Piano and his twin sister Forte were born to loving parents in the year 804, and raised on Erie. They were regularly surrounded by extended family, collectively occupying a small stretch of condominiums in one of its cities. Despite Liberty having taken it under their banner, their Zoner heritage (and spirit) ran strong through the family, resulting in a pair of very rambunctious children.

The pair discovered their musical passions somewhat early on, Forte first and her brother second, around the age of ten collectively. Where Forte had taken to singing, Piano found himself enjoying the...well, piano.

As the twins reached the latter half of their middle grade years, they had managed to score music tutoring with one of the best teachers their home planet had to offer. It was also around this time that Piano's focus had shifted from the analog to the digital, and he transitioned from the traditional piano to a keyboard. He hasn't looked back since. Before long, he was learning to write music of his own, and came to enjoy writing new pieces just as much as he did playing them.

At fifteen, his sister vowed to try to become a popstar in Liberty, aiming for the highest point she could possibly reach - Manhattan. Her brother swore he would do anything he could to help her achieve that dream, arranging covers and writing new pieces for her when he could find the time. Even as he was pushed by the government itself to despise them, he continued to work in her name, and took up freelancing at sixteen, with a Kestrel he had bought with some help from his parents.

Unfortunately, it only took a year before his life would take a turn for the worst. Their parents were killed when the corporation that they worked for had opened fire on union protestors, leaving both children with all of their assets and no-one to care for them but their extended family. Piano, however, refused to force his sister's steadily climbing tutoring fees on their cousins and aunts and uncles. He buried himself in his freelancing work, desperate to ensure that she could see her dream come true.

With the freelancing came personal training - in firearms and fist or knife-fights alike. He knew he was likely to be intercepted, and the likelihood that he'd be boarded would only increase as his ships got larger. Not to mention the risk inherent in docking at certain ports. Piano grew steadily stronger, as both a pilot and a fighter...well, a fighter on the ground, at least.

Between paying increasingly exorbitant fees just to keep himself alive and his sister in vocal training, he found the growing urge to compose again. Through a great many months of saving, and a few days of hard work, he managed to get a music rig installed in his Kestrel...which certainly wasn't built to hold it, but carried and powered it with little issue.

In a way, Forte's dream did come true. She made it to Manhattan, and she's been earning enough in the past couple of years that he no longer has to send her a sizeable sum of his earnings from a job. But at what cost? He had been relatively quiet about it before, but now that the opportunity was long gone, he found himself wishing he could be there beside her, especially as they hardly speak thanks to her schedule.

Piano was involved in the Pennsylvania H-Fuel Crisis of 829, ferrying loads of the fuel when he had discovered Liberty Police was willing to open fire on traders regardless of the goods they carried. This was where he drew his line in the sand, so to speak. He began looking more seriously for somewhere outside of Liberty's jurisdiction to relocate his base of operations, even if it tore him away from his remaining family in Erie.

Thankfully, he received a well-timed intervention three months later from a member of the New Dawn Movement, a ragtag group of liberal anarchists situated in far-off Roussillon. He followed one of their pilots back to base with a load of food rations, water, and oxygen after reading through the pamphlets she'd been passing around, and finding there was a lot more to it than Liberty had described it in their schooling...not that it was much of a surprise to him. Despite some complications outside after his arrival, he settled in relatively smoothly, and has been looking forward to upgrading the encryption on his personal transmitter before he speaks to his sister again.