Character Name: Kagome "Shinsakuto" Yūki
Biography:
I don't know where to start - it all seems blurry now, like a fever dream. I was born on New Tokyo to a respectable family. My father is a high level administrator to a moderately successful Kishiro subsidiary. My mother manages the family home and looks after its prestige. I have a younger sister who has taken after our mother and I might have too if the stars had aligned differently.
For most of our formative years we were raised to become obedient wives, perfect display pieces to compliment a prospective husband, mothers. I can hardly blame our mother for this - it was the life she knew. hence, she passed it onto Emiko and me. Our world was the vision father enforced. It had worked, remarkably well actually, up until it didn't.
When I was about 14, my classmate's older brother became a pilot for Renzu - short range courier between New Tokyo and a shipyard in Shikoku. He didn't want to get a place in New Tokyo as he would be barely spending time down the well, so he stayed with the parents every time he came back from a run. I used to spend time at their home after school. One time he was there too, visiting for a couple of days. Hiromi - that was the name of my friend, at least I believe it was... it was so long ago - she and I had a wild, pop culture driven understanding of what it means to fly. In our minds it meant adventurous men and women exploring unknown corners of the galaxy, brave pilots fighting off pirates, navy ships pounding foes into space dust, beauty and wonder of the cosmos laid bare... Hiro's brother must have had a laugh fueling our fantasies with made up stories that fit the narrative woven by out naive, adolescent minds. Come to think, I would probably have done the same in his shoes. We were kids, we were girls, no one took a 14-year-old teen seriously enough.
When I came back home I announced to my parents that I want to become a pilot. I knew there were plenty of women sailors out there - after all you heard about them in the news and saw idealized version of them in movies, so my wish wasn't far-fetched. I could have asked for a unicorn for birthday just as well judging from the reaction I got from my parents. To them we were supposed to be an ideal of grace and family commitment, a prize and a utility for whatever husband father would choose for us. My sister thought I was silly to want anything but what father envisioned for me. Mother dismissed it as a phase. And it would have been the end of it if something hadn't snapped, somewhere inside me. From that day I would not stop dreaming of flying.
I turned 21. That year I was supposed to get married to some man my father had chosen. For all I know he might have been the best person in the galaxy, but I did not care. I was angry and I was determined. One day while my father was at work and my mother dosed off in front of her handheld, I packed a small carry on, went out the door and never looked back.
The first weeks on my own were nothing to write home about. I had everywhere to go and yet nowhere to go. I stayed with a girl I knew from school. It's not that we were close back in the day, just friendly - still, she had the space to let me bunk temporarily, I hardly had a better option. One night I had a little too much to drink. We were talking and I unloaded all my frustration on her, the anger at father who'd commodify me if he had his way, anger at mother who'd happily squeeze me into the mold, anger at Hiro's brother for he wildly colorful stories about space - he probably was the most innocent of all, but I he was part of the narrative, so I vented his persona along with everything else. I left life in a bubble without even a clue about what to do next, how to get from here to where I wanted to be. I wanted to fly.
As I sat there all sobby, angry and powerless, Ren - that was her name, Ren - looked at me and at first said nothing. Then she asked if I was serious about wanting to fly, because if I were she had someone she could connect me with.
This next part I can't properly put in order... I remember meeting a fence for some local smugglers and extortionists who had an upline to someone from the Hogosha. I did some trafficking for them to and from Ripping, never even knew what it was that I had on me. No one asked questions, so I did what needed to be done, got paid some and did it again. As some point, they got their hands on a stolen shuttle. I remember a smudge vaguely resembling the Samura logo on the side of the ship, apparently someone tried to scrape it off and did a poor job of it. They loaded a fake transponder which probably would not hold up to scrutiny if someone were to look more closely at it, but for traffic control it was apparently good enough, and they waved it through. I left new Tokyo that day and never looked back.
The guy flying the tub was called Razor - I did not know his real name, I didn't really care. I was there to help handle cargo. It wasn't the glorious flying job I envisioned and light yeas away from the fantasy I dreamt up as a girl but I did my own thing, on my own terms. I choose this and it beat the hell out of any perspective life my family had in store for me.
The job was simple enough. But I had a lot of down time so Razor showed me some of the basics of piloting. Somehow I imagined it as something athletic - the movies typically depicted pilots sweating over the stick to avoid catastrophe. In reality the ship did most of the heavy lifting itself once I told it where to go. Of course, you could fly it manually and I learned how to, but it never lived up to the image I had of it as a girl. Up until it did.
Again, most of it is a wild blur of events. I recall Razor shouting to the intercom that we've been compromised and suddenly the ship stared maneuvering wildly. I strapped in next to him into the copilot's chair, we put our helmets on and... the starts went spinning for a moment. I looked to Razor, but he wasn't there, not really. His body was for the most part in place, but his head and part of his body where his left collarbone was supposed to be was gone and through a gaping hole in front of the cockpit the vastness of space was laid bare. A Gauss round went clean along ships entering through the cockpit and exiting towards the rear side, missing the reactor just barely. My mind went into overdrive, I remember taking the stick... and the next thing I knew was that I was drifting though the Shi den Cloud, alone. I and Razor's body, a broken ship and a single ping on the scope - Ainu Depot.
Reasons for joining inRP:
This is Kagome... callsign Shinsakuto... Please help me...
In order to serve our cause, you must pass the Trial of Severing. Do you agree to pass the trial?: Hai, shōchi shimashita
- ooRP section -
Do you agree to have your character addicted to cardamine?: not yet, but she will get there gradually
Favoured ship type(s): Bombers, Light Fighters, Transports
Time Zone: CEST
Discord ID: Docent#6110
