Rachel: In a posting mood, so what the hell?

I just finished doing some lame math stuff for three hours and I felt like doing something that I actually like doing for a while!

So I was planning out Death List like I seem to always been doing lately, and I finished up with Wolfe. I was thinking that I could start posting my characters' plots up here like I think I mentioned I wanted to do last night, since I could use some feedback. A lot of this probably won't make a lot of sense, but anything that I didn't explain when I gave you all the lowdown on my book I'll explain along the way. I've been doing this in order of when the characters are introduced, so I'm going to start with ZeCat. Sorry that I always blab, like, strictly about my book on here, but this is the only place where I ever get to talk about it so you'll have to be patient and bear with me!

Okay, so I'm going to assume that you remember a little bit about ZeCat from the character descriptions I did and I won't go into great detail explaining his character. Even if you don't remember (honestly I would be really surprised if you DID remember) that post is around this blog somewhere, so it's all good. Anyway, here we go. I hand-wrote this out already, so I'm going to just do this in the same format. Oh, and keep in mind that this is just kind of the bare bones of what goes on; there's lots of events that will flesh this rough plot line out.

*Where he starts out: In family-oriented housing in the Western part of Paradise City. He lives with his mother Alva, and his younger brother, Edwin. His father isn't around because his Date occurred when ZeCat was seven years old, an event that altered him on a fundamental level.

*Where he ends up: Xenophon

*How he gets there: Obviously ZeCat starts out at home with the remains of his family. As a quick refresher, he is neurotic, introverted, and totally friendless. He spends most of his time in his room thinking about his long-dead father and hating the Death List. Oh, and he's also something of a coward and a total loser. In other words, he's not that likable of a protagonist at this point, but that opens up the window for quite a bit of character development. Anyway, one evening when ZeCat's mother is out at a meeting, ZeCat gets the idea to go through her things to find his Date, which he has never been told. This is something that he has considered doing before but has never gone through with due to his cowardice. This time, however, he DOES go through with it and discovers that not only is his Date in just a few weeks, but that it happens to be on his little brother's birthday...which is obviously why his mother has never told him when it is. After learning this (he's very freaked out at this point), ZeCat bolts from his house and runs aimlessly out into the city for a bit. While he's out there, he witnesses a mugging taking place in an alleyway. This is significant because both the guy doing the mugging and the guy being mugged turn out to be main characters (Wolfe and Freedom). Freedom notices ZeCat standing at the mouth of the alleyway and calls out for help, but ZeCat turns away in a stunning act of how wimpy he is. This cowardice will come up between Freedom and ZeCat later when they eventually meet. It will also be a characteristic that he gets rid of as the story goes on, but for now it's a prominent part of who he is.

Anyway, a day or so after witnessing the mugging, ZeCat makes the decision to run away from home to escape his Date. He packs his things, leaves a note, and departs. He ends up living in an alleyway between a pixel building and a monorail station (Station Five, which I only mention because it's a significant location for a lot of the characters), hiding for the police. I may or may not have mentioned this earlier, but the police are a very potent force in Paradise City, and laws are VERY strict. Breaking any rule is met with severe consequences, and avoiding one's Date is the most important rule, second only to never leaving Paradise City. So running away from home to evade death is no little thing; it's something that you can never turn back from. Just to give you a little perspective as to what kind of a thing ZeCat's gotten himself into. Anyway, so he's hiding in an alleyway. He has a very difficult time adjusting to life as a runaway, but he came more prepared than he realizes--he brought a bunch of canned food with him that comes in handy later. He lives in this alley for a little while before he gets himself all worked up over the injustices of the Death List and throws a chunk of the cement at a passing yellow pod. Yellow pods are the vehicles that bring people to Almost Heaven, so whenever someone sees a yellow pod drive by they know that someone is going to die soon...just to clarify about the significance of the yellow pod. Anyway, this act not only exposes some fire and rashness in his personality, but it frees Wolfe, who was on his way to Almost Heaven (obviously). ZeCat ends up following Wolfe back to a life house located below The Violet (a restaurant that ends up being significant to several characters) and begins living down there. He meets Wolfe officially and also meets Bryony-Rose (she's main, but the story is never told through her), who quickly befriends him. She is important to ZeCat's character because she forces him to think outside of his closed-off little world; she's bold and outspoken and basically his complete opposite. Anyway, he lives here for a bit and starts to get used to his new life a little. He begins to learn to stand up for himself and to hold his own, though it is still in a very small way.

After a time (obviously I don't have the time periods all planned out yet), the operator of the life house presents the people living there with the opportunity to go and join a group of people who are breaking a hole in the wall surrounding Paradise City. The chances that they will be caught are extremely high, but there's also a slim chance of escape. Wolfe accepts, and Bryony-Rose does, too after convincing ZeCat to join her. They are taken to the outskirts of the city in the back of a food truck and meet Tyson Moore (another main but not main character), the leader of the hole-diggers. Tyson is a complete maniac, which becomes obvious pretty quickly when he rapidly decides that ZeCat is basically his mortal enemy for absolutely no reason. ZeCat works at digging that hole in/under the city wall anyway for several days. I'm not exactly sure for how long yet, but I shouldn't think for longer than a week. In that amount of time, ZeCat would have grown a little more used to living on the streets and would have started to wise up a little to the way things work in Paradise City. Just as the hole is almost finished, the police will arrive and everyone will be forced to scatter in utter chaos. ZeCat and Bryony-Rose will end up fleeing through the hole together. Wolfe will get through as well, but he'll head off in a different direction. ZeCat and Bryony-Rose find themselves in a little settlement that is located just outside of Paradise City. Long story short, this town is basically just for preparing people to be sent off to Almost Heaven and killed.

While they are in "Almost Almost Heaven", ZeCat and Bryony-Rose will meet Ziv and Vine (two more of my main characters). These four will team up together and begin traveling to this place where Ziv and Vine were informed that they would be safe (all of this will be explained through them). ZeCat will be forced to make friends, which will be a new thing for him. He might be driven a little out of his shell by all this, but we'll see. At any rate he will meet two of my other characters, which is good, since my master plan is to have everyone meet at least once. Anyway, Ziv, Vine, ZeCat, and Bryony-Rose spend a lot of time traveling through the ruins of the old supercity that used to be Paradise City in a generally Eastern direction. Food will be a problem out there, as will water, so ZeCat's canned food will come in handy...but it won't last for long. After maybe...well, probably less than a week of travel, the Paradise City police will have discovered them. This would lead to a fight and a quick escape, of course, that leaves ZeCat with Bryony-Rose again. They spend some time hiding in an abandoned building, they would be stumbled upon by Leala, Zylo, and Price--three more of my characters (Leala and Price are main). Despite the absence of Ziv and Vine, they would continue to head eastward according to the directions that Ziv and Vine had given them. The lack of food starts to wear on everyone, and tensions start to run high. ZeCat is sued to not eating much (he has some weird food issues), but his skinniness is working against him; his body doesn't have much to survive off of. The nights of traveling are long and tiring (they travel at night to avoid being found by the police again) and everyone stats getting irritable until one morning when Price starts talking about Xenophon, introducing the idea of a safe city to everyone. I'll cover Xenophon in a different post, but just know that it's not very well-known and it's rumoured to be a safe place where the Death List doesn't apply. ZeCat won't really buy Price's story and will still want to head to the place that Vine and Ziv are headed, but Bryony-Rose will want to look for Xenophon. Zylo, who is Price's brother and has heard about Xenophon from him a thousand times before, will want to go back to "Almost Almost Heaven" for supplies and won't take no for an answer, so he and Price start to travel back to the city and leave Leala, Bryony-Rose, and ZeCat behind. Leala is also intrigued by the idea of Xenophon, so she and Bryony-Rose embark on their own quest and leave ZeCat by his lonesome. ZeCat will continue to travel and will be on his own for a while, forcing himself to face some of his demons and to get over some of his fears. He will steadily continue to grow weaker as food continues to be scarce, and eventually he will be unable to continue his travels. Things will not look good for him, and they'll get even worse when the police of Paradise City (they are RELENTLESS) find him and bring him back to Almost Almost Heaven for rehabilitation. When he is healthy enough to be killed, he is shipped off to Almost Heaven. Once he gets there, he discovers that the place is not what he was taught to believe it is; it's a death camp, not a luxurious paradise.


 Now, most of my characters end up in Almost Heaven at the same time, so ZeCat won't be on his own here. Wolfe, Freedom, Bryony-Rose, Leala, Zylo, and Price end up there, too. I'm not going to get into details about life in the camp, but eventually rebellion starts to brew, largely due to Price's influence. He starts preaching about Xenophon, and a lot of people start think that Xenophon sounds a lot better than dying. ZeCat + co. find themselves in the center of a movement to escape from Almost Heaven. There is an elaborate plan behind all of this, but I haven't quite worked it out yet, so we'll skip forward to the day where it's all supposed to occur. Everything is all set to go, but, of course, there's a huge complication: the people running the camp evidently have ZeCat and Wolfe scheduled to be killed that morning, because they come for them and take them into the dreaded Road to Heaven building. ZeCat is taken to a private room and will go through the standard Almost Heaven procedure...except for the lethal injection. He will be all set to be killed when Freedom, Bryony-Rose, and Leala will barge into the room and narrowly save his life. ZeCat will then accompany them to save Wolfe, but they arrive one second too late and Wolfe dies. There is little time to process this, though, because ZeCat and co. will have to focus on fleeing before they're caught running around the Road to Heaven building. Almost Heaven is on an island, and so the only way to get there is by boat things that I have yet to name and design. ZeCat, Freedom, Leala, and Price will all end up in the same boat thing and will successfully make it away from Almost Heaven. They find land again, a little south of Paradise City, ruins and all.  In other words, they're in countryside. This would be the first time that ZeCat would ever have been anywhere without a city setting, which would be a very interesting experience for him. He has to learn a whole new set of survival skills, just like he would have had to do when everyone ditched him back in the ruins of Paradise City...only this time he would succeed. Also, he would have friends this time around. At this point he has learned how to trust himself, how to be brave, and how to move forward rather than stay trapped in the past. 

After some time of journeying inland, ZeCat and everyone will come across a rebel camp that is dedicated to liberating Paradise City and will stay there for a while. Long story short, ZeCat travels from there to Xenophon, which turns out to exist after all. The details still need to be worked out, but it's pretty easy from the rebel camp forward; just more traveling. Once ZeCat gets to Xenophon, he is reuinited with his mother, his little brother, and a few more of my main characters. And he lives happily ever after, basically. So, yeah. That's it. It was way longer than I thought it was, so sorry! Also, sorry for references to things in the book that I haven't explained...but oh, well. At least this is out here now.

-Iridian