I wrote this as I came upon a stumbling point in the Remembrance rewrite…
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Okay, the alien thing isn’t going to work. None of the martial artists have the ability to attack from a distance, and no matter how cheesy it gets, the little green men aren’t going to land and let the humans beat the snot out of them. They’re perfectly happy zapping people from above, thank you very much.
I could start Sebastian’s change early. Have him launch a fireball by coughing it up like a cat does a hairball. But the Guardians don’t do fireballs, they do lightning, and it would be a hell of an abrupt thing to do right away. Not exactly gradual. So, yeah, don’t like that idea, either.
Should they win? Can they simply defend until Old Man McCrazypants gets zapped by his own Martians? Should they be completely overwhelmed by this new threat, losing people simply because they have no way to fight back,, and then the attack will stop, for no reason that they could discern, cranking up the helpless vibe? Will it alienate the reader to have so much happening outside the range of the characters’ ability to control and/or understand? We don’t even have the Merlin/Moiraine/Morpheus teacher/mentor/rescuer type of character to reassure the reader that SOMEONE knows what’s happening, even if the POV character is totally lost and has no bleedin’ clue.
Goddamnit.
Hey, what if it something like redirecting old man crazy pants. Like, Diane, since this is her part of the story, watches as people run around and notices a place of non destruction. She hears this old man making the lazer pew pew sounds. She stops one of the locals who is running away on who that man is and why he is just sitting there. I would have it be another woman so that when the hysterical lady tries to pull away Diane colcocks her and forces her to get it together to tell her that the old man crazy pants has alzhiemers and his nurse was the first to get zapped. She tells Sebastien that she scientifically thinks that this man has diverted back to a childhood memory and that it is so real for him that he has caused his flash back to become a reality. The only way they are going to save everyone and themselves is by getting to him and trying to get his attention to derail and jump to another memory. Have them pick up an old photo album in his house and use the pictures to divert it. Maybe bring back an early memory of his father, military man, his father comes to life infront of him, telling his son that he has made a mess and that a good man would fix the problems he has caused. . . derailing his thought process and also making whatever people need to know that reality is now squishy.