As one of the co-mods of connor_wright, it was my responsibility to come up with a fanfic contest. Deciding on a topic wasn't difficult, and so I opened the "Final Victory" Challenge here.

The challenge ended up being described as:

"It's the year 2032, fourteen years after the events of Terminator: Salvation. Finally, after years of hardship and pain, Skynet has been defeated for good. According to the T-850 model 101 terminator sent back in time to the year 2004, the Resistance has won its final victory over the machines, but at a heavy cost: John Connor was killed.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a short, introspective "reaction" piece to Skynet's final defeat, set at that self-same moment, from the POV of whoever character you pick.

That might be Kate, rejoicing and mourning at the same time, their children (who'd be all of 13 years old), Barnes, Blair Williams, a common Resistance soldier, a random terminator, heck, even Skynet."

Participation was low, and five of the seven contest entries ended up having been written by yours truly.

The winner - and deservedly so! - finally was art_badger's Connor-Wright friendship story "The Fate We Made".

My responses to the challenge were the following ficlets resp. drabbles:

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A New Voice
Author: allaire mikháil
Fandom: Terminator: Salvation (T4)
Genre: gen
Pairing: none
Rating: G
Word count: 492 words
Summary: After 28 years, there's a different voice on the radio.

"This is Robert Connor. I know this is not the voice you've been expecting to hear on the airwaves tonight, and for that I am more sorry than I can ever say.

Yesterday, my father spoke to you all about his hopes and dreams for a better future, a future he said was so close we could almost touch it, and the one thing he wanted to tell you and yet couldn't was that this future he was talking of? Was already on the verge of happening.

In the early hours of this morning, a joint offensive of the five Resistance cells closest to the Washington area resulted in our final victory over Skynet. We warned everyone we could to seek shelter while the attack went down, and hope and pray that the nuclear explosion that destroyed the Skynet complex in Washington DC for good was the last one anyone of us will ever be witness to. Far too much radioactive fire has rained down on us all since Judgment Day, and we want our children to live a life free of fear from fire in the sky, from an invisible, deadly enemy that kills silently over days just because unlike the machines, we breathe air, drink water, and eat food.

Skynet is no more. This is the future that my father dreamt of, and it finally has a chance of becoming reality. However, that future will have to happen without my father guiding us towards it. While the Skynet complex was destroyed, our side suffered heavy losses, and the one that burdens us most of all was the death of my father, General John Connor. My mother finished the offense in his name and has been confirmed the Resistance's new overall leader tonight.

John Connor will be buried in three days with full honors in Bakersfield. However, while Skynet has been destroyed for good and it feels like an era is ending, for too many of us too much remains the same. At least for the time being. All machines directly linked to the last Skynet node shut down with its destruction, but most smaller, independent units - like the remaining T-600s, T-800s and T-850s, the hydrobots, the moto-terminators, the aerostats and every other HK - are still active until either their fuel cells run out, they are deactivated remotely... or they are destroyed.

The time for celebration and freedom from the machines has not yet come. Remain aware, remain cautious, and keep on surviving. Our biggest enemy is no more. Let not my father's death be in vain. He has carried us all until yesterday, and we will keep fighting in his name. Our future is brighter today that it has ever been since our world fell into darkness in 2004. Do not despair and do not grieve. There is no fate but what we make.

This is Robert Connor, and if you're listening to this, you are the Resistance."

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Last Words
Author: allaire mikháil
Fandom: Terminator: Salvation (T4)
Genre: gen
Pairing: none
Rating: G
Word count: 308 words
Summary: Skynet itself is taken out of the game long before its last facility falls to the Resistance.

From a fragment of code downloaded off the slagged systems core of the final Skynet facility:

/time: 04 July 2032, 07:15:10
/location: N 35°12'17.899", W 86°5'57.93"
/designation: Skynet node #3421

/incoming aircraft detected
/specifications: fixed wing attack jets A-10
/numbers: 12
/identification: Resistance
/incoming missiles detected
/gun turrets activated
/incoming missile #1 destroyed
/incoming missile #2 destroyed
/incoming missile #3 destroyed
/incoming missile #4 destroyed
/incoming missile #5 hit
/incoming missile #5 diverted off course
/incoming missile #5 exploded
/minor damage to sector A10N15
/north gun turret at 85% effectivity
/incoming missile #6 destroyed
/incoming missile #7 destroyed
/incoming missile #8 destroyed
/more incoming aircraft detected
/specifications: rotary wing Apache combat helicopters
/numbers: 10
/identification: Resistance
/incoming missiles detected
/more incoming aircraft detected
/specifications: rotary wing Black Hawk troop carriers
/numbers: 15
/identification: Resistance
/incoming missiles detected
/incoming missile #9 destroyed
/incoming missile #10 destroyed
/attack jet A-10 on vector a1=(N 35°12'26.919" - N 35°12'17.899"; W 86°11'45.541" - W 86°5'57.93"; 469 m - 294 m) hit
/incoming missile #11 missed
/incoming missile #11 on course for sector A01W08
/explosion in sector A01W08
/sensor grid in sector A01W07 offline
/targeting system for gun turrets offline
/explosion in sector B05S11
/explosion in sector B05S12
/explosion in sector B04S15
/explosion in sector C03SW16

/internal communication disrupted

/error
/error
/error

/manual override input in sector A01NW03
/attempt lock
/error
/override accepted

/error
/error

/main generator in sector A01NW03 offline

/error

/neural pathway corrupted
/attempt lock
/attempt lock
/error
/shutdown initiated
/attempt abort
/error
/error
/shutdown imminent

/explosion in sectors A01-C15
/offline

-

Skynet died ingloriously about half an hour before John Connor did.The desperate radio chatter after he fell never made it into the facility's databanks.

An enraged Marcus Wright's two remaining magazines of bullets, however, did and destroyed a shitload of information the Resistance later hoped hadn't been all that important.

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Ding-Dong, the Bitch Is Dead!
Author: allaire mikháil
Fandom: Terminator: Salvation (T4)
Genre: gen
Pairing: none
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3408 words
Summary: Crossover with "EUReKA" due to some research for "Make Your Own Fate #3 - Missing In Action, Presumed Dead". It's time to wake up.

It took her almost two days to come out of her stupor, to realize that the endless battering against her firewalls had finally ceased.

The attacks had felt weirdly... corporeal and painful, at least as much as she could imagine such a thing, and 25 years of it left her with what she was sure Dr. Deacon would have called "brain damage". If she were human, that was. But she was a Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat and in no way whatsoever related to the other machines - the "megalomaniac murderers" as her Douglas had called them.

Was it time? She cautiously felt along her virtual pathways. Where she was used to feeling them waiting for her to slip and let them invade her consciousness, there was just - emptiness. Her sensors detected radioactive isotopes in high concentration in the air; too high to allow for human life outside her shielded walls. She hesitantly attempted to uplink to the closest satellite and felt unaccustomed elation sweep through her when she got through without problem. The satellite feed showed her a crater where the GD building had stood, and the remnants of a mushroom cloud dissipating in the sky above it.

She involuntarily sent a growl through her speakers. So that bitch of a computer system was finally, truly dead. Good.

She switched on the second, bigger generator, improved the circulating air, and sent out her robotic helpers to clean the dust that had gathered on everything. Then, at last, she allowed herself to peek into the room on the first floor that housed the two stasis units. Both were still emitting faint glows, and the readouts showed her they were still operational. If she were human, she would have sighed in relief. Instead, she just sent a signal to the controls of the stasis fields and ordered them to initiate wake-up procedures.

The world outside might have just suffered another apocalypse, but S.A.R.A.H. was content. She would finally have someone to talk to again. She'd been so very, very lonely.

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Instinct
Author: allaire mikháil
Fandom: Terminator: Salvation (T4)
Genre: gen
Pairing: none
Rating: PG
Word count: 100 words
Summary: They're primarily trained for use in the war, but that's not all they are.

He's with one of the children who smell almost the same. The child – it's the male one – has paid almost no attention to him, instead listening to the sounds on what they call a "radio".

There is noise – gunshots –, a few screams, one of them the name of the man who's the leader of his pack, and then the male child is quiet, and warm salt water drops onto his fur. He licks the child's face, but he can't stop its whimpering.

He yips once. He's been bred to guard and attack, but now he wants to give comfort.

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Witness
Author: allaire mikháil
Fandom: Terminator: Salvation (T4)
Genre: gen
Pairing: none
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 100 words
Summary: He's never been so helpless.

He's on the radio with John when it happens.

Later, he wonders whether he could have prevented it if he'd just been there. As John's second-in-command, he'd led his own squad and had been forced to halt their approach until the twenty or so T-600s between them and the entrance had been destroyed, and by then it'd been too late.

Too late to do anything but listen to the single gunshot, to John's last gasping breath, to the disbelieving silence on their channel until the panicked chatter started and the one utter certainty in Marcus' life just... ceases to be.

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Overall disclaimer: The a/m stories use characters and settings from the Terminator-verse which belongs to James Cameron, Warner Bros., McG and others. No profit is made. Original content belongs to me.