[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]G[color=#99AA99]ranted, bothersome might not be the most correct way of describing myself in my early years. Troublesome ought to fit better. Maybe even attracting trouble like a light in the night attracts the moths, eh? But yeah, moving on.
Thanks to my origins I ended up not being overly liked by certain groups of people around the schools I visited, what with being half a Rheinlander and half-Kusarian in the house of Rheinland, the place where many people still held grudges originating from the Rheinland Military's lost war against Kusari's Gas Miners Guild, and on the other hand being the child of two former members of the military did come with the perk of having more of an inherited fighting mentality when it came to dealing with trouble on the horizon.
I had my fair share of fights and did get kicked out of a rather expensive private school once, an occurrence which was to become the major turning point in my youth as my parents simply decided to send me to a military academy on New Berlin.
Of course that's not the only important part worth a mention when it comes to things happening in my younger years, but other than being somewhat isolated and kind of a loner - which I don't see as something bad, I might add - I had a rather normal teenager's life.
Parties, relationships, the whole "school sucks" phase, the "my parents suck" one, and so on and so forth. I even was really madly in love once, so much that I even got engaged - much to the dismay of my parents - but as you can see from the lack of a ring on my fingers it obviously didn't last. More of a childhood fairytale fantasy kind of thing, though it did end up shaping me quite a fair bit in the area of relationships.
Anyway, you can sum the rest up by saying that I just had a tendency to get myself into all kinds of trouble everywhere until that particular turning point, and even a little bit after. Though I'm guessing that when you get the word "discipline" chiseled into your forehead everyday, figuratively speaking, sooner or later you inevitably change.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]O[color=#99AA99]f course it's silly to say it like that, as if it had been easy, because it wasn't. I didn't exactly fit into the exclusivity and all of the Von Claussen Military Academy - an establishment I can actually only recommend in hindsight - and problems did arise pretty much everywhere.
My demeanor wasn't exactly helping, what with my overly rebellious, trouble-making and non-conformist attitude. But like I said before, sooner or later you inevitably change. So I did. You have to adapt if you want to get through life, and seeing as this was my parents' - regardless of my behavior, I loved them dearly - seeing as it was their last straw for me, I buckled after a while. The constant drill obviously helped.
It was actually becoming fun once I gave it a more honest try though. Military discipline and all the other things isn't exactly to my liking still. It's something situational. Sometimes it has advantages, like when you work closely with some kind of Military or Para-Military organization. Other times, like when you go to do some more easy work, it's superfluous. Not necessary. So you might as well remove that stick you have stuck up your ass and have a good time doing your work, right?
Well anyway, the first year had passed and we were getting to the more interesting things you learn in such a place. More useful things. Things you can put to use in, as it would come later, my line of work. But regardless of them being more interesting, they're still kind of boring details so I'll get to the more fun stuff.
See, in the second year everyone gets to pick an additional, presumably more practical kind of course. It's like the first big time when the mighty men in charge of you say: "Dear, we've drilled the discipline into you, we've drilled more theory into you, we're on our best way to shape you into a better human being. Now you can pick yourself something to do that you actually want to do."
Ranging from things like various athletic disciplines, sports games, a chess club if you will, more theory of all kinds for those interested, to things like flying. A basic course in which you'll ultimately learn how to operate, maintain and pilot a small space-ship, along with getting your pilot's license if you do well.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]Y[color=#99AA99]'know, even though I buckled under all the pressure and I still wasn't that partial to the whole Military Academy thing for the most part, it changed a lot when I saw that I had the possibility to learn to fly. I've always been fascinated with the whole idea, the whole concept of flying out there in space like my parents used to do. Just being there, isolated, confined to the little ship's cockpit you were in, far away from everyone and everything. And yet at the same time, part of the whole universe in its colorful entirety.
That freedom when you'd be in control of your own destiny by moving the flight-stick and that overwhelming sense of foreboding you'd get when you made escape velocity and that little ship of yours kissed the gravity well goodbye, launching off into the dark, into the unknown. It always seemed strangely peaceful to me.
It was as if a gate to a whole new world had opened up, a world you never get to grasp when flying aboard some luxurious little shuttle, just staring out of a window while counting the hours until you were to arrive at your destination.
But l'm trailing off here. I don't have to tell you that it didn't start that flashy and easy right away. First came the theory. Then the countless simulator rides. Between the usual day-to-day work, the usual courses and lessons, there was only some time alloted to my greatest interest in this whole gig.
Instead of complaining, bitching, I did as told, did as taught even. The basics, theory, that had come to first. It had to, because if you didn't learn that, didn't know, you had no foundation atop which to build on the things that followed. And I wanted the things that followed. I wanted to fly.
You could say that I ended up going from a troublemaker to someone who delivered A-grades on a daily basis after a while. I learned, studied, didn't rebel. I was being a good girl. And it paid off.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]O[color=#99AA99]h dear, the first time. Just like the other kind of first time, over way too quick, but it wasn't awkward in the least. It was wonderful. After seven months of theory and simulators, flying in the backseat with an instructor in front of you, watching over you, they let me fly on my own.
I don't really have the words to describe it, I mean, I do but they just don't do it justice. It was such an overwhelming feeling, sitting alone in that little Tiger Shark as it made way out of New Berlin's gravitational clutches. Escaping the world as I knew it, making off into darkness. Stars glimmering faintly in the distance, the system's own shedding little light on everyone traversing this patch of space, reflections of the light in the distance, their source the space-station, The Ring ahead.
But the most wonderful part of it all was that blissful silence. With the looming darkness of space all around you, it was strangely comforting, not menacing, threatening like the calm before a storm. It was just like in the middle of Winter, as if snow had fallen onto the world, shrouded it in a veil of endless white. Silencing everyone and all things as the world came to a standstill. It was overwhelming and comforting at once, and that moment I knew, this was it.
This was what I wanted, was where I wanted to be. It was perfect.
You caan imagine how annoyed I was when the instructor said his part over the radio, telling me to do as I had learned and to get in formation, to follow him on this unfortunately too-brief voyage.
I did as told, already longing for the next time I'd get to make this experience, the next time I'd feel so... whole, in a way.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]I[color=#99AA99]t came, later. Repeatedly. But always with some boundaries which I wasn't to cross, lest I wanted to risk pissing-off my superiors and be barred from flying. But I progressed further and the little trips went to become longer ones, to the point of that the next year, on my birthday, my instructor had managed to arrange for something special. Given my, as he would later say, natural talent and outstanding grades, it was the reward for all the hard work I had invested, all the countless times I had kept my temper in check against my nature.
My first inter-system flight. From New Berlin to Stuttgart. To Baden-Baden. Home.
It was just as wonderful as the first time I had left Berlin and gazed into space, albeit obviously different. With my instructor flying lead, we took the trade-lanes, we passed the stations, the people busily wandering from A to B, the Rheinland Military and Federal Police patrols, we even got to see some of the Military's mightiest and biggest ships maneuver around Stuttgart as we were waiting for our spot in the cue to Baden-Baden.
Can you imagine the look on my parents' faces as we finally arrived so unexpected?
It was shocking, unexpected like I said, and a really big surprise to them. Of course during my by-then three years on Berlin there had been visits, vacations, times I had seen them, but the last thing they had expected was their daughter come visit them as a real pilot, not like their little girl. I remember my father just staring at me in a combination of shock and awe while my mother could barely keep herself from quietly laughing as she stood behind him. But they were happy to see me nonetheless of course.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]I[color=#99AA99]t really was a wonderful day, really really really was. But let's move on before I start getting lost in that memory too much.
That year, it was to be my last one at the academy. I had fought against the system, I had given in against it, I had learned, I had gained knowledge, friends, I had lost some things, but as the end of it approached, I was happy. It wasn't just like graduating with flying colors that made me so happy, it was a major plus, and it too did make me happy to see my parents at the final ceremony, proud of their little girl.
But what really made me happy was that I had found what I wanted, what I longed for and desired. I wouldn't go so far as saying I had found my "destiny" or such, but I did know what I wanted, wanted more of.
So, after a while of me being back, back at home, taking a break after those years, just spending time with my parents - I too had missed them as dearly as they had missed me - I obviously told them what it was that I was after.
They weren't that happy, especially not my father. I wanted to fly, wanted to go out into the universe, experience that wholesomeness I mentioned earlier, that feeling, the freedom, everything. But they didn't want their little girl to do it, no sir. Too dangerous. Too risky. There had been enough people who had done what I wanted to do, whose lives had reached a horrible ending, or at least an unfulfilled one.
So I told them if they weren't going to let me, I would enlist in the Rheinland Military. I had the background necessary for it, I had done excellent at the academy, I had contacts, friends, had gotten to know people who could easily help me with that. If I wanted to, I could always get what I was after there, without my parents' help.
It hadn't been the right thing to tell a former Chūsa of the Naval Forces and a former Leutnant of the Military. The series of arguments that would go on for weeks after that were the proof for it having been as wrong as humanly possible. I had screwed up big-time.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]I[color=#99AA99]t would take a long time until their anger - and my stubbornness - would have ebbed down to the point that we could really talk about how to go from there. I was supposed to follow in their footsteps, work in their business, live a quiet, peaceful life as part of the corporate establishment. That was their idea, and it was far from mine. I didn't want that peace and quiet. I wanted the kind I had tasted when I first launched into space, my own hands guiding me out there, not some shuttle's captain or what have you. I wanted to do my own thing, do what I wanted, and do it my way. Wearing business-suits and dresses while conquering meeting rooms and mountains of paperwork was far, far away from that. Settling down somewhere, that was far from it too. Not to mention the whole "family business" part. As much as I loved them I didn't exactly want to spend my life in the vicinity of my parents either. I wanted my independence, my freedom.
After a while spent with everyone coming to their senses, it was my mother who started to understand at first. Later she would tell me that it wasn't so much what I wanted as the way I had acted, the way I had simply been, which reminded her of herself so much, or rather the way she had been a long time ago in her younger years.
That was the turning point. Well, at least to a limited extent. It took a lot of convincing one another before we could at least settle on me not enlisting in the Rheinland Military. Later on I realized myself that it had not really been one of my brighter ideas, I'm just not much for being too bound and the whole thing with orders and having to follow them all to the letter. Using the Military as a vehicle to get myself into space would have only ended bad, and I can thank my dear parents for convincing me not to go that way.
As for them, slowly, steadily, they both grew to understand more and more about my wants and needs, about the future I was seeing for myself, the future I was wanting - although I still don't know what exactly it is in all areas, that "future" - and we came to an understanding. Of sorts. My father didn't really like it at all still.
It's the typical story of an overprotective father wanting to keep his little girl safe from the dangers out in the world. Now that I've seen plenty of the "bad" in the universe, I can't blame him. Back then it was a different story. A still argument-filled different story with my mother acting as the mediator between us two, for the most part.
But I wouldn't be here if it had not gone a different way than to my father's liking, right? Well it did. And it didn't. I don't exactly know what it was that made him crack, but one day, everything changed. In my favor. Or ours? Well both. Kind of.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]O[color=#99AA99]n old Earth, in ancient Greek mythology, the "Chimaera" was a kind of monstrostiy. A creature that had the head and body of a lion, then the head of a goat, and a tail that ended in a snake along with its head. The stuff of legend, so it's said. The Chimaera in my story was the remnant of my father's old days in the Naval Forces. The last thing left from the time when he was younger, bolder, and when he had more hair on his head. But that's a completely different affair I won't talk with you about. So.
One day he came to me and said we'd go out. On a trip. To somewhere. I didn't have anything much better to do - I admit that the first months after the academy I avoided anything like "getting a job" or whatever like the plague. I was being helluva lazy to be honest, but anyway, I didn't have anything else to do, so I came along, wondering where we'd go.
And so it came that we ended up on the nearby space-port and my father led to me an old, old hangar on the far edge of the said port. Before I go on, let me say that I really don't know what made him crack, or rather not so much crack as change his mind. I once asked him later, way later, and he told me - he really loves to be cryptic, and he's not a man of many words, but anyway - he told me I'd find out for myself soon enough. I can only speculate about the reason right now though. Maybe it was that he wanted to cast aside the last remaining bit of days long gone, but I doubt it. I also thought he might have just wanted to do his best to, well, keep me safe and sound, but knowing my father that would be too plain. What I like to think is that rather than doing those two, he saw himself in me beyond the point of me being his beloved daughter. Just like my mother had done.
So he put in the pass-code to the gate's lock, and the old steel-framed doors came to life, sliding open slowly while the lights flickered on one by one. And there it was.
It wasn't the monstrosity of old. This was his ship. His own Chimaera. His. Very. Damn. Ship.
"When you go out there, my dear, do it with her. She has a long history, dating back beyond my days, beyond the time I met your mother. And she's all yours now. So take care of her, and she will take care of you." - He said.
And that was when I got my father's blessing to go my own way in the universe.
Well, obviously it's what I ended up doing shortly thereafter. And now I'm here.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]O[color=#99AA99]h sure, I could tell you more stories. Stories that would explain how I got here, what made me go here, where I've been before and what else I've done, but those, those aren't the stories you want to hear, right?
I mean, I could even tell you a story about how I once met a Military Admiral by the name of Meric Freelamen, but I don't think you've any idea about who that is, even. I could also tell you how - in waaay different times - I was once in Seto, when it still was called Leeds, and I ended up learning to fight from people such as a Mariko Kietan, or a particular Dragon, Marzoruki Kimozashi. But I don't think those names will ring bells either. And yeah, I guess I could tell you the stories of myself fighting Bretonia's finest at the side of a particular Alexander Yamakazi much later, when times had changed. I even could tell you how, more than once, I ended up in the far reaches of the Taus and also saw Omicron Alpha while fighting the Outcasts alongside Mercenaries and Bounty Hunters alike. But those too are different stories. Not those you want to hear, and not those I intend to tell at the time being.
Maybe I could tell you why most people who've met me think me a mute, but that actually wouldn't be much of a story. Hell, it's really simple when you think of it. I mean, unless if I'm intoxicated - Alcohol and I aren't really that close friends and we sure don't go well together - but yeah, see, what's the point of talking if you don't have anything to add to a conversation or discussion, right? Besides, you learn a lot, learn to observe and listen, I mean really really really listen, when you just decide to shut your trap for a while. It can also be pretty fun too, now that I remember some occasions where I simply, well, kept my own trap shut even though I didn't think that I didn't have anything to say or something.
But yes, I digress. Although the way I see it, it's time for the closure of this particular tale. Don't you agree?
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]S[color=#99AA99]ee, I'm not that good a storyteller so I'll end this one as it started. During my years, I've come around, seen things you wouldn't believe. I've fought aplenty, won some battles, lost some others. I've met people in far-away reaches of space, so distant you might have never even heard of them. Friends, enemies, I've made both on this journey of mine.
With time I've come to the conclusion that we, human beings like you and me, we're not really looking - and sometimes especially acting - that different from moths. We live our lives in whichever way, we each try to reach our own personal light, no matter what or who it is. We all have people and places, goals, ideals, things we are drawn to.
And just like the moths, sometimes that light, it burns us. Scorches our wings, makes us fall, makes us scream, makes us beg. Not looking that different at all, if you put aside the "Why?" behind our motivation, isn't it?
Yeah, you could say that we are like moths. But even though on one hand we don't seem that different, on the other hand we are. And that goes just beyond the biological level, us being human beings and moths being insects and so forth. No, what I mean is all the things I've said earlier. We think, question, choose, doubt, all those and more things make us different from moths.
And that's what makes this situation we're in rather funny. You see, you can act like a moth, and not like a human being. You can fly around in space and see something. Maybe it's different, like a Chimaera would be in the middle of House Liberty, or maybe it's just catching your attention for any other imaginable reason. And that's where you can act like the moth. You can see that thing, whatever it is that catches your attention, you can see it as your own source of light in a way, getting drawn to it, closer and closer, without so much as a thought, a question, doubts, anything.
What can happen is that not unlike the moth at all, your wings will burn, and you will burn, if you get too close for comfort. If you act too aggressive, if you go about things in a way that a moth would, just getting closer, not paying attention - maybe even unable to pay attention because you're so focused, so hell-bent on getting closer - that you might not even notice whether the light you're approaching is the one that will bring you warmth and safety, or the one that will bring you your very own demise. But it goes much deeper than that.
You can approach the light like a moth. You can see something out in space, and you can demand things and question things forcibly, things which don't need be demanded nor questioned, even though you might not realize it. You can approach things and people like the moth does a candle in the night. You can try to question people about things that aren't as important to you as they first seem, rather than thinking and coming to that realization yourself. Things which, when you gave them some thought, would be of no importance to you at all most of the time. Yeah, they might be of importance to the person you're questioning, the light you're approaching, but then it is not your choice but theirs to shed light on that particular "Why?", and all you can do is keep getting closer and closer. And then you can burn your wings. But that's not so bad. Unlike a moth, you're a human being, and you can learn.
It's when you do things like that even though you should know, even though deep down you actually do know better. That's when you're not acting like a human being. That's when you act like a moth, one who can't learn. One who didn't learn when given the chance.
That is the worse thing you can do. Be a moth, so to say. Remember when I said that that this situation we are in now was rather funny? Simple reason for that, really. You didn't approach me like a moth approaches a dancing flame. You didn't come with remarks about the shallow and obvious. You didn't act like you were interested only to get to that sliver of light you were after.
You really were interested in my story, and I so told you just that. You didn't want a justification for my actions, my doing or my behavior, either. Even though I'm sure you questioned it at some point, which is fine and well now, because you didn't want to know things that aren't of any importance to you, things that even if I were to tell you, you would forget them the next day.
Could say you did what sets you apart from all the moths around and didn't reach out for the searing light. Right, aren't I?
That's how my story ends for now though. I don't know the real ending yet, but I'll see to that in due time. And by the way, you can call me Fuyu. In my father's tongue it means "Winter". I'm sure you can figure out why, after hearing my tale.
And now? Well, I'll get going my friend. Maybe I'll see you around later, maybe not. Time will tell.