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entry author - Tricia Reyes
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entry date - 01.16.828
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[INCOMPREHENSIVE]..working? Hello? Oh. It's working. Huh. [Noise log - Wooden surface impact] The thing spent ages in my backpack and it's still on. Well. Hi! Thought I should document some thoughts on, well, stuff.
So, first, I came back to the Core, got almost instantly promoted to the Guildkeeper and got assigned to a crap ton of paperwork. Rheinlanders, Velvets, other people... Good times. It was weird to see Archos not in charge, though - he was around, just not as frequent. Guerra, the guy who took position as the Guildmaster, was very gung-ho, which I can fall back. But eventually he gave up on it, for some reasons, and I think I understand now. Shortly after, I was elected as a Guildmaster. Me! A bloody nobody, in charge of The Core and APM. Been a good run, but... [Noise log - sip; ceramic impact] The discovery of Omicron Nu made things worse, with Libertonians claiming it as their own system almost instantly. Not to mention, some of the core personnel was very against the idea of bombarding Akabat. Crazy, I know. Only then I realized that the board is a bunch of opportunists and that it's beneficial for them to keep the Order around.
Waste of people and money, if you ask me. I had a very heated discussion with the board once and I almost snapped at them. I thought it would be probably for the best to surrender the Guildmaster's mantle to Archos. He still kept me around as a Guildkeeper and I still had more paperwork to do. This time, trying to convince Libertonians to cooperate with us. [Noise log - sigh] They consider the Core to be a foreign agency. Never thought I'd say these words. Why? Why would we need to convince them in the first place? We were allies, like, for ages!
I got tired of this nonsense. I applied for libertonian citizenship, got some land at Bayport on Manhattan and said to myself "I want a house!". Hired the best team I could find and I don't regret a single thing - this house is everything I could've dreamed of. It's spacious, it got two floors, a large kitchen, and - the best thing about it - an underground hangar with a retractable landing pad! Means I can store at least two snubcraft vessels right near my home! How cool is that?!
[Noise log - sip; ceramic impact] I've been doing absolutely nothing for the first two weeks, though. Literally, I was lying in a bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if the life's worth living. The Elysium, a cruise Liner I had for diplomacy meetings, was now converted to my personal yacht. I don't know how many luxury liners have gigantic pools with open windows, but Elysium is one of them. The captain, Julius, is a good man as well. The most loyal man I've seen in my life, more loyal than most of the Core personnel.
[Noise log - sip; ceramic impact] It was hard for me to open up about my issues to someone, even as trusted as Julius. When I did, though, he gave me a very interesting advice. He said "You need to learn to relax, child. Try the pool, I heard it's very relaxing. Just lie down, shut your mind and look at the stars. I'll take care of the rest.". And I did. I went completely naked, just to feel the water, to feel nothingness. And I floated, looking at the stars, not thinking about anything. Just me, the cosmos, and nothing more. It was an astonishing sensation, I still remember this indescribable feeling. It was never the same afterwards - I'm not saying it gotten boring or routine, - more like, I opened my mind to something.
First thing I wanted is to change my image. I went to the best beauty shop there is on Manhattan. They operate on a whole new level - something about genetic surgery or engineering. Regardless, I woke up and... I saw snow white long hair. Just as I wanted. And I'm keeping it loose ever since. Some shopping had to take place, too. I felt a really heavy need for gothic stuff. Coats, tailcoats, belts - everything. Some of it was ordered, some - handpicked by myself.
Next on my list was the garden. Yeah. Me. In a gardening shop. In our age. Who would've thought? Not me, certainly, yet here I am. At first, I wanted to hire a gardener, to make it all easy. but then I felt a need to add a piece of myself to my new house. And I enjoyed it, - planting flowers, cutting bushes, growing a tree, - every single bit of it felt better than decimating the Order fleet.
I've decided to keep my old Core uniform, though. And my coat from Bounty Hunting days. Right now they take their place on mannequins upstairs, right near my favorite tailcoat. I had Sun visiting me the other week, we talked a bit about the omicrons and philosophic stuff. She had that strange aura around her, though, like... She looked so calm all the time.
But yeah. This is the part where I get to being my old b**chy self. And the topic of today's b**ching is... Surprise, tax money!
I have no idea who recruits people into Fourty-Sixth. There's quite a lot of them, yet they're all so... Unprofessional. Not to mention that the LSF might have some big time moles in their ranks, I still feel like my tax money is getting wasted on nothing. And it ain't cheap to live here! I have to pay two million credits a month just for the land and the infrastructure! Sometimes I think about organizing a private military company, here, in Liberty. But it's me being impulsive. I wouldn't be so on edge if it wasn't for the Nomads, they seem to be rather active in the last few days. Even saw a small scouting party in Pennsylvania. The bigger node tried to indoctrinate me - well, it's a good thing they don't keep tabs on people. "Mercy" that the Nomads subject people to is a well known thing and I'd like to live the rest of my life for myself.
So, yeah. That's everything I wanted to document. It's good to have thoughts written, - or, well, recorded. Helps to clear the mind.
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entry author - Tricia Reyes
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entry date - 01.17.828
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I hate it when I'm right. Here's me, finding this old diary, making a first entry about how things are getting more or less settled, and BOOM! - 24 hours later, the Nomads invade New York. It was a full scale invasion - Artilleries, Archons, Purifiers, Mindnodes, even the infectees. Navy capital ships were nowhere to be seen and these pink bastards were right above my home. Fourty-Sixth got decimated right at the beginning, then on LSF Battlecruiser, one Primary Fleet battlecruiser and the LPI Dreadnought were severely damaged. The Fifth Fleet didn't even had a dignity to show up, neither did the Insurgency. Even Outcasts were caught in a crossfire, and they all were heavily damaged too. If this keeps up, we'll be forced to organize a militia to protect our own houses from alien invaders. F*cking A, the Navy should be doing this kind of job, not armed civvies!
The Nomads are gone for now, but something is telling me it wasn't the last time I saw them here. A Nomad floating above my home is a sight I'd never want to wake up ever again, I had enough of this in the Omicrons.
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entry author - Tricia Reyes
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entry date - 01.20.828
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Isla. Another constant face near Trenton, although a pleasant sight to see every once and then. Only recently got to knew her... maybe a bit better? There's a lot she isn't telling me, for her own reasons that is, but I invited her over to my place - she sounds like she needs to talk her heart out and somebody to listen to her. Will have to try my best, this seems to be a very, very delicate case. If only I wasn't under this surveillance... Have to wait a bit more, though. In the meantime, after I meet her, I'm going on a shopping spree - my garden is still missing a lot of details.
Speaking of, I need to document all the flowers I want to buy.
- Wine White Windflower
- Flaming Katy
- Red Dahlias
- Moraea Aristata
- Red and White Chrysanthemums
- Columbine Flowers - Blue and Pink
- Belladonna Lily
- Desert Rose
- Cambridge White Lily
Might burn some holes in my pocket, but I don't care, as long as I have a beautiful garden!
Soooo many things happened over the span of that time. Huh, my last entry here speaks of me looking for flowers. Flowers, of all things. Can't believe I used to be so obsessed with them back then. Well, I suppose if you'd exposed someone like me to planetside life, you'd realise how many beautiful things can be.
The most important thing to mention is... I got married. Hard to believe it happened five years ago. Hard to believe I got married to a woman, either. Isla, she... Opened my eyes to many things that I was, things I never knew I was capable of. This... compassion, care, love - I never knew I was capable of any of it. When you're out there, in space, you shun it all aside, simply pull the trigger or make the others pull it. Even as I speak, there's someone out there getting robbed for their last money, being shot at or infested by a Nomad. But down here... Life is slow, and I like it that way.
Among other things, I got to wear my old office uniform at one point. Thought I'd escape being a corpo slave driver in Liberty but that life shortly caught up to me. Up to the point where I was the second most powerful woman in the whole Police force. Or should I say, the most powerful one? Officially, Isla was in charge of it, but she isn't made for this sort of stuff. She was... too young to be the commissioner. Too much life and energy for a grim slave-driving corpo executive. Didn't last as long as I thought it would, but I can't say that the lessons I learned about leading the Core were of service here. More like, I haven't learned my lessons at all. LPI and the Core are so similar, it's almost uncanny.
Speaking of, tensions between the Core and Liberty have only been getting tighter since my leave and one thing that definitely didn't help was my old XO's defection from the paramilitary. Yeah. My old gang, hijacking what used to be my battleship and making it all the way to Liberty with nothing but the skeleton crew. Now, they're proud members of the Forty-Sixth - a fleet I used to despise, yet, ever since they've gotten way more professional and respectable. Sometimes, at night, I can see the Umbra pass over our house. I'll never mistake her engines for anything.
As about what I have been up to since my days in LPI, well... I can't call myself a revolutionary fashion designer, but my dresses are fetching a good demand on the fashion market and I have an amazing model for my ideas. Never knew I had -that- in me, yet here we are. Ever since the dream I had about my wedding dress, I couldn't stop thinking about it. So now, fashion has become my passion. But I'm not overly obsessed with it, not to the point where I'd look like an extra weirdo. Hell, I'm probably the most down-to-earth fashion designer in Liberty if we're talking personal image. Maybe that's why I'm not revolutionary. But, hey, as long as I make the dresses that I like and as long as people buy them - I'm satisfied.
I never expected a happy ending. Not for myself. But now? I'm more than fine with how things are.
I don't think I'm ever coming back to this log, but reading it back was... amusing. Seeing how I was back then and how I am now. However, I think I've reached my final point. A point with which I wouldn't want to make any future comparisons. I am where I want to be, and I am never going back.
