The Leading Man's Unlucky Loot (Chapter 1)

1st May 3067
I don't like what I do. I absolutely hate it. All those innocent lives, But it's a living I guess – A bullet whizzed past Karta's head.
“Stop daydreaming Karta!” Alent yelled over the roar of the battle. Karta snapped out of her daydream and looked around. The deck of the Ignis was a battlefield, enemies everywhere. She cursed and looked around for her comrades. Lamya was fine on her own. Karta watched in awe as she took down a group of enemies with one swing of her staff. Seth on the other hand wasn’t doing so well. Karta pulled her trusty pistol out and shot a warning shot. The officer turned and charged at her enraged. Karta took a step to the left and shot him. She walked over to Seth and placed her hand on her shoulder
“Go back to your nest little Magpie this is no place for you” She whispered, Seth obeyed and ran. Then Karta looked for her captain. She scanned the deck once again and froze.There was a Naval Officer trying to shoot Alent. “ALENT!” She screamed and threw herself into the bullet’s path. Everything seemed to slow in that instant as Karta crashed to the floor. She could feel herself drifting into darkness, into an eternity off sleep. She faintly heard Alent yell “Karta!” and saw his pained face.
I love him, I really love him. I remember when he found me I hated him. He was just another stepping stone.

26th June 3066
Karta's stomach grumbled. It had been 3 days since she'd eaten. She sighed and started playing with the gold coins around her.
“Great. I'm going to die out here.” Then she heard foot steps and muffled voices.
“The door’s locked Captain.”
“Stand back Lamya.”
A gunshot rang in Karta's ears, and the door was pushed open. The captain scanned the room, eyes dancing over his prizes.
"This is what I call treasure, Lamya," he whispered to her, his eyes never leaving the gold.
Time to make my entrance.
Something in the glorious mountain of precious metals moved. He blinked, smile vanishing. If it was yet another godforsaken monster…
A long mop of blood red hair tilted out from behind a huge treasure chest. "Treasure?" Karta said quietly. "Prize? Blessing? Curse?" Her face gradually turned to meet them. "Every rose has its thorns..."
Dark eyes were laid upon the intruders.
A moment passed.
"A-Alent Sora!!!" squawked Karta.
The man himself shrugged eloquently and gave a tiny bow. “Now that’s the true greeting the leading man should receive,” he said, smiling smoothly at Lamya. “See? Even this isolated girl knows me. It’s fame. It’s fate!”
Lamya looked at him. Blankly. "I'm more interested in why she's sitting on our treasure, and is she going to try to stop us from taking it?"
The girl stood up and dusted herself off, ignoring the woman and addressing Alent.
"Damn, my captain hated you."
Lamya sighed. "That would be a yes."
Their foe half-folded her arms, touching one hand to her lips. “Or one of my many, many captains did anyway…”
Alent looked grumpy, pointing his pistol at Karta. He was feeling less and less famous the more she talked. “Listen, I don’t really care, now budge before I pitch you out the window.” He remembered they were in a grounded airship. “Or, I kill you and tell people you were just a Giant Rat”
The woman gasped, hiding her incensed reaction to being called a Giant Rat and faking hurt instead. “What’s wrong, don’t you like your treasure?”
The Sky Pirate stopped pointing his pistol at her for a second, having heard something of interest.
“MY treasure?” he repeated, perking up.
She struck a pose that radiated smugness. “Yes! Yours! Like everything else in this room, I am treasure.” She twirled to demonstrate the fact that she was part of their loot.
“Don’t get any ideas,” muttered Lamya irritably, just as he leapt forward to seduce his first-ever personal slave girl. But he restored his partner-in-crime’s confidence in him when he stepped back again, to reveal the rope now tied tight around the tattooed arms of his ‘treasure’.
“So what’s your name, treasure?”
“Karta,” replied the treasure winningly, suddenly aware that this wouldn’t be as easy as usual.
“Where shall we keep her, Lamya?” asked Alent, winking.
The woman shook out her long purple hair and walked around them both. She kicked a pile of coins with a high-heeled boot. “Please,” she huffed, wrinkling her nose like a rabbit (he’d neglected to point out that habit to her, for fear of death). “It’s painfully obvious how this rather impressive horde came about. The little thief stows away with the treasure until she is placed with what the finder has already scavenged, then joins or kills the crew and captain, and finds herself with a larger cache than before and a convenient airship to keep it in. Lock her up the moment we’re back on the Ignis.”
“I like the way you think,” smirked the Sky Pirate, stretching out his fist to Lamya for a secret handshake.
She replied in kind, rolling her eyes. “Someone around here has to, Alent.”
“Do you think I would do that?” Karta asked fluttering her eyelashes.
Minutes later a door slammed in her face.The rune like markings up her arm gave the faintest blue glow. “Oh, very intimidating!” she hollered through the wood, having been trussed up and dumped on the floor. “You know, I can tell this is a broom cupboard!”


Thank you for Reading my Story "The Leading Man's Unlucky Loot" This chapter is still under construction and more will be added Thank you fro reading once agan.

Hi, want a review?

All those innocent lives, But it's a living I guess

Did you realise that you've repeated 'live'? It sounds sort of odd to the reader, especially when you've used two completely different meanings of the word.

“Go back to your nestcomma little Magpiecolon? or new sentence. this is no place for youcomma” she whispered

“ALENT!” she screamed

You don't have to capitalise this, since 'screamed' already implies the emphasis that the caps lock lends to it. And, as before, the speech tags should all be lower case, and there should be some sort of punctuation before you close the speech marks.

into an eternity [s]off[/s] of sleep

"A-Alent Sora!!!"

You only need to use one exclamation mark. Even two would be excessive. Maybe you could use a question mark and an exclamation mark, if you want to convey her surprise.

“Or, I kill you and tell people you were just a Giant Ratfull stop”

The woman gasped, hiding her incensed reaction to being called a Giant Rat and faking hurt instead.

Two problems with this sentence. One is that the second part of it, from 'hiding' onwards, is not very well worded. It doesn't flow and it's hard for the reader to follow the sentence through. Two, you've already referred to Lamya as 'the woman' and as a reader, it's very confusing.

“MY treasure?” he repeated, perking up.

Same rule as before. The italics already emphasis 'my', so there's no need for capitalisation.

I wonder if you should be italicising Ignis, if that's the ship's name. I'm assuming it is, though I was rather lost through some of this. That's my first point. You take everything so quickly, and this has two major consequences for your writing:

1. Your reader struggles to keep up with the story. Let me use this as an example:

The Sky Pirate stopped pointing his pistol at her for a second, having heard something of interest.

It's hard to follow you when you start referring to him as a Sky Pirate. The reader has to sort that out by rereading the opening a couple of times. You need to make sure that it's simple for us to put two and two together, without telling us so abruptly. Perhaps describe Alent; maybe he carries a mark that singles him out as a Sky Pirate? As it is, I did a double take.

2. There's no time for emotion or description of any kind, which only further contributes to number 1. This was a particular problem at the beginning. I was completely lost, which I think was at least partly your intention, but that doesn't mean you can't flesh the story out a bit. We need emotion. Karta has just died for Alent, and we feel absolutely nothing. Even if we don't yet know her inside out, there needs to be some sort of emotion there. As yet, the whole event falls flat. Since it is a little bit of a cliché, diving in front of a bullet for somebody, we really need to feel it and you need to add that bit of uniqueness to the description.

Personally, I wouldn't even have started the story the way you did. I take it you'd usually have split this up into a prologue and a first chapter if it was a bit longer, though, and maybe it could be if you slowed it down a bit.

The dialogue was pretty good in the second half. We got a good sense of the characters' personalities, and I like the idea, even though I feel like I've read something similar somewhere else... I don't know, but I feel like I've heard 'Sky Pirate' before. All the more reason to add some description and start fleshing out these characters so we can see their faces as well as their hearts.

Speaking of seeing, whose point of view are you telling this story from? Well, obviously you're using third person, but we seem to skip from Karta to a general narrative that's almost dizzying to read. I lost touch with the story in wondering why you were swaying so unnaturally between Karta and an omniscient narrator. It's weird.

There's potential of some sort here, but please, slow down! We can't hope to get all the way inside your mind and follow your thought process, so you're going to have to bring it down to my level, I think.

Hi,
I enjoyed ready your story immensely. I really liked your idea of Sky pirates, (it's neat!)
like Jetpack mentioned, you to slow down and smooth the plot out some. Also you could be more descriptive of your characters, you didn't mention what Alent looked like at all and you hardly gave the others any description either. I like to know what the characters that I'm reading about look like. Other than that it was great, Kee writing!
Eagerly Waiting
~Zanna

Generally, I like it. However, I agree with Zanna and Jetpack that you need to slow down and take some time to flesh out the characters, particularly in the first part. I had very little idea of what was going on and had to read it twice. Furthermore, I felt not the slightest little jolt of emotion upon reading that Karta died; granted, I'm not the sort to get weepy over dead characters, but consider fleshing out her character a bit more before killing her off.

...shot a warning shot.

Isn't this a bit redundant?

“ALENT!” She screamed...

and

“Go back to your nest little Magpie this is no place for you” She whispered...

She does not need to be capitalized. Furthermore the second one needs to be punctuated, e.g., "Go back to your nest, little Magpie. This is no place for you," or something.

“Or, I kill you and tell people you were just a Giant Rat”

Period after Giant Rat.

The woman gasped, hiding her incensed reaction to being called a Giant Rat and faking hurt instead.

This seems awkwardly worded; I had to read it through twice to make sure I understood correctly.

Overall I think you need to take a bit more time with the story, develop your characters further, and stop head-hopping in the second half. Other than that, good.

Hi
I liked the story, but there were a few problems;

Karta pulled her trusty pistol out and shot a warning shot.

Having 'shot' twice in the same sentence makes it sound weird, I would change it a bit.

into an eternity off sleep.

'of sleep'

Also you need to take the time to be a bit more descriptive. Parts of it were confusing and part of the time it was difficult for me to define who was actually talking.

I liked your idea though, continue working on it!

~Tayla