I was born to sixth-generation rice farmers in one of Planet Kyushu's most fertile farming plains. Growing up on a declining planet in a declining industry was endlessly frustrating, but I never developed or shared the pure anger and hatred of many of my classmates, most of whom left at age 18 to join the Farmers' Alliance. I was saddened, but my endless curiosity and thirst for understanding led me to a passion for social science. Kyushu's largest academy, as you know, has one of the most prestigious Sociology programs in Sirius, and I begged my family to go when I turned 18. My parents could not afford to do so, and finally acquiesced to Synth Foods, selling our precious family land for a minuscule fraction of what it had been worth just fifty years prior... sacrificing our family's heritage to offer me a chance at an education. I feel a great deal of shame for this, but my mother assures me we would have had to sell within the next five years anyway. I was determined not to let their sacrifice be in vain, and I attacked my studies with a ferocity and focus I didn't know I possessed. My studies taught me three key things: 1: Kusari's successes are owed to the brilliance of humanity when unimpeded by poverty, war, and sickness. 2: Kusari's failures are owed to centuries of greedy, short-sighted rule by unaccountable leaders and corporate entities, constantly keeping our nation off-balance in their endless hunt for greater profit and control. 3: It doesn't have to be this way. There are better ways to structure political systems, economic systems, and foreign policy. Empirically valid solutions may stand in contrast with the status quo, but we can scientifically assert that they will be better. After graduating, I enrolled in my region's fighter-spaceflight training program while working at university as a teaching and research assistant, and now I wish to apply both forms of experience, academic and practical, to the Blood Dragon cause. I prefer peaceful solutions and my faculty mentor thought I might make a good politician in another time and place, but she knew as well as I do that structural oppressors have no interest in peacefully discussing challenges to their undeserved power; they understand only violence. I'll shed as much blood as I need to to free my people from their shackles and set them on a course to prosperity and peace.