, but I know more about Nietzcheans and could see enough parallels where it made sense. Plus... I think I like the tribal dynamic. I've used similar concepts before in other unrelated stories.

---

If a person could be in lust with a ship, then Felise figured she was, just a little, with this one. Standing in the derelict's slipstream core, she stared, mesmerized by its inherent beauty and danger, unable to believe how well-preserved and maintained this place was so long after the fall of the Commonwealth. She could stay here for days and admire just this part of the ship.

That was, if she wasn't being hunted and didn't need the parts desperately to make her own ship work so she could run. Again.

She grimaced, trying to get the console to respond. She'd found door control easy to get, and she'd made quick progress to the core, but while the slipstream drive seemed like it would be fully functional, the power was doing strange things through the ship—she probably should expect it to die soon—and she needed to hurry.

“I'd prefer it if you left that where it is,” a voice said, making her want to jump. “That is my slipstream drive, and if you tamper with it, I'll have to kill you.”

She shook her head, swallowing as she turned to face the man who'd spoken. Tall, dark-haired, the sort of human that could have been trouble if she'd been willing to let her hormones rule her instead of her upbringing, he managed to challenge her lust for the ship for just a moment.

“Nice try, but the high guard has been extinct for years,” she told him. “And I checked—there are no salvage claims on this vessel. It doesn't belong to you. Not to anyone, not anymore, so me borrowing a few parts... Not much you can do about that.”

His eyes went to the force lance in his hand—great, he'd managed to raid more of the ship than she had—and back to her. “If you want to live, you will refrain from touching that drive.”

She shook her head. “No, if I want to live, I need the parts from the drive to get me out of this system. I'd have gone with a slipfighter if I could have, their parts would have been closer to what I need for my ship, but it seems someone else has already salvaged all of them.”

His lips curved just slightly, and she thought he was amused by what she was saying.

“And anyway, it doesn't really matter because at the rate power is dropping through this grid, there won't be anything left to salvage soon. Shame, really, because they don't make ships like this anymore, and it's beautiful, but with this much damage, it's only good for parts.”

“Trust a Nietzchean to say that,” another voice said, this time from behind her, and she was tempted to hurt something, anything, since her scans hadn't shown any lifeforms on this ship and now she had two of them to deal with. “I guess that explains a few things, though I've never seen a Nietzchean on her own doing salvage runs before. Aren't they all supposed to be back at home, making little babies and staying where it's safe?”

“Some Nietzchean prides allow their infertile females to prove their worth in other ways,” the one in the high guard uniform said, and Felise glared at him.

“Who are you calling infertile?”

“You,” the second one said, amused for a moment before dropping his smile. “Guess since you can't create things you figure on destroying them, but it's not going work here, Freckles.”

She would have whirled and hit him, maybe even shot him, if she wasn't sure she'd take a force lance blast the moment she did. Freckles were a genetic impurity. She did not have them, no matter what anyone said.

“Alik.” A third person had joined the party, this one another woman, and Felise looked down at her scanner, tempted to throw it into the core for all the good it had done her. She just needed a quick salvage run. A couple parts and she could have been on her way to someplace safe.

“We've lost control of more of the key systems,” the high guard one said. “I know. Enadar, escort our guest here to her quarters.”

“Alik, if we're losing containment—”

“Then it is my responsibility to fix it and you are not going anywhere near it,” he insisted, reaching over to take Felise's gun. “Don't get any ideas about trying to escape. You hurt him, and you will answer to me—if you survive the ship's internal defenses, which is unlikely, even with your advanced genetics.”

“I'm an engineer. If you need help with something—”

“You'll do it out of the goodness of your heart?” the one called Enadar said, snorting as he pushed his gun into her back. “We're not stupid. No one trusts Nietzcheans.”

“Except to do what they have to in order to survive, idiot,” she reminded him. “If I can't get off this ship, the best thing for me to do is help fix it.”

“Yeah, except you're probably working with the ones that sabotaged it in the first place, and there's no way we're trusting you with so much as a holonovel.”

---

“You know, you have no more right to this ship than I do. It's open salvage. You can stop poking me with that thing because if you don't—” Felise cut off her words as the ship fired at her feet. Enadar smirked at her, and she glared back at him. “If you've lost as much of the key systems as you seem to, then that was just an accident, and I'm not afraid of you and your little gun.”

“You might try being afraid of the ship instead,” Enadar said, shoving her forward into a room. “They didn't build him with a sense of humor.”

Felise snorted. “I came on board because this wreck was floating dead in space with no salvage claims on it.”

“You can't claim an older brother,” Enadar said, shutting the door on her, and Felise shook her head in frustration. She knew this ship was in no state to fight. She wasn't sure how anyone had managed to stay alive on it, but whatever hack job they'd done in getting the ship going again, it clearly wasn't working. She could fix this, and while she might not be the most stereotypical Nietzchean out there, she was enough of one to want to come out of this alive.

She went to the closest wall panel, pulling it off and starting to work.

“If you bypass that system, you cut off life support to this section of the ship.”

Felise looked up, almost smiling when she saw the state of the AI hologram. Gray and indistinct, it had nothing more than a flat computer voice lacking all personality. “I'll risk it.”

“You may be bred for a level of genetic resistance, but even your body cannot withstand the effects for very long.”

“Yeah, well, your little attempt to make me think I'm dealing with a—whoa. Someone gave you a nasty little virus, didn't they? This thing is eating through your code like candy. And here I thought you were just a little feint from the bad salvage crew to make me think that a high guard AI still existed on this ship,” Felise muttered, recognizing the trojan for what it was. “Fortunately for you, I've seen this thing before—the Annapurna pride created something similar to help them battle with larger ships before they were wiped out. Now it's used by cowards and pirates that are too weak to fight fair. Though why they'd need to use it on a derelict...”

The hologram flickered out, and she shrugged, going back to work. She didn't care if the AI had been a trick. She knew she could stop the virus—it wasn't half as adaptable as it pretended, and its main strength lay in overwhelming any ship's systems to where it was hard to prioritize what to fix, not in actual complexity.

It didn't make it any less of a pain in her genetically perfected rear to fix, but she could do it.

---

“What did you do?”

“I killed the virus and saved all our lives,” Felise said, frowning when she realized that she wasn't talking to the malfunctioning hologram but to the live members of the crew. She had better hearing than that. How had her door opened without her hearing it? She should have been out it and getting the part she needed by now. “You could be a little thankful.”

“Awful convenient you just knowing what virus was running through the ship and could shut it down like that,” Enadar said, shaking his head in anger. “How many times do we have to tell you we're not stupid?”

“You don't want an answer to that,” Felise said, biting back a kludge even though she never used that word.

He snorted. “You think you're so much better than us when you have to resort to this kind of thing to be able to steal from us. Yeah, right.”

“Enadar,” the woman said, and he just rolled his eyes at her.

“Malina over there is such a bleeding heart she thinks we should drop you off at the next drift with supplies and our gratitude,” Enadar said, shaking his head. “I suggested leaving you for your friends to deal with, but Alik says they'll likely kill you for your failure.”

Felise swallowed. Alik was right, though failure wasn't the only reason her family wanted her dead. She didn't want to admit that. “I saved the ship. I think letting me go is not only the least you can do, but in your best interests.”

“It's not happening,” Alik told her. “Out of respect for Malina's wishes, you will not be left behind in a crippled ship as easy prey for those who come, but trusting you would be a mistake, and it is not one I will make. You will be moved to a location without any access panels for the duration of your stay and any further attempts to alter the ship will be dealt with using lethal force. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Felise said, anger welling up inside her. “But if you think—”

“Three Nietzchean ships have just exited slipstream,” the ship's hologram reported, only this time it looked and sounded like Alik. “They will be in firing range in less than five minutes.”

“Your friends?” Enadar asked derisively, shaking his head as he did.

“It doesn't matter,” Alik said. “Enadar, move her where she can't do any more damage. Malina, command deck. Now.”

The other woman nodded, starting to run, and Alik followed after her. Felise felt Enadar grab her arm, and she glared at him.

“You know I don't have to go with you. I can disarm you and be off the ship in minutes.”

He pulled her along, keeping his gun pointed at her. “If you really believed that, you'd already have done it. You'd have killed all us kludges and left the ship.”

“Except one of you isn't a kludge, is he?”

“No.” Enadar said with a grim smile. “Big brother is the avatar of a warship. And your friends just pissed him off.”

[(Anonymous)]

(Quote spam will happen when I get home and can copy paste easier.)

So if one of the K&T teams were to be an Andromeda like crew/ship...?

[scribblemyname]

Hmmm... Got a preference? :eyes teams over for likely suspects:

[(Anonymous)]

Tyr accepts the role of Orca's alpha instead of killing them to take his son.

[(Anonymous)]

Tyr doesn't betray the crew. (I'm not there yet, but... he does seem to care about them so maybe there is a way he doesn't have to betray them and can have things he wants.)

[scribblemyname]

Seriously. I need to watch the episode to write the fix-it. Haven't done it yet.

[(Anonymous)]

Lena runs her store on a former Commonwealth ship.

[scribblemyname]

Hmm... :eyes Seven Days:

[(Anonymous)]

X-Men as an Andromeda-like crew

[(Anonymous)]

Rhade doesn't die when he resets the timeline (just watched it and am not sure why he didn't just stop with killing his alternate self if all he was supposed to do was save Dylan.)

[scribblemyname]

(Because Dylan had to get stuck in the black hole and know that the Nietzscheans had all betrayed him and be motivated and all that jazz. So rather than rework out how to get Andromeda into said hole, he just reenacted what clearly worked and lost instead of won.)

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, crazy thought... After the fall of the Commonwealth, society is divided into factions a la Veronica Roth/Divergent.

[scribblemyname]

I think I love you.

[(Anonymous)]

Tyr and Jayne from Firefly bond over guns.

Andromeda/Firefly: Alas, for a Good Gun

[scribblemyname]

"I lost a good gun once," Jayne said sympathetically, looking off into some memory before shrugging and swigging down some more alcohol. "Vera could blow a hole in a starship."

Tyr leaned both arms on the counter and picked up his glass. "Then you have to break in a new one."

Jayne scowled and shook his head.

"I had it for a decade," Tyr added.

They shared a commiserating glance and emptied their glasses together.

[scribblemyname]

The Andromeda crew as a Leverage-type crew

[(Anonymous)]

Harper & Trance. Purple & Gold.

[scribblemyname]

:le sigh: I ship them. Platonic or romantic, still my favorite Andromeda characters.

[(Anonymous)]

This is, I think, my favorite Andromeda quote.

"I have faith in nothing but this: when the Universe collapses and dies, there will be three survivors. Tyr Anasazi, the cockroaches, and Dylan Hunt - trying to save the cockroaches."

[scribblemyname]

I adore this quote.

[(Anonymous)]

"Here's everything I know
about war: Somebody wins,
somebody loses, and
nothing is ever the same again."
~ Admiral Constanza Stark, CY 9784

[(Anonymous)]

The Heavens burned, the stars cried out
And under the ashes of infinity,
Hope, scarred and bleeding,
breathed its last.

~Ulatempa Poetess, "Elegy for the Commonwealth"

Andromeda Fill: What is Hope?

[scribblemyname]

The Heavens burned, the stars cried out...

"They say that as if we depended on the Commonwealth for survival," Trance Gemini murmured to herself. She was hanging upside down by her purple tail in a little garden alcove on Scholar's Drift, home to a ridiculously eclectic library of odds and ends and ancient books and missives.

Ulatempa's "Elegy for the Commonwealth" was excellent poetry, but it was woefully lacking in certain particulars of reality despite the rave reviews one of her fellow stars had given it.

The heavens burned before the Nietzscheans revolted. The stars didn't cry out; they lit the novas in the cosmos to consume the initial wave of the Spirit of the Abyss. He sent out planet-eaters and devourers of flesh, and the suns reacted with fire and shifting realities, avatars moved into place to find the one that would defeat him utterly.

And under the ashes of infinity,
Hope, scarred and bleeding,
breathed its last.

"So now the Commonwealth is hope, is it?" Trance closed the book and dropped from the tree branch she'd hung from. She had stolen a treasure with this book, worth a great deal, and that a candidate to hold the very Engine of Creation had an eye on.

She glanced into the twisting futures ahead of her.

"I'll sell you the book."

"Adventure? Let me come with you."

"I suppose we could use a good thief."

"And welcome aboard, your purpleness."

"Harper." The candidate will smack the backside of her future friend's head.

The Engine is a backup plan, but a good one. It was always their failsafe. And somehow, this Beka Valentine holds the key to reaching the one—a Nietzschean, a human; it's too far ahead and still uncertain. Trance spins around on her heel until she's pointed in the right direction, the Beka direction, and moves forward with a smile.

[(Anonymous)]

"We say atoms are bound by
Weak Attractors.
Why not admit the Truth:
The Universe is held together by Love."
~Michio Von Kerr, Wayist physicist

[(Anonymous)]

"If hope is the engine of the soul,
Then duty is the navigator...
And love is the fuel."
~High Guard Supreme Commander Sani nax Rifati
"Persuasions and Exhortations"

[(Anonymous)]

"Between birth and death lies desire,
Desire for life, for love,
for everything good.
And this is the source
of all suffering."
~Outcast Consensus 17

[(Anonymous)]

Trance doesn't want to lose Harper in any possible future.

[(Anonymous)]

Trance gets her tail back. (Or keeps it.)

[scribblemyname]

I've been thinking about that. Hm.

[scribblemyname]

Trance is an earthling and her and Harper escape together

[(Anonymous)]

Is she still purple? She could be a mixed breed of some kind, maybe.

Not that her being human is a bad thing, but I admit to partiality to the purple tailed Trance.

[(Anonymous)]

Little purple tailed engineer babies/kids roaming the ship.

Andromeda Fill: Snips and Snails and Sparkly Tails

[scribblemyname]

"Harper!" Rommie's voice was sharp and disapproving.

He pulled himself out from under the sensor bot he was repairing and shot her a wary look. "Yeah."

She had her arms crossed and looked as disapproving as she sounded. "There is something small and purple crawling in my ducts, and I want it removed."

"Hey! Her," Harper protested. "And where's Trance?"

"Corralling the other three in Hydroponics," Rommie answered promptly. "Trance said you were supposed to keep an eye on this one, so go get her." She spun on her heel and went back out of the machine shop.

Harper grumbled as he clambered to his feet. "Do this, Harper. Go there, Harper. Fish the cute little purple kiddies out of wherever they've teleported to next, H—"

"Harper."

"Ah!" He fell back surprise. It was just Andromeda's hologram, raising an eyebrow at him. "Don't scare people like that. What?"

"Your children can't teleport, can they?"

"What? No." He thought about that. They couldn't, right?

---

He found the giggling little girl, not even five years old, hanging off a ladder by her tail. He pulled her up by her tail to an offended shriek.

"Daddy!"

He kissed her nose. "Come on, little bit. Time to go play gardener."

"Aww, Daddy." She gave him the big blues.

He tried to look stern. "None of that. Rommie doesn't want you playing here."

"That's right, Harper. Make me the villain." And there went that disapproval again.

"Ignore your Auntie Rommie. She just needs some space."

The tone went flatter. "I'm not her aunt."

His daughter just went back to giggling.

[(Anonymous)]

Little purple minis with presents for Aunt Rommie.

[(Anonymous)]

"We all wear the twin masks of emotion,
Happy or sad, haunted or hunted,
You choose the mask, you choose the risk.
You choose your own poison."
~Last words of Plethe the Pirate CY 3902

She Weeps/He Drowns

[(Anonymous)]

If nothing else, I should ask if Destan's introduction/background was too much like someone else's. I wasn't sure if his was enough on its own, so I put it with Dayla's. Hers is first, his second.

---

“Please tell me I do not have to do this,” Dayla whispered, looking out at the window, not back at her mother. She could not face the woman, would rather not see that indifference on her face when she did. She forced herself to breathe despite the tightness of her dress, wishing she could free herself from that, if nothing else.

“You know you must,” her mother said, coming over to put her hands on Dayla's shoulders. “Your sister is too sick to manage it, and your brother is still trying to salvage the business. We need the money. You must marry him.”

Dayla's stomach twisted. She did not even like the man. He was more than twenty years her senior, and even if he were not, if she could overlook the differences in their ages, she knew it was almost impossible to do that with the conflicts of their minds. He treated her as though she were a child—or incapable of thinking on her own—tried to dictate her opinion and her clothing when he was no relation to her, no one to make those kinds of decisions for her, especially since they were hers to make. Her parents might think they had that right, but not him. He was not her husband.

She never wanted him to be that man.

“It won't be as terrible as you seem to think.”

“Maybe it wouldn't be for Hlynn,” Dayla disagreed with her brother, wanting to face him even less than she did her mother. “She's quiet. Dutiful. I'm not. I never was.”

“Yes, but Hlynn has been sick for months now, and he likes you, sister dearest, though heaven knows why,” Cain told her as he came closer. Dayla wanted to throw her mother's hands off and run, wanted to get far from that sense she got from her brother. Sometimes she wondered if Cain was why Hlynn was always sick, if that tug she felt from him whenever he was near was stronger for his twin, more like a poison. He drained her, made her feel empty and tired, so sick...

They would say she was crazy, thinking that, considering Cain to be a monster, but she thought his name said more about him than it should, that he was too alike that first murderer, and she shouldn't be frightened of her own brother, but she was. If only she could see this marriage as an escape, but she knew it wasn't. She was trading one prison for another, and she could not do it.

Outside, the sky darkened, rain clouds moving in fast, and she almost smiled when she saw it. Some people's spirits would falter with such a sky, but hers always improved. Sometimes she swore she could make that rain come right to her when she wanted it, and now was the right time for it—let the sky cry since she was not allowed to, since she could not let Cain see her tears.

“Come now, off with you, Cain,” her mother said, moving away from her. “You need to go so Dayla can get ready for the wedding.”

Dayla looked back at the window. What if the rain could wash all of it away? Not just the dirt in the street or that clinging to the house but the house itself and all her family? Then she could run. She would be free. She would take Hlynn away from Cain and get her better for once.

“I wonder if you'll have to cancel, Mother. Look at that rain,” Cain said, and Dayla did turn to frown at him. Since when did rain bother him? The look in his eyes was dark, though, and his tone was not at all in line with his thoughts, but their mother missed it as she stared out at the water.

“Oh, dear. I'll have the coach brought around. I hope her dress won't be ruined on the way to the church.”

Dayla shook her head, wishing the storm strong enough to sweep away the horses—no, she didn't, that wasn't fair to them. She felt a hand on her arm and swallowed when she saw Cain's expression, feeling the grip tighten with that same darkness in him.

“The rain won't save you, Dayla,” he whispered in her ear. “You're not the only one who can pull it to you, after all.”

“Oh, good, I think it is stopping,” Mother said, and Dayla knew that Cain had done that somehow—if she'd pulled it, he'd stopped it—but the idea of her brother having that kind of power... She shuddered, and he laughed.

“Try not to do that around your new husband,” Cain warned her. “I admit it's tempting to let them burn you as a witch, but I might need to use you again, and so we can't have that, can we?”

He was still smiling when he walked away, leaving Dayla with her mother and a mess of confusion. She couldn't control the weather, could she? No—but then she always knew when it would rain, and it did seem to follow her moods, but she had to be wrong—Cain couldn't do that. That was like magic or witchcraft, and that was a sin if it even existed, and she wasn't like that.

Yet when she looked out the window at the silenced storm, she didn't know that she could reason away that doubt or the fear. She was afraid of Cain, yes, but she was now afraid of herself, of what she might truly be capable of doing, and how was she supposed to live with herself after that?

---

“Strange weather we're having tonight.”

Destan Washbourne grunted, not wanting to make conversation at the moment. He did not know why they always seemed to seek him out when all he wanted was a drink and a few minutes of peace, but somehow he was forced to speak with men no better than gossipy women every time he stopped to rest for a while. He lifted his drink to his lips and gave the man a pointed glare.

A glare that got ignored.

“That kind of rain should have lasted more than a minute. It's like someone snuffed out its candle.”

“I don't care about your weather or anything else here,” Destan muttered, shoving his glass back toward the barkeep. “More. Now. Before this one has an accident.”

“What kind of accent is that?”

“The kind that is going to kill you if you don't leave me alone,” Destan warned, taking the bottle from the bartender and carrying it with him to the only open table. He would have preferred one that wasn't at the window, but he didn't need this now. He needed the liquor, needed to shut out the awareness he had of everyone in this place. He was fortunate—at least there were no prostitutes here trying to seduce or men lusting after them—but there were still too many emotions and no way to make them stop without more than this bottle.

“You watch that voodoo, honey chile,” Arline warned, shaking a big dark finger at him. “Ain't nobody supposed to know what others are feeling the way you do.”

“That mean it's the devil's work?” he asked, frowning. “I don't want it. I swear I don't. I just... know things. I can feel them. I want it to stop. S'il te plaît, Arline. Help me find a way to stop it. Help me make it go away.”

“Hush now,” she said, taking him into her arms and holding him against her as he cried. He knew she was worried, and he wanted to take that away, too, but he didn't know how. He didn't know how to be rid of it, not even to sleep, and he didn't think he'd managed to do much of that since he was twelve. “Ain't no devil in my boy. He's a good one.”

“I'm not your son,” he reminded her quietly. His parents had always left raising him to her, and he loved her more than he did his own mother, but he knew he wasn't hers. He wasn't anyone's. They didn't want him because he was wrong somehow.

Destan leaned his head against the wall. Arline was gone, his last sanctuary with her, and he didn't know how much longer he could wander, drinking enough to block the feelings he got from everyone, without either his body or his mind giving out on him.

He tensed as he felt a new emotion enter the room, one unlike most of the ones he'd felt so far this evening or any time in the past. He had never known something that felt so tangible, almost as though the hatred this man felt toward... everyone was something that could be touched and measured. He saw the man frown as he saw Destan, and then he went to the back, where the private rooms were.

Destan glanced at the bottle, wondering if it had affected him more than usual, and then he felt something else—a pull. He'd never known anything quite like that, either. He went to the door, leaning against it as he looked out into the night.

He focused in on the coach, and since he was already half-drunk and not feeling much like stopping himself, he went toward the door, opening it up and leaning inside. “Strange time for a wedding, isn't it?”