Burned Commentary: The 3 Paths to the End

 Hello Readers,

We've reached the part of the story where I now have to explain the 3 paths this story took.  In my last entry, I posted my original outline and while Chloe is featured in the story I actually had not considered anything but using her as a team member and that she would be allowed to have Jackson's child via in-vitro fertilization.  She would be close to the Fullers and Donovan's of course and get a happy ending.

Then one of my readers asked me a question and it put the idea in my head why should Rocki be the one to get the happy ending (not their words, but that was the idea I got from the question).  So originally there were 2 choices which gets me to the original Chapter 3.  I was going to then put Jackson into the situation where he had to choose between saving Chloe or Rocki.  The 2 paths would lead to a quicker resolution before I followed up with the real path.

Once I remastered the original 10 chapters and made key changes to the story I then revised my Afterburn outline. The original 3 paths were going to play out Chloe Lives/Rocki Dies, Rocki Lives/Chloe Dies, and then the happy ending as detailed in the outline.

However, with Sienna's addition to the story, it gave me a third party to throw into the mix.  Sienna's addition to the main story and one of Jackson's ex's allowed me to remove Rocki from one of the paths (as she was getting the primary one).  Sienna got the Left Path ending (with none of the three girls dying), Chloe got the Right Path ending (Rocki died) and Rocki marries Jackson in the true path.

Each path dealt with the container differently as well.

The Left Path:  Jackson's team carries out the mission in Jackson's memory as the world believes he is dead.

The Right Path:  With Rocki's injury the group is forced to improvise.  Stevens and Tao were killed the night before so Jackson buys remote turret rigs to deal with the men on the doc and kills his former teammates with explosives.

 The True Path:  Jackson has made a deal with his team who are patriots and not aware of the fact that the Director was no longer in the employ of the US Government.  They make it look like the container has been destroyed and the team is dead.  Dividing the money between the two groups the team reunites for one final mission, eliminate the director, which they do.

Story's end.  The final chapter was always going to end where my story began, Cancun.  I always planned for the group to buy the resort that they all met at as I thought it was a nice ending for the group that went through so much together.  It wasn't until I was writing the story that I decided to bring Coco back into the mix just to round out what happened to everyone.  I like the character and will feature her more often in later stories.

The Epilogue... So now we get to the happily ever after...  at least it was until I remembered a key story fact about Full House/Fuller House... that a loved one dies and brings everyone together.  Jackson's Grandmother, his father so, unfortunately, I made it his wife.  Now to be fair I did give them seventeen years which is more than either his grandfather or mother got.  So Rocki got her happy ending just not happily ever after.

Chloe got the happily ever after but only after a fashion.

Sienna got a happy ending.

Jackson lived happily which after his life is all he could ask for.