The Best Laid Plans

Title: Best Laid Plans
Series: Battletech/MechWarrior
Original Publication: May 2012, Classic Battletech Forums

When I decided to upgrade Grand Theft Agro from a one-shot to a series, my mind began plotting out a long-term story arc; more to the point, it decided where to end that arc first and then worked backwards from there. Of course, that finale was a long way off and just about everything changed along the way, but a few elements of what was originally planned survived.

The end result was Best Laid Plans, a continuation from Salting the Earth featuring some of the (surviving) characters and incoperating the ending that I had planned all along. It also served as a handy end to one particular character set, bringing them up to the end of the published Dark Age material. For the moment,  this marks the end of their storyline, but not the end for them as a whole.

After all, with Era Report 3145 due soon there's no telling what may be within...

Trivia:

This was the first fic in which both Goren's name and Kirsten's hair were not edited after the fact. Hooray!

A chunk of this fic was written before I had access to the Loyalty short story dealing with the fate of Jacob Bannson. Suffice to say, many edits were involved.

Pedro Baer was one of the first Bannson's Raiders characters created, but owing to not having stats for the Violator (and learning that it wasn't introduced until 3135) his debut was pushed back to this fic. Ironically, Nero Nowen was created to take his place.

Speaking of which, Pedro was originally slated to die at this point. However, having put off his appearance for so long, bringing him in just to kill him seemed pointless. The result is that he's in reserve for future use.

King's Tigers appeared in the fic Nothing but a Hound Dog, although this fic was written first. It's clear that the years haven't been kind to them.

The members of Arasaka's Furies were named to a theme and inspired by a common source. Hi guys! Maru's name was changed at one point, so there may be stray errors sneaking in. And yes, the "Bethany" mentioned is Miri Wolf from Take On Me

The Recital City University was modeled on the UTS Tower, a fantastically ugly building that I am strangely enamored with.