---Incoming Transmission---
Comm ID: Leonardo_Tigre (ingame: Leonardo_Tigre)
To: Liberty Navy Recruitment
Subject: Application
Name: Leonardo Jurado H. (Hildebrand) Tigre
Age: 22
Gender: male
height: 5”5' feet
weight: 73 kg
Parents: Father - Inocente Tigre; Mother- Inocenta Tigre
Place of birth: Battleship Osiris, Omicron Major
Date of birth: 796 A.S.
Timezone: GMT +08:00
Experience: at first, space-simulators planetside; short-term trader; refugee runner
(a “slightly-altered” true story...)
Being an only child wasn't easy. I was an infant when the Nomad Wars started... My parents were actually already part of the secret organization called the Order, when at the time was solely supported to eradicating the Nomad threat. When the war ended, they decided to settle on Planet Erie to scratch out a new living as independent traders to eventually forget the pains they had in the war.
I studied at the College of South Erie at 803 A.S... I wasn't very adept in my studies since I spent most of my time beating my classmates in PvP space-simulators, but I got to pass more than alright. Our “bacon” came whenever mother arrived home from trading, and I was mostly left at home with my personal maid Helga Faustebeign, a Rheinlander who had Zoner citizenship. I never have seen father since I was 8. My only true friend was Carlito Vendoza, who had almost the same simulator-experience as I had.
My first big break came when mother asked me to come with her trading when I was 14. And surprisingly, my simulator-playing payed off, letting mother have less hassle of teaching me on piloting, and soon she even fully gave the helm to me to pilot the ship while she conducted business.
It was only a couple of years when I had met my father. But it didn't turn out well... I was piloting the ship while mother was already starting to seal the deal with the Niobium shipment, when I was fired upon by an unknown ship. I recognized it immediately to be my father's judging it by it's make, but he somehow never replied to my hails. Using all the knowledge I had in all those days of playing, I dodged as best as I could until mother came out of the station on a rented Liberty Patriot. But the unthinkable happened: father had just shot some cannonball missiles at me, b mother instead drew the missiles away from my ship and onto hers, resulting in her death... I was very devastated at this...
But just as when my father's ship was about to unload another barrage came a full blast of energy on his ship: a Liberty Dreadnought came to my rescue. It was none other than the Battleship Missouri, coming in for a maintenances check, that saved my life.
I docked into the massive battleship, and met the Captain himself (sad to say I forgot his name).
Instead of giving a long explanation of what happened, the Captain gave me a small datapad. My mother didn't wish for me to know the horrible truth, so she kept it a secret from me within the data that the notepad contained. How the Captain got a hold of the notepad was explained in it later.
The Captain also gave his condolences to my mother... He knew her from the first days of my parent's retirement. He was informed personally by her to give the pad in case her death was heard.
Before I dismissed myself, he gave me something to remember him by: an [LN] token. He said it was his “second-best” lucky charm, until he replaced it with a [LR] necklace he salvaged from a distant battle in his career, and told me, “The [LN] is always open for new recruits, if ever you wished to, of course...”
When I arrived at my estate, Helga was surprised that my mother wasn't with me, and after telling her the story, said that she expected this. She added also that there was a secret notepad that the captain I had met earlier gave me, so when I went into my chambers lied on the bed and activated the hologram:
-mother shows up in the screen, the background being her own bedroom-
Dear Leonardo,
If you are hearing this all, then you already know I have died... I always hoped that this would never happened, but just as seeing you watch this hologram I know now that the truth would have to come out eventually.
Your father was actually infested by the Nomads... Forgive me for pointing out so bluntly, but I can explain everything...
It was a few months after your birth on the Battleship Osiris, while I and your father were doing a secret patrol over in the Omicron systems. It all went so fast: a whole fleet of Nomad ships just entered our scanner range when we were opened fire from the de-cloaking vessels. We were totally outnumbered 10 to 1, so your father had decided to sacrifice himself to let me flee... I was totally against it until he forced me to.
As I looked back, I saw his ship explode, his escape pod captured and tractored into the Nomad Gunboat. I did my best to shadow them to a nearby jumphole.
I flew as fast as I could back to the Osiris. I told Casper Orillion of my report. He reluctantly ordered a squadron to arrive shortly at the jumphole to rescue your father...
I waited for an agonizing 6 hours for his return, but I was so overjoyed at the time to see that the rescue was successful, and he had returned safe and sound.
I never knew he was infected until after 3 years in our retirement. While coming back from trading, He came to me in a strange way: as if he was possessed by some entity. I also saw him holding a pistol over at me, saying, “Run, love... I just cannot... control... the Nomad within me anymore...”
I was devastated to have heard that he himself was seeded by the Nomads all those years ago; how his thoughts had suppressed the Nomad for so long is anyone's guess; but at the time I almost collapsed in sadness by just the mere thought I was living with a Wild after all...
But that wasn't the end of the story... He “seemingly” did his best to counter the will of the Nomad from shooting me, and before running away from the estate, said, “Cents, please... guard... Leonardo for me... Goodbye...”, and flew off. I figured he couldn't control it any longer, and thus decided to fly off instead, leaving us with peace...
I was wrong...
The last I had heard of him was that of a private comm message from a far-off ship, saying in a secure channel: “... infection... *terminate* ...ticks... ...elapsing...”.
Please be strong, Leonardo... I never wanted any of this to happen to you... Just ask Helga on what to do, and I'm sure you'll be able to figure out on your own...
I will always be with you, Leon... I love you...
---Data-streaming ended---
---Data teminated---
I was in tears when I finally found Helga holding some old pad. When she gave it to me, I hesitantly read it, and found it to contain her will of testament, giving all of what she owned (the ship, the land and her banking credits), entirely for me to use.
Honestly, I knew not what to do... It took some time for me to recuperate my thoughts (3 months to be exact), while Helga took the time to finalize the transactions with the will for the transfers to be ready.
But I knew the estate I lived in had to be payed with the tax eventually. As I looked at my mother's files, she had just enough insurance to deal with the rent, and some extra to begin trading. So I picked myself up, went into my mother's cargo ship, activated the helm, and went trading once again. Yet I didn't do so without looking up at the sky above my estate (heh... I still am trying to get used to knowing that everything is mine), and tried to speak to an entity watching below me, “Mother... I won't let you down, and I won't give up...”
Two years of complex trading between Kusari and Liberty passed slowly until when I had heard about the situation in the Bretonian-Kusari War, about the countless refugees suffering from the battles, in which I could hardly refuse any aid. Besides, they were willing to pay me credits if I helped them, which where more than enough to cover my rent and maintenances.
When I arrived there, the situation was more grim that it sounded; countless people were cramped up in tiny areas of Holman Outpost, sometimes screaming for their loved ones of whom were separated from while trying to get away from it all; hundreds starved from the lack of rations within the outpost; many of them now homeless, and some only had enough to register themselves for a one-way ticket to any transport.
But in the darkness I saw some good: there was a refugee named Milarosa Bloodstone (whom I shortened to Mila later on) who aided greatly in the refugee's problems. She was the only one who wished to take a proactive approach among them, either to help the loved ones reunite back to their families, or to at least to comfort them and lend them a shoulder.
I knew I needed her help, especially with the numbers of people I was faced with. She also knew many of the refugees, which would help in rallying them up to safety.
She helped me in loading and unloading at both stops of the refugee run, but she was a bit inexperienced in piloting herself; never have had the need to do so until then, so I mentored her myself by my first-hand experiences with this ship.
We had some great experiences together during those four years of delivering either Consumer Goods or Food Rations from Planet Erie to Holman, then bringing refugees to a safer haven on the way back. The star systems were always very beautiful, almost breathtaking, when one has the chance to slow down and experience them. The Manchester system was a particular favorite of Mila, for she admired the comparison of the East's white nebulae, with the West's dark, dirty colors, almost like a constant battle between what was righteous, and what was evil, and that that system was in the middle of it all..
From what I understood, Mila was a daughter of one of the workers in the Planer Harrison Planetform colonization project, but her father was annihilated by a stray blast from a Kusari Battleship orbiting the planet before Battleship Madcuff was stationed there, but she wouldn't say much about her family other than that. But at least we did share some things in common: both our parents were killed, and that the only one that saved her life from a rain of fire was a Liberty Navy Pilot on vacation on Planet Harris at the time, and had decided to father her as his only child, since his wife was infertile.
We met a few friends along the way, notably Gumikacsa, a trader like myself... I knew not much about him, apart that he was an independent trader, and that we periodically ran into each other sometimes...
More so did I meet a number of challenges: there was the occasional criminal presence that asked for the refugees, but I managed to either get away or destroy them altogether, or at most, gave them my credits, which would at times set me back a few runs-worth of money.
Mila was really squeamish about these fights, saying that I didn't have to destroy them, or that I could merely disable their ship just so we could get away; and at times I agreed, for I really wasn't fond of such killings myself, but some battles I just had to win, or else would've been dead right then and there... This didn't really come very well for Mila, who sometimes would cover her eyes and ask me to turn off the comm channel as the criminals screamed for aid before their ship blew up. And a few times... I did so myself, by my own will, just so I could have a good night's sleep later. The voices would sometimes echo into mother's, and I would wake up, perspiring and exhausted...
But at least Mila could alleviate the nightmares I had by her famed cup of chocolate that soothed my soul from hurt... A special recipe from her family that was used during times of emergency.
A number of years came (two more years, and a half to be exact), and we were fraught with a major threat once again: a Lane Hacker Gunboat wished to grab Mila for his own use. But I did the unthinkable: I refused in a kind manner, which ran the risk of getting blown up, and instead gave credits to him. Surprisingly he accepted this offer, and we parted our separate ways...
It wasn't also her that these criminals asked for: most would ask for the refugees I delivered. But deep in my heart I knew the lives under my hands were far greater than the credits I had amassed, and many a times I took such chances to bargain with them, only to have either escaped unscathed, or to have fought...
It would be another year and a half when, on orbit above Los Angeles, I saw another Liberty Dreadnought guard the docking ring, and once again remembered the fateful event of my mother's death. Then I saw the LN token on the helm as I came back to reality. The words of the captain once again echoed in my mind, “The LN is always open for new recruits, if ever you wished to of course...”
I was at a crossroads at the time... Until I decided to seek the wisdom from a veteran in the job. I came in contact with a captain of a Liberty Assault Battlecruiser (he was strict in letting me know it was a battleCRUISER, not a battleSHIP) a number of months later. He told me of the risks of the job, how I would face some of the toughest criminals and nations in the Sirius sector, how I would be separated from my friends, especially Mila, who had been with me through many situations thick and thin, and at times, be branded by a traitor by the same people I would be protecting for the acts I may do on the job...
I swallowed all of these facts hard, and because of this he decided to let me in the great ship. Both I and Mila were amazed at the capacity to hold such numbers of people. I was truly stunned by the craftsmanship of the vessel, and of how it had much combat experience fighting the “injustices of the galaxy”, especially the Nomads and criminals plaguing this sector...
That was when I had realized... What was life asking of me? My mother had sacrificed herself to save me, and a Liberty Dreadnought captain rescued me from certain death. When I looked at Mila, that's when I noticed she had many aspects my mother harbored: weak in stomach, but strong in will; petty in a fight, but fiercely loyal to her friends. I didn't want to lose her again (I guess the spirit of mother was inside her), just as I had lost mother all those years ago. No... I didn't wish to...
...I knew what I had to do...
I have heard of the many disciplines in the LN, and the sacrifices they make to serve their country. But when I look at myself, I see I have nothing to lose to enlist. My mother has given me a life, and so I shall give it back.
I will serve the force, honor the oath, and defend the greater good, even in the face of unsurmountable odds, and even against certain death. I will fight for people like Mila and the refugees, so that no harm has to come to people by criminals. I will fight to prevent more suffering, so that there would no longer be a need for people to flee from danger, and that a family may safely find their daughter working diligently in her studies to get a high-paying job in Manhattan. I will fight for humanity, so that people like my father wouldn't have had to be taken over by the Nomads, or by any other war-mongering alien race whatsoever.
This may actually be the hardest decision I have ever made, especially to Mila, who was against such killings the LN was going to be, but I choose not to let down my mother, father, my friends in my travels, the refugees, and Mila. I have been through so much... I just can't give up...
And it's with this I say, “Sign me up for the Navy, officer!”
---Transmission ended---
(//Edit: Hopefully, now that it is above the age of consent, I might be able to join now, right? *laughs* I'm not desperate or anythin... It's just that I like you LN guys... that's all. I was really lookin forward to a great RP character soon...)
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