Apologies for the following mondo-sized author's introduction...
I never really watched CSI while it was growing. I caught glimpses of it every now and then. I'd be at someone's house and it would be on TV in the background. I'd get glued to it watching. I never knew much about the characters, other than the names Sara, Nick, Catherine, and Grissom. Didn't even know it took place in Las Vegas.
Recently, one of my brothers was talking to me about episode – that I now know is called The Unusual Suspect – where a twelve-year-old confesses to murder. Coincidentally (if you believe in such things; I don't) it happened to be on a couple of days later. I burned away my day of sleep before work watching it, and the other three episodes recorded on my DVR. One of those episodes was Pirates of the Third Reich, which included the fantastic character, Lady Heather. Since I used to write FanFiction all the time when I was younger, and I've recently become interested in it again, I thought, Well, why the hell not?
So, I started watching other episodes and pieced this little story together. Thankfully, coming up with a case wasn't (as hard) as I thought it was going to be. A special thanks goes to some of the other great CSI story writers I've been reading for the past month or more...
And about my Assassin's Creed story, I apologize for the lack of updates. I have no intention of leaving the story unfinished, because I hate it when I'm reading something and it's never complete. But my humble opinion is that the Assassin's Creed franchise is skipping down a path to the bottom of a hill from which it is getting harder and harder to see it ever returning from. Not that it couldn't happen, I just don't know how...
All the best characters – in and out of the Animus – are now dead or out of focus. All the mystery and intrigue the series used to offer up in spades – you know, the kind that has you analyzing every wall in the game, looking for a clue – is gone. The story in the actual game series has completely and criminally wasted its once-insane amount of potential. Fans tend to do better work with the franchises they're fans of in many cases...
...but in Ubisoft's case, this is just getting unbearable. The choices they're making aren't just a little misstep, here or there. They're blatantly, obviously stupid, with less and less redeeming value or possibility for each new one they reveal. So it's a little hard to get in the mood to work on an AC-related story.
That, and I've written the story all the way through several times. It was almost a fifty-chapter affair when I did the first draft of it. I had an editor who worked with me to trim back a bit on the angsty internal monologues and sex/sex act scenes, and that got it down to the thirties. Then I changed directions with it over and over. I'm trying to make it a little less... well, angsty and sexual. But I just can't escape viewing the characters in it that way. Sorry, but Desmond and Lucy are... well, sexy, each in their own ways. And Desmond, from whose point of the view the story is told, is quite angsty. And there's so little character development for the modern cast. Particularly Desmond, who's the main focus of it.
Which is unfortunate, because it's easier to relate to them as people (being from our time period) than it is to the ancestor characters. But anyway... I do have an actual plot for it, so it will be done eventually.
In the meantime, I've been on a CSI kick, so I've been working on this after reading several talented authors here on FanFiction. It's a two-part, currently. I might split it up into three. I've already written the entire first part, so I'll just post it.
Hopefully, everyone enjoys it!
Another day, another dollar. What a tired old phrase.
And yet, it was exactly the thing on Nick Stokes' mind when he wearily drug himself into the car he was driving. A call had come in from a distraught sounding man. His girlfriend was missing and there was blood all over his apartment. But no body.
Nick hated these types of cases. They were always so depressing. And usually, it turned out the person who seemed the most upset about it was really the killer.
To think about it now, though, he chuckled when he remembered what Sara had said on the matter. "We all know the killer is usually the person closest to the victim. Why don't we just skip all the crap and arrest everyone the victim knows until we get a confession?"
Not exactly how Nick thought on it, but still... he couldn't dismiss the thought that it made some kind of sense, given the pattern. Except for those cases when the murderers turned out to be someone totally out of the blue. Which did happen a fair few number of times in this line of work.
As the police squadron cars he would be riding with pulled out of the parking lot in the pre-conceived order – with Nick falling in line somewhere towards the center – he wondered just what HAD attracted him to this line of work. It wasn't usually a pleasant job, it had taken a lot of work to get into it, and he'd almost been killed more than once in the courses of crime scene investigating. Not that he would trade it away for anything in the world, but still...
The drive out to the desert felt long. While the lights and other cars passed, Nick listened to the radio – something he didn't do very often anymore. Tuning through to find a station with something he recognized took quite a while. But when he finally did, he sang along and bobbed his head to the beat. It was a song he'd frequently overheard Catherine listening to, although she didn't seem to particularly like it. Thinking about Catherine reminded him why he still worked as a CSI. The people he worked with...
The cars rounded out into the edge of the desert. The residence of the 9-1-1 caller was on the outskirts of town.
If you're lucky enough to live in Vegas, who'd want to live this far out of town in Vegas? wondered Nick.
When HE'D been shopping for homes there, the outskirts had never been anything he'd even considered. As his car came up on the edge of a bridge, he shook his head with a smile to think of all the weird houses he'd toured there...
It was then that a scream suddenly reached his ears. "Help me! Please! Anybody!"
Nick slammed on the breaks. The car began to skid. Dust from the dirty roads flew up everywhere. Behind him, he heard several honks, and watched for a moment while the other cars ground to a halt behind him.
But he didn't waste time asking them if they were okay. Someone, somewhere nearby needed help. Surely, they'd overheard the cry, too. Surely, they'd be right behind him while he hurtled himself from the driver's seat of his car.
"Please...! PLEASE! Don't do this...!"
His head jerked to the right automatically. The screaming was coming from... underground? No, that couldn't be right... Under the bridge...
"Stokes! What's going on?!" came the demanding call of an officer behind him.
"HELP ME!" came the cry again.
Two of the three officers behind Nick joined him in drawing their guns and moving to the side of the bridge; the voice of the third radioing to the cars ahead faded as Nick came to the guard rail. With stunning determination, he went to his knees behind it and raised both arms over the edge.
Beneath them, just outside the realm of the shadow cast by the bridge as the sun set on the other side of it, there was a tall, blonde-haired man taking slow but deliberate steps towards a woman tied by the hands and laid out on a large, flat-surfaced boulder. Whatever he was saying in response to her crying out was lost in the rushing wind. Nick's eyes widened when the man's arm lifted and the knife glinted in his right hand. He reacted without another thought.
His gun made three loud banging sounds as his finger pulled the trigger back the same number of times. Head jerking back, blood spattered out of the man's back and into the sand just moments before his body toppled to join it.
Nick took a deep breath as he raised himself back to his feet and lowered his gun behind the guard rail. The woman resumed her calling out for help, and the officers were skidding down the sand hills towards her. He smiled...
Click.
Nick jolted as his hands were forced behind him by the officer to his right. He looked up to meet the officer's eyes with a mixture of shock and confusion he could feel in every muscle of him.
"Nicholas Stokes..." sighed the officer with apparent regret, "...I'm afraid I have to place you under arrest... for the murder of an unarmed... civilian."
Nick's lips parted the very slightest of distances, and his eyes widened with the realization of this information.