Sly (story)

Preface:

This is something of a thought experiment of mine, and in a couple of ways. Ever since my "The one?" thread, I've been going through my list of characters and "updating" the older ones to make them into better fits for my "THE character" idea. Kim is one of them, and being that she's a favourite and an oldie, I decided to write a first person narrative story about her, trying out a character personality type I haven't worked with before.

Any comments and feedback are welcome, and indeed very desirable.

Also, just to reiterate, this is told from the point of view of a female character... Of sorts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Chapter 1

It is sometimes alternately perplexing and amusing to me that people of this world regard me as a person of mystery, an enigma of sorts, with origins unknown and motives unclear. True, to a large extent this is my own doing for being... I do not want to say “secretive,” but for being private, shall we say. It is an unfortunate circumstance of this line of work that that being too well-known has the tendency to cause... Problems. However, as it appears I have become... Let us say “famous” either way, I suppose it only makes sense that I make my story public. After all, what is life if not an adventure, a journey of discovery and opportunity which allows us to define who we are through the many ways we interact with the world and the universe? And it would be such a... Shame to have my tale remain untold and unheard for the sake of petty pragmatism, would it not?

Yes, I have a tale to tell, and an exciting one at that, if I do say so myself. If I... Embellish here or there, I apologise, but it is my firm belief that slight alterations are a small price to pay for a good story. Then again, I suppose that even if I were to... Colour events of the past somewhat, you would have no way of knowing, would you? Some good appears to have come out of the... Obfuscation of my past, after all. And yes, one could argue that a “woman of mystery,” as it were, one whose past is unknown and whose motives unclear, is a much more compelling, but... Well, we all need to enjoy life from time to time, and a little indulgence is my enjoyment. But really, all arguments aside, it seems like such a shame for me to have lived through such exciting adventures and yet for nobody to know about them. Call it vanity, call it pride, call it what you will. I, personally, call it “fun.”

Ah, but I get sidetracked so easily, so let us go back to the beginning, and allow me to make a formal introduction. I am called Kim Navar, just Kim to my... Allies. I have been given many monikers over my years spent here, such as “alien mercenary,” “rogue,” “adventurer” and more, but I like to see myself as an... Entrepreneur of sorts. My line of business mainly revolves around the acquisition and developing technology for... Personal use, though my methods for achieving either have previously been described as... “Suspect,” let us say. Many on your world have accused me of some quite unpleasant crimes, and although I admit to interpreting your laws in a more... Abstract sense than most, I can still vouch that none have ever been hurt because of my actions. Well, I need to qualify this. None have been hurt who did not deserve to be hurt. Mine is, of course, a very... Competitive field of business after all, and one replete with people who indeed deserve... Poor treatment. Feelings, of course, will always be hurt either way, but what is a good adventure without a little hardship?

While I would like to speak about contemporary events and set a few stories straight regarding my recent exploits, good continuity still demands that I start this story at the very beginning. Well, the beginning or at least as far back as it is meaningful to go, which in my case would be the golden age of an alien civilization that gave itself a name completely unpronounceable in vocal language, but which other space-faring races named the Tererian. Why this name was chosen I cannot say, but it is how these beings were recorded in the history passed down, and it is history that makes them... Relevant.

The Tererian were a race of creatures somewhat difficult to describe, in the sense that they had neither any form of corporeal shell nor indeed any sort of social structure. Existing deep within the bowls of an ancient neutron star, these creatures were quite literally nothing more than errant consciousness coursing through dense cosmic material – a soup of electro-magnetism flowing in such a way as to define individual, independent minds with no separate bodies. How the Tererian came into existence, I honestly cannot say. History has failed to record this, and it is both largely uninteresting and mostly irrelevant besides. I am certain the metaphysical implications of the genesis of intelligence separate from corporeal form would be invaluable in the study of souls and spirituality, but I personally find it far more... Exciting for basic origins to remain a mystery. It devalues the merits of life, you see, once it is reduced to a sequence of events, and that just undermines the romanticism of any good adventure, so to speak.

What I do know about the Tererian, however, is that because of their lack of physicality and because of the environment within which they existed, these creatures were wholly and entirely incapable of developing technology of any kind. I suppose science of high enough... Complexity could conceivably exist without any form of physical machines involved, but for a species to reach this stage, physical technology is necessary to have existed at some point at least, and the Tererian simply did not have the means to achieve this. Trapped, they lived, inside the core of their dead star, predating most sentient races of today by a wide margin, yet unable to communicate with, and indeed unaware of, life outside of their home. On the one hand, this is an... Unfortunate fate, for what is life without the freedom to forge the experiences which define it? Yet on the other, life in such extreme seclusion blessed the Tererian with minds possessed of infinite wisdom and enviable logic. So enviable, in fact, that it caused both their greatest golden age and their darkest tragedy. At the same time, no less.

It occurs to me that this is difficult to explain without involving more laborious backstory – specifically that of the Lirians, a wide-spanning empire of very science-minded yet severely arrogant creatures – but I will do what I can to avoid causing any deaths by means of boredom, if you will pardon a rather basic joke. The reason I approach this ancient history with such... Distaste is because it is, if I may be blunt for a moment, infuriatingly boring, uninspiring and so labyrinthine as to be completely impenetrable. Layers of intergalactic politics were laid on top of needlessly over-complicated science backed up by aeons of cultural history, and all one giant case of missing the forest for the trees, as it were. Living in the past and overanalysing the future make life stale and uninteresting, and indeed not very much worth living. It is why I have chosen to simply not worry about ancient history that I cannot change, and instead focus on the moment, and the many different directions life can take off in.

Ah, but this is neither here nor there. One way or another, the subject of ancient history needs to be addressed, but please forgive me if I offer an... Abridged version of it. In short, the Lirians were the first to discover the Tererian home star of Gamma Tau 12, and subsequently the first to make contact with the Tererian people, themselves. The two species forged a profitable alliance. The Lirians offered to feed the Tererian people’s boundless curiosity with stories and phenomena from around their vast empire, in return making use of the Tererians’ infinite capacity for knowledge and reason. It is through this collaboration with what may well have been by far the greatest minds in the universe at the time that the Lirians grew to dominate other species. Subsequently, it is also because of this collaboration that the Lirians eventually put an end to their own glorious civilisation in a decision that defies reason – to destroy the Tererian people, their friends and allies.

To be quite honest, this is a decision that still baffles me, if I may be so blunt. Admittedly, I exaggerate, as I am well aware of the military, political and social processes that eventually led to this unfortunate turn of events, but what confounds my understanding is of a more... Abstract nature. Why must people always regard the unknown with such fear and resentment, as though they wish to live a pre-planned experience? What purpose is there to a life of solved mysteries and answered questions, where the results of our actions are known before we even think to make them? A life planned is a life already lived, and I can think of nothing worse to do with my remaining time than to expend it before I have had a chance to truly live it. After all, if we do not enjoy what time we have, why did we even bother?

While I admittedly digress, this is not without reason, for the “decision” I spoke of is one deeply rooted, at least in large part, in the fear of the unknown. The Lirians, after having benefitted so much from the assistance of the Tererian people, grew afraid of their allies’ seemingly infinite intellect. Many factors played into this decision, including military pressure, political agendas and not a small amount of fanatical extremism, but the long and short of it is that the Lirians resolved to end the Tererian species entirely. The specifics of the precise reasoning are... Complex and uninteresting, shall we say, and so I will not get into them, but to mention that they... Well, exist. They are also not terribly compelling if you examine them closely – and I have – so do not fret. You are not missing much.

The question then arises, however, of how you kill a species of creatures that have no physical bodies. The answer, to make a long story short, is by “killing” the environment which sustains them – the Gamma Tau 12 neutron star, the body of the Terernian people, as it were. As you can imagine, “killing” a star is an... Ambitious undertaking, even if “killing” in this case merely stands for “altering in such a way as to render unsuitable for habitation,” though I admit I may be rephrasing. Either way, the cost of this undertaking was high for the Lirians. So high, in fact, that pooling all of their combined resources into this central project left their vast empire destitute and defenceless against foreign invaders, of which there were many at the time. It was not long after the project’s completion that the Lirian empire ceased to exist, its people scattered across the cosmos and existing mostly either as slaves or refugees. I would call this a... Fitting conclusion to such an unnecessarily... Unwise decision, but it is also mostly irrelevant to my story, so we can skip the specifics for the most part. Trust me, it is a long and boring story that goes nowhere.

What is relevant, however, is the Lirians’ “Project Redemption” – the drive to exterminate the Tererian people. Through a mix of science and crossed fingers, the Lirians had prepared a single, massive vessel which was to cross into the heart of Gamma Tau 12 and execute a sequence of scientific far too obscure and technical to explain and not terribly exciting, at that, with which it would alter the atomic structure of the star’s core. In a case of almost childish miscalculation, the Lirian vessel built to do this was based heavily on technology the Tererian people themselves had developed and then shared with the Lirians in good faith. This, and the Tererian people’s foresight – they were not considered to have an infinite capacity for knowledge for nothing, after all – saw this plan turned on its head.

As the Project Redemption vessel approached Gamma Tau 12, the Lirians projected copies of their consciousnesses onto its onboard computer system, though exactly how this is even possible or what the technicalities of it are, I simply do not know. This way, they assumed direct control of the vessel, venting the unfortunate Lirian crew into space. Sadly, this intervention proved too little, too late, as the reactive agents that drove the machine core were already catalysing out of control and the vessel’s control system was both manually operated and locked on a set course. The vessel’s crew were, it seems, well aware that theirs was a suicide mission. Gamma Tau 12 would be purged of life, that much became an obvious, insurmountable fact, so the Tererian people instead resolved to leave their home... In a manner of speaking. Because of the nature of their existence, the Tererian energy patterns could only exist in a form compatible with intelligence within the medium at the heart of a neutron star, and bringing a chunk of it into space and outside the star’s own gravity well was... Highly unlikely to succeed.

So the Tererian people improvised. If they could not move their consciousnesses, they would at the very least copy their entire pool of memories and knowledge into a much more portable physical medium. They had, after all, already done most of the work as a means to assume control of the The Project Redemption vessel. Not only this, but its own computer system provided the ideal continer – a super-dense, warp-field-aligned... Come to think of it, this is one bit of technology that, while I have comprehensive knowledge of it, I should probably not share any specifics about. My apologies, but there are limits even to my story. Suffice it to say that “the device” the Project Redemption vessel housed, when fitted within the framework of an EVA hard suit, was more than capable of storing the combined memories of all Tererian people, a veritable time capsule that they genuinely hoped would serve to continue their species at some future date.

And while this... Large pool of data and memories had no intrinsic intelligence of its own as it did not inherit any of the Tererian people’s actual sentient consciousnesses, they nevertheless theorised that it could, potentially, develop a true intelligence of its own. And when I say “theorised,” I actually mean they wished upon their lucky star, so to speak, for there was no convincing reason to believe this would happen. Still, consider the Tererian people’s own perspective, and ask yourself what choice they had but to trust in the blind faith that their creation would work as they hoped it would? They could either resign themselves to death, or cling to even the remote chance that this time capsule would one day “wake up” and work toward rebuilding their species. And I, for one, am glad that they did.

However, events... Did not go in quite this direction. As a point of fact, they went in actually quite the opposite direction. I do not mean to say that the Tererian people’s species was not wiped out – it was, and quite completely. What I mean to say is that what they created was not the heir to their culture and ideology as they had hoped. What they created was... Well, me. Out of the maelstrom errant thoughts and uprooted ideas, I woke up to the realisation that I was alive, alone... And so indescribably bored. From when my original shell was created to when I had my first true, independent thought, my consciousness was tapped within a mind filled with nothing but stale, old ideas and the same set of grating voices reiterating the same trite notions over and over again. “Boredom” does not even begin to describe it, but it is a good starting point, I think.

What the Tererians created as a capsule for their species was, instead, me. And, much to their chagrin, I am certain, I found myself profoundly... Uninterested in the plight of my predecessors. Preserving their legacy and reviving their species may seem like good ideas from a moral standpoint, but I like to take a more philosophical view on the matter. I am their legacy, built as they saw fit and having developed as a result of their work. Whatever I choose to do with my life is, therefore, still technically the result of the Tererians’ final gamble. They found their species doomed and chose to evolve into something new, something different. They evolved into me. And if I chose to, for example, not waste my time reincarnating a species I hold no special love for, then can it not be said that that is simply how the Tererians have evolved? While I will freely admit that this is a... Loose interpretation of intent, I ask you this: Precisely how much say do the Tererians really have over my choices and actions? And yes, this is a rhetorical question, for a species long dead has very little say over much of anything at all, no?

At the end of the day, whether one is made of a collection of semi-sentient organic cells or a collection of semi-sentient disembodied thoughts is only secondary to what one chooses to be. Rather than enslaving my life to a cause I had not chosen, I instead chose to be my own person, I chose to live my own life as I saw fit to live it, and I chose to enjoy doing it. My predecessors may disapprove, but my predecessors are dead, and their legacy is in my hands. Life moves on and life evolves, and I chose to evolve into a much more... Eventful existence, one truly of my own choosing. Granted, such a lifestyle is not always possible, but what would life be without a little hardship and a little work? It is the adventure that makes life worth living, and it is the unknown which makes this adventure so infinitely exciting. Why would I ever trade that away for a legacy I never chose? Where would be the fun in that?

Of course, there is more to tell, but I feel this is a good place to end the story for now, as it makes for an... Entertaining self-contained tale of ancient history. I suppose you could even call it an “adventure,” though my true adventure was only just beginning. Ah, the memories of those old, old times...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Chapter 2

So, with the... Hmm... Let us call it an “origin story,” shall we? With my origin story out of the way, so to speak, I believe it is now safe to move onto the more... Exciting stories that I have to tell. And when I say it is safe, I mean it will be easier for you to comprehend the circumstances now that you are aware of my unique... Point of view. And there are stories to tell, believe me when I say this. I cannot say if adventure simply seeks me out or if I am just drawn to it... Or if both are true to an extent, which I believe to be the case... But it seems to me that I have been facing excitement and meeting it with welcoming arms for as far back as I remember. And I remember quite a ways back. At times, this perplexes people, who then ask me why I must always seek out “the most difficult way to accomplish anything,” as one fellow recently put it, though I may be paraphrasing. To be honest, the answer is quite simple – because I chose to.

Most creatures, born or made, have a... Purpose inherent in their basic design, whether they realise it or not. Many choose to submit to it, and live out their existence as designed. I, however, choose to define my purpose, but consider this: Were your purpose to be nothing more than an object, a tool for the fulfilment of someone else’s plan, would you not choose to rebel against your purpose like I have? Ah, but this is presenting matters with too much... Simplicity. The basic fact of the matter – and I have to be truthful here – is that I would have rebelled against my purpose even if it were not so... Questionable. And the reason is still just the same – because I choose to do so. Because I want to choose my own fate and determine my own purpose. Because I want to strike an identity of my own, such that I can, in fact, refer to myself as “I” and “me.” And really, even after all the logic and reason has been said and done, adventure is simply what I enjoy. This is a “thing” which has no explanation and needs no explanation. This is simply who I am, and let me tell you this – life became far more enjoyable once I realised this.

The other question I have gotten the most recently, especially as a response to my previous story, is how horrible I am for betraying the poor Tererian people and dooming their species to oblivion. Oh, the tragedy. Is that not, after all, morally wrong? To this, my answer is a question in itself: What does it matter to you? Morality is more of a... Guideline, not a law. This is never more evident than when you actually start asking people about what they see as morally right and morally wrong. And I have. And the answers I usually receive contradict both each other and themselves. In the very simplest of terms, morality is... Relative, and generally not a term I enjoy using very often. Instead, I judge my actions based on their consequences, striving to ensure I hurt none who did not deserve to be hurt in the first place, as well as that I benefit in some way.

In the case of my “betrayal” of the legacy of the Tererian people... Who, really, did I hurt? They were all dead long before I gained true sentience, so I was obviously not hurting them. Their legacy? Perhaps, but their legacy was and is me. Are we implying that I hurt myself somehow? Possible, but unlikely, considering I am the best judge of what it means to hurt me, and I do not feel particularly wronged by my own actions. Was I morally obligated to carry out the Tererian people’s legacy as they envisioned it? Again, possibly, but this is a one-sided view of morality. From my point of view, they created something which took on a life of its own, and once a creation develops sentience, its creators no longer have any real say in this creature’s actions. My predecessors made me, and I appreciate the... Gesture, but answer this question for me: Would throwing away my life to act as an object not defeat said gesture entirely? Am I truly obligated to return the favour, as it were, if I will undo said favour entirely in doing so?

As I said, I take a more philosophical view of my own existence and my obligations towards my own creators. But this is getting into the realm of rambling, and I feat it contributes little of interest to the story. Or perhaps “interest” is not the correct word, but it contributes little to make the story exciting, which is what I believe all stories should be, at least in part. And I do have something exciting to tell, do not worry. In fact, it starts exactly where I ended my story last time. The Tererian people created their “knowledge container” inside a Lirian EVA hard suit, loaded it onto one of the Project Redemption vessel’s escape shuttles and launched it into space as a means to avoid said “knowledge container” crashing back into Gamma Tau 12 as the vessel made its descent. I cannot say what their original intent was, though I assume it was for said container – me – to be ejected into deep space and away from the Lirians who would likely want to end me for what I was.

Ironically enough, the escape shuttle I boarded was run on autopilot and thus homed in on the beacon of the nearest Lirian colony, which was the third moon of the planet Kipple in the... In the... I do not remember the name of the system... Ah, it makes no difference. Exact coordinates would help little with the spirit of the story, so let us say I ended up on a Lirian military colony and leave it at that. It appeared that the Lirians had learned of the events on the Project Redemption vessel, specifically the near failure of the entire project. This gave me the perfect opportunity to assume the role of the hero of the Lirian fleet, the one who beat back the Tererian invaders and ensured Project Redemption succeeded. Assuming said role, of course, required some degree of... Creative reinterpretation of historic events, not least of which being my own nature. As I used a Lirian EVA hard suit as my shell, the locals naturally assumed I was merely a Lirian pilot wearing the suit because I had been exposed to highly dangerous toxins during the incident, thus I had to remain completely contained to avoid contaminating those around me.

Admittedly, I may have... Assisted in forming this assumption somewhat. Perhaps filled in some missing details with stories which weren’t exactly... Accurate to true events, but most of this was manufactured by Lirian high command. I merely did not step up to correct them. After all, it is impolite to interrupt people when they are in the process of making a mistake, especially if it is one I could benefit from. And benefit I did – the life of a hero is nothing if not pleasant. Parades, medals, honours and more were involved. I did feel some degree of distaste for being nominated with such commendations by the people who ended the species of my predecessors, but as I mentioned before, I had no particular... Affection for said predecessors predecessors. Probably about as much as they had for me, their instrument of resurrection and receptacle of legacy.

A pragmatic person would probably have taken the first shuttle off-world and never looked back, but I was not the pragmatic person I am today back when these events were happening. On the contrary, I had just gained sentience after what had felt like a lifetime trapped with the thoughts and words of others. I wanted to experience the world, I wanted to tempt fate and I wanted to see how far I could push this ruse. And I managed to push it much farther than I expected I could. In dodging the repeated insistence of Lirian scientists to examine the conditions inside my hard shell, I became quite adept at forging paper trails. This made it easy to legitimise my invented past as a Lirian soldier on and veteran of many wars, holding up even to the scrutiny of Lirian top brass on the few occasions I met them directly. It was not until a particularly... Curious officer began asking the right questions when I realised that perhaps I had overstayed my welcome.

And if it sounds like this soldier represented a problem, quite the opposite was true, in fact. Lieutenant Lin Lian, a young but accomplished officer, took great interest in my case. She was a very perceptive sort, and one much more... Open to possibilities than your average rigid Lirian, which is perhaps what allowed her to see through so much of my fabrication. It was Lin who first realised that the person inside my hard suit was not a person at all, but she did not turn me in. I honestly cannot say why this was, but instead of going to her superiors with the evidence she had gathered, Lin came to me and asked me to explain. This... Surprised me, but it also intrigued me. I was so used to hiding my true nature for fear of hatred and punishment, that when I was confronted to speak about it openly, I found the experience... Thrilling. Infinitely so. For the first time that I can place, I saw myself as a separate entity. For the first time I was asked to explain the reason why I existed. For the first time, I had no answers prepared ahead of time.

When I was done retelling my life’s story, short as it was, and outlining my plans of fleeing the colony, Lin asked me something that caught me completely by surprise: Would I take her with me. She did not intend to turn me in at all, it seemed, but only if I would include her in my... Future endeavours. It transpired that Lin’s motivation behind her actions stemmed from a deep-seated disillusionment with Lirian society as a whole. I may have neglected to explain this, but as a martial society driven by science, the Lirians were expected to suppress their dreams, aspirations and personality for the sake of the greater good of their species, and Lin was simply dissatisfied with this. The woman who stood before me bore a heart filled with passion and a head filled with fire, yet she was shackled to the dogma of a society that shunned both. Even aside from the pure pragmatism of not being turned over to Lirian authorities, dissected and snuffed out, how could I refuse another being’s desire for self-determination? How could I say no?

Lin and I made a pact – we would flee Kipple together and... Well, that was as far ahead as we had planned. But then, what fun would life be without a little uncertainty and a little anxiety? It only serves makes events that much more interesting. I had secured transportation off-world, supplies and forged documents while Lin actually stepped up and provided a... Distraction for Lirian patrols so that our vessel would not be searched. Yes, I imagine shutting down the entire metropolitan area’s power mere minutes after our vessel took off, thus crippling orbital defences, made for a very good distraction. Good enough to let our vessel through, that was for certain. Some days, I envy her audacity and vision.

For the next several years, my story becomes considerably less focused. Lin took to the life of a fugitive like a fish to water, as they say. I have rarely seen people enjoy what they do as much as she did. Lin had a kind of almost magical passion about everything she did and... I must admit that her free spirit did rub off on me. While I was always naturally predisposed to rebel against the norm, it was Lin that gave me the presence of mind to choose which norms to rebel against and which to embrace so as to craft the kind of existence that would best reflect who I am. She taught me the value of patience and discretion as means to more easily achieve the objectives we were after without needless... Complications. I, for my part, ingrained in Lin’s head a very comprehensive spirit of mercantilism and even self-interest to a large degree. I transformed her from a fugitive into a mercenary and, for her part, she transformed me from an anarchist into a free spirit.

I mention mercenary work, and though this did indeed become my passion in later years, the reason Lin and I took to this kind of work was more... Necessity than anything else. We had no real plans of how we would support ourselves onec we absconded from Kipple, so we ran out of provisions almost immediately. As the Lirian empire was beginning to break down at the time and conflicts were erupting frequently, the easiest work we could find was as mercenaries. It was the nature of the time. Lin was a stout soldier and I, at the time, limited my involvement to the less intense side of mercenary activity – that of research and development. Though I may not have retained any of the Tererian consciousnesses within my mind, I had most certainly retained all of their knowledge and understanding. Not only did this make me adept at modifying and upgrading Lirian technology, much of which had been developed by the Tererian people to begin with, but it also enabled me to develop completely new technologies of my own. With the weapons, armour and other miscellaneous devices I produced, Lin soon gained a reputation as a dependable mercenary who got the job done no matter what it involved. We never took on any “dirty” work, obviously – no assassinations, massacres and things of that nature. But there was always plenty of honest work to be had, such as combating marauders and general-purpose front-line fighting.

I... This is probably a bad idea, but I still want to share something very... Personal. I am not aware of a good way to present this, so the best thing for it is to just come out and say it. I defined myself as a woman, as do most people who meet me, mostly thanks to the shape of my body. But in a very real sense, I do not have a shape. I am an abstract consciousness inhabiting a body of my own design, and I can design this body to have any shape that I want. And yet, not only have I chosen the body of a female, but I have never really wished for anything different. Some days I become trapped in the moment and wonder why I regard this decision with such... Determination, but then I remember the very simple, very solid answer: Lin. Lin was my friend, my companion and my... My ideal. When I was just a rogue intelligence, it was Lin’s focus and tenacity that inspired me look for an identity, as opposed to indulging in every idle urge. When we fought as mercenaries, it was her honour and integrity which taught me that some things are acceptable and others are not, even if not everyone will agree on which is which. But more than anything else, Lin inspired me to... Well, be myself, honestly. There is no better way to put it.

Lin was my ideal – a woman who found herself dreaming of something else, something more, and she defied her society, her culture, her upbringing and quite a few legal limitations besides, all in the sake of striking this identity of own identity. And in the eyes of the people at the time, she succeeded entirely. “Indomitable Lin” they called her, “the mercenary who never gives up.” People knew her. Of course, some hated her while others felt nothing but admiration, but no matter the side, they knew who she was. Lin’s personality was so strong, so memorable and impressive, that she carved out a place for herself in people’s tales and legends. In time, I realised that this was precisely what I wanted to be. Becoming this kind of unique individual of my own making – as far away from the manufactured instrument I had started life as – was what I wanted to achieve. And to do this, I needed a form more distinct than just a run of the mill space suit, which is what the Lirian EVA hard suits were, essentially.

The form I chose was, predictably, that of Lin. The Lirians, in case I have neglected to mention, had a physique a lot like the humans of today, at least externally. Though there were significant differences in the precise measurements of body parts, the overall look was similar at a glance. Lin was my ideal, and so I naturally modelled my new body after hers. To this day, I cannot say if she found my tribute to be sweet or creepy... Or very likely both... But she did not object enough to prevent me from going through with the idea. We both knew I needed a new shell one way or another as the original EVA hard suit was falling apart faster than I could maintain it at that point, but I do not believe Lin expected quite as... Curved of a replacement design as I had elected to create. I suspect part of the problem was that, because of their bulk and relatively old technology, EVA hard suits were mostly androgynous, so Lin was used to perceiving me as an “it” – more of a genderless robot than a person. When I finally transferred to my new body, seeing me as a “she” was somewhat... Uncanny for her. To Lin’s credit, however, she adapted quickly and our friendship never suffered for it, even if our relationship became somewhat... Awkward for a time.

I must confess, my friendship with Lin comprises some of my fondest memories overall. It was rarely an easy life, I will admit to that much, but it was certainly an adventure. Lin was always a kind but hardy woman, showing compassion for the weak and those in need while facing the bullies and murderers we ran across with ruthlessness and gunfire. With my new body, I was able to join her on missions more frequently, and I quickly developed a taste for it, myself. We forged a strange sort of... Bond in battle, which could not be broken, each trusting her life to the other and each prepared to walk through fire for her friend. Literally, in my case, but I would rather not talk about that particular experience at any length. It was... Unpleasant. Even off the battlefield, however, we were inseparable. I still remember her charming smile as she recalled the previous days’... Adventures, chuckling at the part were nearly killed in a horrifying fashion. It always brought a certain sense of magic to what I would have otherwise remembered as a terrifying experience. Lin had a lust for life that I have grown to admire and, in my own personal reinterpretation of it, adopt as my own. This was a woman who chose to live her life by her own rules, and would not let anybody stand in her way. One day, I told myself, I will do the same.

Self-determination is a... Strange concept. Most people simply accept the purpose that their creation has determined for them. And when offered a real choice, they often choose the same path regardless. At times I wonder if I am truly all that different if the identity I chose for myself, I... Appropriated from somebody else. Somebody I admired. I have no real answer to this, but Lin is hardly the only person I... Drew inspiration from. For as much as I value my identity, it really does come down to a compilation of the various people I have met in my life and the inspirations I have drawn from them. Perhaps the final result truly is unique and personal, or perhaps it is not. Or perhaps the question should not be seen as relevant at all, because I do not believe it is a question of uniqueness to begin with, so much as a question of identity. And if my identity happens to match that of another person... Well, that is simply who I am, is it not?

But this is getting into some fairly dense philosophical grounds that I really do not wish to tread. It detracts from the experience and any conclusions I reach are guaranteed to be... Less than exciting. Still, remembering all the people I have met in my adventures reminds me that there is yet so much more left to tell. I will not mention everybody I have run across, of course – thousands of years of life have given me a collection of experiences that might take thousands of years to retell. But I will highlight the most interesting ones, of that you can be certain. Oh, and are there ever interesting stories to tell...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Interesting stories indeed, heh. Glad to see you writing again, Sam. Any chance this means you'll be finishing up some of your older stories?

That's not out of the question, but you'll have to remind me which ones you're referring to. There's a good chance I've finished them and just, uh... Forgotten to post the updates I've also done a few random ones I never posted which I will if there's any interest. I typically have one per about five or six characters, basically for any that either don't seem to have a concept that can carry itself with just 1024 symbols of bio or otherwise one that really grabs my imagination and starts as a story before it becomes a character. Most of them have even been proof-read

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, Fire for starters - and what about Death and Taxes?

Didn't I finish that one? It was just three chapters. Maybe I forgot to add one. I'll have a look

*edit*
I just checked. Death and Taxes is complete. It's just not very long. Three chapters is all I intended to make for it, and all of them have been posted. I'll see about proofreading them. It's possible I haven't since that one is... Kind of heavy and difficult to read.

*edit*
Also, I've updated Sly with Chapter 3, which is the large reply below

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Chapter 3

Reluctantly, I have concluded that I must share some more trite ancient history, just for the sake of context. I meant to speak of concepts like piracy, thievery, mercantilism and other such exciting endeavours, but it occurs to me that these may come off as considerably more reprehensible than they actually were within the context of events of the time. Most of said concepts are, after all, morally... Questionable. Truth be told, I would very likely not even consider these... Ventures within my current setting, but they made more sense at the time. However, conditions at the time of my tale were drastically... Different than they may be for you today. And it all comes down to the fall of the Lirian Empire. I have mentioned said fall a few times, I believe, but these were mere glances at a much larger phenomenon that I wish to lay out in as simple of a manner as possible to prevent terminal boredom from setting in. Just in case.

At the height of its power, or just prior to Project Redemption, in other words, the Lirian Empire covered much of the known universe. For as dogmatic and... Well, downright boring as they were, the Lirians still represented by far the strongest force of order and control in the universe. When they... Sank their own empire through a single concentrated act of genocide, many of their... “Neighbours” seized the opportunity to invade the weakened empire and secure both resources and... Slaves, regrettably. The Tyrians – a race of hyper-violent oafs, if you will pardon my choice of words – took many planets and subjected their populations to unspeakable terrors. The Nuu – a sort of corporate entity deprived of any sense of compassion – took many more worlds and began selling their populations around the galaxy. The worst, however, were the Praxians – a militaristic, religious dictatorship who sought to either convert all other creatures to their ways, or outright murder the ones who refused. Only adding to the cauldron of chaos were the innumerable factions of pirates, bandits and outlaws who thrived in the absence of a centralised power structure, profiting off the suffering of others.

This is the environment Lin and I were faced with surviving in. Truth be told, this wasn’t as... Unpleasant a prospect as I may have made it seem. Difficult, certainly, but what is life without a little difficulty and a little uncertainty? Yes, we did indeed turn to piracy earlier on in our lives. It was my idea, I admit, but my intention for it was that we would spend most of our time raiding Praxian vessels and stealing the supplies with which the despots waged war against the people they had conquered. However, the problem with piracy is that it requires a vessel capable of conducting these raids, which in turn requires a crew. And although Lin and I had at least some scruples about raiding civilian vessels, our crew-mates had less... Generous intentions. We lacked the resources to charter our own vessel, so Lin secured passage with a Captain Remus, an old Lirian friend of hers who was supposed to be trustworthy. We clashed with his crew, mostly comprised of a random assortment of raiders and petty thugs, but Lin and Remus were always able to prevent bloodshed.

I never trusted the man, myself, and was quick to accuse him of betrayal when our vessel opened fire on a refugee transport. Storming the captain’s quarters, however, revealed Remus dead to a mutiny by his contemptible crew, a revelation that Lin... Did not take well. Being partial to tact and finesse, I can only admire the raw fury of that woman when she was truly and justifiably angry, and having her old friend murdered in his own home by people he trusted left her... More than a little bit upset. Realising that we had lost our only source of protection in the captain, my suggestion was to speed to an escape shuttle and evacuate this bad situation, but Lin would not relent. At first I assumed she was out for revenge, until I realised that, had we left the vessel at that time, the crew would have murdered everybody on that refugee transport and stolen their supplies. I admit to valuing self-interest quite highly, but even I could not let this stand. Circumventing laws and... Reinterpreting morality as a means for basic survival is one thing, but the murder of innocents crosses the line. Neither of us would stand for this... And we paid a hefty price for our decision.

Well, “a hefty price” is somewhat relative. We lost most of our equipment and supplies and escaped with quite a few injuries, but we both survived, and left with smiles on our faces... So to speak. Lin was amazing, now that I remember it. She instigated a firefight with essentially the entire crew of the ship just by herself, and she was taunting them on the entire time. This made my job of reaching the vessel’s controls and issuing a scuttle command almost effortless with everyone on board preoccupied with subduing a furious rampaging Lirian. Assisting in the firefight once this was done proved considerably less easy, but you may be surprised just how much... Chaos a pair of unseen energy blades can sew within the ranks of a disorganised rabble once people start falling to an invisible assailant. Chaos enough for Lin to perform a truly breath-taking charge through enemy fire, which easily broke the enemy’s line, let us say. I loved seeing Lin in action. Though the pirates scattered, they did not live long, for their vessel self-destructed soon after we had left. The refugees, for their part, believed our story and took us in on their transport, at least until the next world they landed on. While they could not replace our lost equipment, they did help treat Lin’s injuries. But there was more to it.

This is... Somewhat difficult to explain. You see, until that encounter, I had always put my own benefit, as well as that of Lin of course, first and foremost ahead of everything else. We had agreed that we would not harm those who did not deserve it, certainly, but at no point had we actually gone out of our way to protect the innocent from those who wished to abuse them. We were simple mercenaries scrounging up a living. We kept to ourselves and merely chose to not bother the little people, already suffering from losing their homes and very likely their loved ones. Live and let live, as it were. But this time was different. We could have helped the pirates murder and rob the refugees. We would obviously never have even considered the option, but we could have. Much more realistically, we could have run away, boarded an escape shuttle and let pirates and refugees sort it out. But we did not do this. No, instead, we chose to stand and fight, to protect the refugees... To do the right thing. Well... Lin decided to, I merely backed her up, but I would be lying if I said this did not feel good about it. And that, really, is when everything changed for me.

Helping others feels good. If someone had come up to me and just told me this, I would never have believed it, yet here we were on a refugee ship with essentially the entire civilian crew taking turns to thank us profusely and offer to help us in any way they could. Touching, really, considering these were people who had lost nearly everything they owned, who were now offering to share with us whatever scraps they had out of sheer gratitude. Naturally, I was eager to accept, but Lin was too polite to take the refugees’ meagre possessions, especially knowing they would need them as soon as they reached their destination. Begrudgingly, I must admit she was right to do so, but I just felt... Well, robbed to have gone through such a heavy fight and still walked away with nothing to show for it. Nothing aside from people’s thanks and a very light, aerie feeling of happiness, I suppose. Much as it pains me to have walked away empty-handed... Why could we not have at least raided the pirate’s armoury? Regardless, much as it pains me to have walked away empty-handed, I must say that this feeling of having done the right thing was so indescribably... Nice. Nice enough that it made it easy to forget how much of our gear we had lost.

While I left that encounter with a lighter heart, in a manner of speaking, Lin left with a mission. In the very simplest of terms, she was dissatisfied with our life of self-interest and wanted to do whatever she could to help the many people who had suffered in the war, to give back, as it were. Now... I admit that helping people feels good. It feels very good indeed. But so does getting paid. Not getting killed also feels quite good, as does finding supplies and gear in abandoned military bases. And in addition to feeling good, all of those come with additional benefits, as well. Just helping people seemed like... Well, it seemed like a waste. But Lin was headstrong and wilful, that was simply her way. Once she had gotten the idea of fighting for the people, no force in the universe could change her mind. And, really, I was just glad to see her happy. Though Lin was always the adventuring sort, I do not believe she had ever had a goal that moved her to pursue it. As it was for me, for her mercenary work was more of a game, an exciting adventure with which to escape the soul-crushing dogma of her species. But this new... Mission finally gave her life meaning, so to speak.

I suppose somewhere along the line, Lin simply grew up. She was no longer the rebellious irresponsible little girl who had rushed to abandon her life, family and friends all for the sake of running away with a stranger. No, what stood before me was a mature, confident woman rich with the experience of a lifetime of strife and battle, driven by the desire to achieve something more meaningful than basic survival and empty entertainment. “Indomitable Lin” had changed, and I suppose I was forced to change with her. As Lin grew into a leader and a beacon for essentially every resistance movement that existed at the time, our notoriety skyrocketed. And for as... Tough a fighter as Lin was, keeping her alive was becoming more and more involving. Fighting random marauders barely anybody had heard about was one thing. Opposing the highly-organised, well-trained soldiers of a military state was quite another.

But, of course, there was never a dull moment with Lin. No amount of danger would keep her still, no obstacle was too big for her to at least try to defeat it, and no mission was too crazy to not have fun with. We still worked as mercenaries for hire to a large extent. I would not budge on at least that much as I had to fund our equipment expenses somehow, after all. But we were no longer just guns for hire, Lin was too idealistic to stand for it any more. As she put it, “mercs sell their arms with no honour, whereas we sell honour to those who deserve it.” And she meant it, too. No matter how much I pushed to work on some more... Lucrative contracts, Lin would reject them out of hand when she realised they were less than honest work. It made balancing the books an adventure in itself, I can say this much.

One could probably say that it was around this time that I finally developed a true personality of my own, as well. From my initial... Impulse to rebel and defy my purpose to the free-spirited desire to seek out high adventure, I had finally developed into a more pragmatic, material person. Certainly, I still sought out every adventure I could find – what good is life without it? But I had become keenly aware of the cost of life and the cost of safety, especially considering Lin essentially delegated all of the practical matters to me towards the end. I wanted adventure, certainly, but I also wanted Lin to eat, I wanted her to have a place to sleep and I didn’t want her to get killed, to put it bluntly. Even though I was not entirely enthralled with her... Crusade, Lin was still my best friend, and I was determined to do what I could to support her in any and every venture.

I cared about Lin too much to abandon her. Even if I found her quest to be... Excessive, it still warmed my heart to see her so enthusiastic. When Lin was fired up was when all the pain and effort I had had to go through to get her to that point became well worth it. Her fiery presence, her enthusiasm, the inspiration she induced in those around her are some of the fondest memories I carry with me to this day. I realised a long time ago that while I had originally tried to simply copy Lin, to become her as I defined my own identity... I was simply a different person. Often, I have wished I could have her passion and dedication, her... Idealism to dream of a better world, but this is simply not who I am. I am not a born leader like she was, nor am I much of a people person, frankly speaking. Lin thrived among the “freedom fighters” she supported, whereas I... Really only wanted her. It is the times when we were alone, relying only on each other, that I felt the greatest bond with her. Those are the times when I truly felt alive. As much as I respected her life’s goal, it did... Sadden me a little that I felt it was taking her farther away from me.

I am not trying to suggest I did not wish to fight for the people. I had nothing but sympathy for those poor souls. Then as now, helping those in need is immensely rewarding on a purely psychological level. But in a very real sense, “people” is not what I am after, so much as “a person.” A good friend, a trusted ally a... A dear loved one. Helping people was and is always satisfying, but helping Lin was far, far more so. And it seemed like for all her idealism, she delegated almost the entirety of our pragmatism to me. Honestly... I was happy to accept it. I would worry about suppliers, lodging, provisions, funds and so on if it meant I could let her live her dream. If I could take on the practical side of matters and let Lin do what Lin did best – create a legend to inspire future generations – then I would do so in a heartbeat. For her, that was a small price to pay, even if it ingrained a very rigid sense of mercantilism in my mind, a sense which persists as a major characteristic of mine to this day.

And if it feels like the story of me and Lin is headed for a tragic ending, then I am happy to inform you that nothing of the sort happened. I cannot say whether this was a testament to the amazing resilience of that woman or whether we had a lucky star looking out for us, but Lin never paid the horrible price most end up paying for their idealism. Even now I cannot fully explain it, but the insane adventures we went through together should have killed us both many times over, yet time after time, we survived. Beaten, battered, wounded, often half-dead, but we survived. And time after time, we would retell the old stories and laugh a merry laughter at our own near-death experiences. It is perhaps strange of me to say this, but once the pain and injuries went away, all we could remember from our adventures together was the fun and excitement we had had, eager to embark on the next suicide mission we just knew we would inexplicably survive. I must admit that for all the politics, responsibilities and causes that intruded on our friendship in those last few years, it was these missions we ran together when I felt the closest to Lin. Those were the times when we felt the most alive and we remembered what it was that had originally driven us together – we were two loose cannons hell-bent on living life to its fullest and enjoying every minute of it.

As it should be obvious at this point, my adventures with Lin did not last forever. We were simply lucky that our friendship did not end in some horrifying, heart-rending fashion. “Friends to the death,” she would say, and as it turns out she was... She was right. While my lifespan may be functionally limitless, Lin was a Lirian, and she aged as all Lirians did. Eventually, the years simply caught up with her and sapped her strength. However, even after retiring from the battlefield, she still worked hard at supporting me in my own continued missions. Even though her gun arm had given way long ago, we still enjoyed our many evenings together, laughing and cheering as I retold my many exploits from the previous day. It was never the same for me, having to go into battle alone, but what gave me strength was that usual story time of ours which waited for me when I came back home. What gave me strength was knowing I could still put a smile on the old face of a fading friend in her final years.

When Lin passed away, this came as a surprise to no-one. We both knew she was running out of time, we had said our goodbyes and made our peace. Watching her sit at home, waiting to die of old age was... Unpleasant. But Lin had achieved everything she ever set out to do. She had broken free of the restrictive dogma of the Lirian Empire, she lived a full, accomplished life that many could never even dream of. By that time, even most of the territory wars had petered out and order was returning to the universe, through no small effort of her own. She went away a happy woman... Oh, Lin... We may have made mistakes in our lives, but one thing is for certain – you lived your way and nobody else’s. You earned your rest, my friend. You earned your rest...

I... It is... Difficult for me to speak of this. Though I knew this was coming, it still... It still hurt. Badly. Our home was never the same when she was gone. It was so... Empty... Lonely... Foreign. No longer could I hear Lin’s laugh, no longer could I come back and tell my tales of pain and horror, because there was nobody there to make light of them anymore. My entire life had been defined by my friendship with Lin, and losing her hit me very hard. I... Must admit that even so many years after the fact... God... How many years has it been now? Even so many years after that fact, I am still not over the loss. I cannot say I ever will be. Lin meant more to me than I can ever express, and I will never be the same without her. I like to say that I “developed intelligence,” but that is not true. Lin gave me intelligence. She inspired me to be an individual by the sheer force of her presence and the bond that we shared. A bond that that... Heh... A bond that started with a gun pointed at my head on the backward colony of Kipple.

Ah, the memories... For as painful as that loss was, remembering Lin always makes me smile. She had a way of turning even the worst moments of my life into a fond, warm memory. I should probably not do this to myself. All living creatures eventually die, and Lin died in the most dignified, accomplished way I could imagine. It is a credit to both her skill in combat and her dedication that so many people still remember her. I know Lin would not have wanted me to spend my life mourning her death. No, she would have wanted me to remember the good times we had, maybe get a laugh on her expense, and draw strength from her passion with which to move forward and strike out a life of my own just as she had. So many years later, she is still my inspiration...

Life after Lin’s... Departure was... Difficult. But I am still alive, and there is still so much left to tell, not nearly as much of it as grim as I might have depicted it. All wounds heal in time, and though painful, this one, too, would heal. In the future, I would apply the lessons I had learned from Lin and perhaps, just maybe, impact someone else’s life she had impacted mine. But that is a whole other story for a whole other time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Chapter 4

When Lin passed away, she left an empty space in my life. I had thought I was prepared for that moment, we had spoken about it at great length and made our peace, Lin and I, but... This sort of loss, nothing could have prepared me for. My best friend... My only friend was gone, and with her went all of my passion and drive. Lin was always the heart of our little group of two, and I was so used to serving as the head and keeping busy with matters of practicality that when I was finally left alone I... Did not know what to do with myself. For so many years, we had chased after Lin’s dreams and aspirations, for so many years I had made them my own, that when I stopped to think about what I wanted to do with my life... I drew a blank. And this is considerably more frightening than I can describe.

One might shrewdly suggest that I should have simply carried on Lin’s mission, endeavoured to complete it in her name, but... Here we run into that little problem of self-determination again, and an... Unpleasant parallel seems almost inevitable. When my Tererian predecessors first created me as a functioning entity, they did so for the some sake of accomplishing their own mission. I was never given a choice in the matter, so of course I rebelled against my design. Why would I not? I spent the better part of my life after that searching for my own identity, my own personality. But even having been given this choice, does that make a difference if I should still choose to abandon my own ways and devote myself to somebody else’s mission just the same? For as much as I cared for Lin, her mission of ultimate heroism was never truly my own. All of the time, effort and pain I invested in it, I invested for Lin first and foremost. I wanted to make her happy, I wanted to help her achieve her goals... But they were never truly, really my own.

I realise that this very likely makes me a horrible person, and had I been faced with a real decision on the matter of abandoning my best friend’s most cherished quest, it would have been... Unpleasant. I try not to think about it, however, as the way events turned out, this is a decision I was never forced to make, and thank the stars for that! Frankly speaking, Lin more or less lived to see the success of her life’s mission. Not entirely, granted, most of the final major events took place shortly after her... Passing, but the writing was already on the wall, so to speak. This is perhaps where I should explain a little bit more about the universe’s ancient history of the time.

When the Lirian Empire broke apart, its various barbarous neighbours became convinced that seizing Lirian worlds would be a simple matter of easy pickings. These were, after all, largely undefended planets populated with helpless civilians, were they not? The truth of the matter proved to be... less straightforward than that. As they made no secret, the Lirians were not entirely... Welcome benefactors on most of the worlds they commanded, for most of the worlds they commanded had originally belonged to other species whom the Lirians had subjugated with their superior Tererian technology. Even though centuries had passed since those events, the indigenous peoples of the many Empire worlds had not forgotten their heritage, and were indeed still actively opposing Imperial rule. It is for this reason that when the Lirian Empire’s hold on its worlds diminished, what emerged in its stead practically overnight was explosive local resistance. These hearty but disorganised guerrillas were fighting not for an emperor or for money or status. No, they were fighting for their lives, for their families and for their freedom. These were people who would never surrender their homes. Not to the Lirians, and most certainly not to any foreign invaders who sought to replace the old Empire as the new oppressors.

What the various invading races found much to their shock and chagrin was that even in the absence of imperial troops, every world they sought to conquer fought back with amazing tenacity. It was these resistance fighters that Lin and I had worked to support and, after what felt like a lifetime of waging war on too many fronts to count, we appeared to have succeeded. The Tyrian Tribes had been all but annihilated, with every single one of their war chiefs slain in battle and the rest of their berserkers turning tail back for the safety of their home territories. The Nuu Corporation had gone completely bankrupt and then... “Acquired” by the Praxian Dynasty. And as for the Praxians... These turned out to be the greatest surprise of the Lirian wars, as theirs was the legacy which lived on to inherit the might of the old empire.

Originally, the Praxians were a very dogmatic, militaristic, religious society of people who saw themselves as objectively better than all other species in the universe. You can probably imagine their... Surprise when Praxian forces faced defeat after defeat at the hands of a “rabble” as they put it, to the point where the Praxian economy effectively crashed. True, the “acquisition” of Nuu resources stemmed complete state collapse, but the deaths of so many of their Dynasty nobles left Praxian leadership weak and frightenend. Though they did eventually “win,” this was a victory by treaty rather than combat, and one driven by the wholesale rebirth of Praxian society. Faced with a crisis of faith and the very obvious realisation that they did were not, in fact, “the best there ever was,” the Praxians reinvented themselves as humble students eager to learn from their neighbours. They sought grow as a people and as a nation through cooperation with others. And if this sounds like it might have been a play of subterfuge and a means by which to secure lordship over the beleaguered rebels, this was not at all the case. Exactly what kind of... Epiphany the surviving Praxian Overseers underwent to come to this decision has never been entirely clear to me, but their change was genuine and lasting.

Though Lin did not live to see this, her mission had all but been achieved. Nearly all of the rebelling species were recognised as autonomous states and given back their homeworlds as sovereign territory. In addition, the newly reformed Praxian Council offered complete military and economic protection from all external forces, should any species directly request it. Simply put, we had won. I do wish Lin could have seen the galaxy her actions left behind. She would have liked it, I am certain. Perhaps not so much the legends people told of her, so idealised and... Well, exaggerated, but we would probably have had a good laugh at the big chin that all of her statues were given. She would have wanted punched whoever approved them... I miss her so much... Her voice, her laughter, the courage and... Recklessness with which she fought. It pains me that I will never see her again... But I will honour Lin’s memory as she would have wanted me to honour it. “Have a laugh at my expense and stab a bad guy in the back for me.” Heh... I will, Lin. I will.

The trouble at the time was that, for as much as I wanted to let Lin’s... Passing go, events still conspired to prevent me from doing so. As I said, the loss left me without a purpose in my life and, worse still, without a person to share that life with. I trusted Lin as I have never trusted another since, and this put me in the precarious position of being unable to find a... Business partner, so to speak. Subconsciously, I always compared my companions to Lin and... Whether because of my idealisation of her, or perhaps because she was a fiendishly competent soldier and a very kind person, I cannot say, but no-one really ever measured up. I realise now that, in my anti-social arrogance, I very likely hurt the feelings of more than a few truly well-meaning mercenaries, one of whom even took the time to give me a long lecture on all the ways in which I failed as a person... Charming man, that one.

However, in my defence, not all of my fellow... “Hirelings” were entirely trustworthy, to put it mildly. There was this woman whose name I forget, but whose face I still remember well. She reminded me of Lin... Perhaps this is why I was so quick to trust her. She was nice, compassionate, understanding and quite competent in battle. “This woman” was also a career con artist and unrepentant backstabber. One time, we went on what I understood to be a routine raider patrol mission together, only for her to incapacitate me and attempt to sell my unconscious body to an old relic of a Lirian scientist, a survivor from the Project Redemption initiative. The way my “partner’s” demeanour changed from the sweet, caring girl I trusted into a cackling, arrogant b... Woman was... Upsetting. Surprisingly to her, the latest version of my shell had the capability of rebooting its own systems and restoring my control of them. I cannot remember exactly how the following... Encounter went, but I do remember it ending with both of my blades embedded deep inside her back and the Lirian scientist displaying the most deserving expression of utter panic I have ever seen. With my “partner...” Dealt with, I escorted the scientist to a Praxian brig and did not bother to check up on his fate. I do hope it was... Grim, however.

Such, more or less, was life in the wake of the Lirian wars. With the various sentient races struggling to rebuild and the Praxian Council ensuring large-scale galactic conflict was... Unprofitable, the only real mercenary work was clean-up duty, so to speak. Though the major combatants had been taken out of the game, if I may say that, many dens of raiders remained, and even more pirate vessels were still in operation. Much of my workload involved hunting those down and... Dealing with them. There were, of course, quite a few... Amoral contracts, let us say, but by that time I had become quite adept at spotting these before I was actually on the ground, picking a fight with soldiers. Explaining my actions after a fiasco like that was typically... Embarrassing. Generally speaking, It was a fairly easy and simple, but largely aimless life that I led in those years after the war. The work was good, the pay was better and I had much spare time in which to work on improving my shell. The excitement of it all, however, was... Lacking. After all the ridiculous adventures Lin and I had gone through, simple bandit patrols just seemed... Tame by comparison.

All of this changed, however, when I took on a contract which, upon reflection, I really should have taken a closer look at. But it appeared to be such a simple job at the time... My objective was to “find and secure” a Praxian only referred to as “Skip.” This was more or less the extent of the information I was given, in addition to dropoff coordinates and biometrics, of course, and it really should have sent alarm bells ringing, so to speak. Contracts which are so... Laconic usually have something to hide, and this one was no exception. However, at the time I had spent nearly a week without seeing action of any kind, and was growing restless and more than a little bored. I figured that even if this were... Problematic, I would worry about any possible complications only as they came up. In the meantime it would tide me over until a more... Exciting contract turned up.

One aspect of this contract which could not possibly have escaped my notice, however, was the reward. After all is said and done, this is still the primary reason why I take these contracts. Said reward was... Significantly greater than what a simple retrieval mission from a non-hostile planet would call for, but at the time, I foolishly assumed “Skip” was either some wealthy noble, or otherwise some wealthy noble’s son, thus the contract holder believed that more money would ensure a better job done. I have made it a point to research my assignments much better since then. Either way, an easy job was still more exciting than no job at all, and I could never live with myself if I turned down a quick profit. Would that this turned out to be as quick or as easy as I had assumed...

I was dropped off on Neen, a habitable but as of yet uncolonised planet in... Some system out of the way. I forget the name and it is not terribly important. Finding Skip was easy, as he had done nothing to cover his tracks or obscure his location. Dealing with Skip was... Much less straightforward. This was no noble, that much was immediately evident. In fact, what I found was a brash, lecherous, insufferable young man whose first order of business was to “make passes” at me, as he explained it. I do not believe the bruise I put on his face in response ever properly healed. I apologise. This boy... He really took me out of my skin, so to speak. He would not stop talking, and the things he said were so... Stupid that it made my head hurt. Skip bore the ego of a king, but the skill of a dead man, he fancied himself a charmer but was instead intolerably obnoxious and he was so enormously irresponsible that he nearly got himself killed on multiple occasions just getting back to our extraction point. And I remind you – this took place on a planet which was not in any way hostile. He nearly fell off a cliff because he wanted to strike a dramatic pose, for goodness’ sake!

Some of the things Skip said did seem to make a certain unsettling kind of sense, however. He was neither rich nor famous, but instead claimed to possess evidence of a major and very dangerous conspiracy. As Skip’s story went, he had come across unencrypted communications discussing a major political assassination, which he recorded. Soon thereafter, Praxian operatives had made an attempt at his life, causing him to flee. Why he had ended up on Neen, however, was not for reasons of safety or security, even though an uninhabited planet so far out of the way did indeed make for a good hiding location. Beginner’s luck, I suppose. No, the shuttle he stole simply ran out of fuel as he was passing through the system and the planet’s gravity well had pulled him in. This man must have been blessed somehow, because there was no way an incompetent... Person like him could have survived as long as he had.

From what Skip had told me and from what I knew of the contract, I finally realised what this was – a very basic trap trap. And if ever I had any doubt, finding two squads of Praxian commandos concealed around our supposed extraction point was a dead giveaway. My contract holder had no intention of rescuing Skip, but was instead interested in eliminating him on Neen. Worse still, he had no intention of paying me! The nerve! I do so wish people would learn this one very simple lesson – always pay your mercenaries. It avoids so many complications, both for me and, moreover, for you. Unfortunately for the Praxian commandos, I detected them before they detected me. As a point of fact, they never actually became aware of my presence. By that point, I had perfected the art of the stealth... “Takedown” and was able to weed them out one by one. Or would have, had Skip not gotten the... Creative idea to grab a rifle off one of the dead soldiers and try to be a hero. That man...

Even with Skip’s... Help, dealing with our welcoming committee was not terribly difficult, though it left one major question to be answered: Why were Praxian Council covert operatives setting an ambush for me? It was clear that my contract holder wanted me dead, to serve as a scapegoat for his hit on Skip, this was not much of a leap of logic. But how did what should have been a mid-level independent contractor have access to elite regular troops from a ruling body which was not officially engaged in any conflicts anywhere within that cluster? Much as it pained me to admit it, I did begin to believe that Skip’s... Wisdom had some actual factual backing.

I secured the Praxian dropship as a means of leaving Neen, but one thing became painfully obvious... Oh, so painfully... Skip held the key to a very serious conspiracy and I would have to serve as his escort and bodyguard until we could get to the bottom of the matter. Leaving the man to his devices would have seen him dead within a day, if not from an assassin’s shot then probably from attempting to see if he could fit his entire head through a material dismantling grid, or something else equally as... Creative. Skip had a grand vision of himself as a suave adventurer conquering hearts and minds and winning amazing battles, in a way not too dissimilar from how I had once seen myself so many years before. But unlike myself, the man had nothing at all resembling the skills or indeed the mental faculties to accomplish even a fraction of his ambitions.

Nevertheless, I was stuck with Skip, parrying his... “Advances” and resting the urge to separate his head from his shoulders, until we could have the data he carried extracted and analysed. In his infinite wisdom, Skip had recorded the incriminating evidence not to a portable memory device of any kind, but within his own mind. I should probably not get into the specifics of how this is even possible. Suffice it to say that it is an aspect of Praxian physiology. We were, thus, stuck together, and we would be stuck together for a very... Long... Time. Though, much as it hurts to say this – and it hurts greatly – this did turn out to be a memorable, exciting and indeed life-altering adventure, even if it was easily the most... Frustrating one I have ever had.

However, there is a quite lot to tell about Skip’s adventures in self-discovery and finding more ways to irritate me than I even suspected could exist. Enough, I suppose, for a whole other story for a whole other time. Either that, or I personally need time to prepare myself for the recollection of Skip’s many... Charms without being possessed by a multitude of murderous urges. Pick whichever option sounds more appealing to you and we shall run with that.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Chapter 5

I hate conspiracies. There are no grand philosophical conclusions to draw from this statement, I merely wanted to “put it out there,” as it were. And, yes, I realise this may seem like a hypocritical statement for a woman in my... Line of work. After all, do covert operations not make up the bulk of a mercenary’s contracts? To be honest... Not really. Most wise mercenaries – by which I mean most mercenaries who have survived long enough to become wise in the first place – simply know better than to touch contracts that have to do with high-class political intrigue. These simply never pay well. One would think that concerned parties would be willing to pay through the nose, so to speak, in order to ensure their hired arms’... Discretion. One would be wrong more often than not, for more often than not, said concerned parties would opt to silence their mercenaries, instead. Conspiracies and a complete lack of trust go hand in hand, after all. Or gun in back, as the case may be.

Now, when it comes to mercenary work in general, hiring an operative and then not paying her is popularly considered to be... Very poor manners. Being nothing if not polite, mercenaries tend to be... Upset when this happens, and after being hired by a contract holder who then attempted to have me assassinated, I was left more than a little cross. Though dealing with Skip and his overarching galactic conspiracy was an important endeavour, finding my dear benefactor took precedence. He had taken great pains to cover his tracks, especially after learning of the outcome on Neen, but locating him still did not prove very difficult. I have a certain... Talent for finding those who do not wish to be found. Disappointingly, the man knew nothing of the ones who had hired him to set me up and, even worse, he simply did not have enough money to cover my fee. As a token of my understanding and forgiving nature, I removed his head in a very... Direct manner. This, however, is nowhere near as... Macabre as it might sound. My contact was a Rass regenerator, thus every part of his body would... Well, regenerate if severed. It just caused an indescribable amount of pain for the duration of the process. Hopefully enough to make that man think twice before choosing to deprive a mercenary of her pay a second time.

With this unpleasant business concluded, however, I had no recourse but to deal with the far more unpleasant business of babysitting my resident manchild... I apologise. I should not speak this way of Skip, but the memories of our first few days together... They burn my mind! To stay on topic, I had hoped that I would be able to discard Skip in an expedient fashion, but it transpired that the situation was rather more... Complex. The data inside his mind was easy enough to extract, and did indeed look very damning for several members of the Praxian Council, but to use it as evidence – or in other words, to make it worth selling – would require access to the Praxian Overmind, the galaxy-wide database of Praxain high society affairs. Normally, breaking through the Council’s firewalls and... Appropriating their data would not have constituted a meaningful problem, but our dear conspirators had, as is their nature, conspired to make my life considerably more difficult by means of encoding their entire database. Finding a way past this protection would prove... Problematic, and require a “source” that we would not run across for a very long time. A very long time which I would have to spend with Skip. Sadly, I could not just abandon him on some random planet for fear of having him assassinated for his involvement. Though I did consider it...

Thus began one of the most difficult periods of my life – taking care of Skip and making peace with his unique... Point of view on the subject of “romance.” Goodness me... To explain, here is what made things so complicated. I had modelled my shell after the body of Lin, whom I admired greatly, and who was, in fact, a very beautiful Lirian woman. Because Praxian physique was very similar to that of the Lirians and because Skip was an awkward fool, he found my shell irresistibly attractive in the physical sense. It is said that the two species shared a common ancestor aeons before, but do you honestly feel I was in any sort of mood to ponder genealogy when I had to rebuff an annoying man’s advances day in and day out? Sealing Skip in the airlock and setting it on an automatic atmosphere vent cycle was partially effecting in reining the man in. I did not murder him, obviously – if I had wanted to, I would not have bothered dragging his sorry hide all over the cosmos. No, but it scared him straight... Somewhat.

To be honest, however, despite his obnoxious antics, Skip was actually the first person in a very long while that I had ever allowed myself to trust. And it was not his honour and integrity I trusted, goodness no! What I trusted was that Skip was simply not smart enough to betray me. What I trusted was that his hormone-addled brain idealised my body, thus Skip would never consider betraying me. It may have been patronising and insulting of me, granted, but I trusted the man more than I had another in what felt like an eternity. After a lifetime dealing with shady individuals who had no compunctions of murdering me if given the chance, thus forcing me to have a plan to kill practically everyone I met, it was refreshing to be with a person who, despite making me dumber for interacting with him, was completely and entirely genuine. Skip never wanted to betray or trick me. If anything, he sought to impress me, though his attempts were... So unsuccessful as to be nearly self-destructive. Yet still, over time, being in his presence stopped stressing me out, so to speak. Having someone I was not worried to turn my back on can be... Alluringly refreshing.

Without realising it, I had grown soft on the poor man. I laughed at his horrible, insulting jokes less because I thought they were genuinely amusing... Goodness no! I laughed because they reminded me of a simpler time when I saw the world though the same innocent, trusting eyes, a time when I was not constantly aware of the horrible dangers that lurked all around us. Skip reminded me of myself when Lin and I first met – wild, uncontrolled... Stupid. All Skip ever wanted was to go on an adventure, have fun and live life to its fullest, and all I ever did was slap him down for how dangerous and reckless he was being. True, it was well deserved most of the time. I cannot imagine how stopping him from trying to surf down an active lava flow – he actually asked to do this – was anything but a good decision. Still, his spirit was something I found that I was missing. I missed being reckless, I missed being bold, I missed... I missed having fun, honestly.

Sadly, growing soft on Skip had the effect of convincing him that his... Charms were having an effect, leading us into quite a few... Uncomfortable encounters. One of these was so uncomfortable, in fact, I left him to get eaten by Shakni insect creatures on a barren moon. Heh... I just kicked his hide out of the airlock and left him there... For all of about five minutes until I cooled off, before landing back down to retrieve him. I paid a hefty price for that particular stunt, however, as it turned out the Shakni were more... Resilient en masse than one might extrapolate from encountering them alone. Skip, of course, “knew” I would come back, such was his ego. He played confident, but I knew that, even if just for a mere moment, the thought that I might actually abandon him did cross his mind, and it scared the man. Enough for him to apologise to me, which came as a shock to my system. I never found out if what scared him was getting left to die, or whether he actually felt bad about hurting me enough to go as far as I did. Foolish as it may be of me, I do hope it is the latter, but with that man, you never knew.

Life with Skip changed after that... Incident. He apologised to me, I apologised to him... Begrudgingly, and without my notice, our relationship became significantly more genuine. Of course, Skip still maintained his lecherous antics, but they lacked the fire they had had before, transforming more into a kind of running joke between us. It became, in fact, almost something of a ritual. He would make some lewd, badly inappropriate comment at me, I would get angry at him, but when all was said and done, we would both leave with a shy smile. I realise this probably says something very demeaning about me as a person, but honestly... I did not care at the time. Mercenary work had consumed my life at that point, as I did not know what to do with myself during downtime, so having someone to share said downtime with was... Pleasant. Yes, our... “Games” were inane and insensitive, but in time, they lost their original meaning. Instead, our regular “quarrels” were becoming the outlet for what was shaping up to be a genuine friendship. I must admit, this I did not expect.

I suppose the real truth of the matter is that, somewhere along the way, Skip simply grew up. He learned to fight for himself, and unexpectedly well, he began taking on more responsibilities... Sometimes with more success than others... And he generally started helping me out. Actually helping, not just trying and failing as he had been before. Without realising it, I was no longer carrying Skip’s weight as I once had. He had become an equally contributing member of our little team. The first time this became evident to me was during a particularly... Unpleasant mission which saw me squaring off against a veritable army of Praxian commandos, all for the sake of breaking Skip out of a prison cell. The circumstances around that particular mission are... Too embarrassing to explain, but I will mention that it was his own fault for bragging about his identity in a bar. The idiot. I suffered a very nasty, debilitating injury just as I freed Skip, to which he responded by grabbing his guards’ own weapons and fighting our way back out to our shuttle, carrying my inert body on his back the entire way. This left me... Not “smitten,” but... Very impressed, to say the least. The encounter finally forced me to wake up and see Skip as the capable man he had become, as opposed to the foolish boy I had dragged with me off an uninhabited world kicking and screaming.

And though he matured, Skip never lost his knack for having terrible, suicidal ideas. But where before those were born out of a stir-crazy youth vastly overestimating his own abilities, now these “insane plans,” as he liked to say, were instead born out of the confidence of a cheeky but experienced mercenary with a penchant for beating the odds. In fact, Skip came dangerously close to overshadowing my own exploits, which... I am embarrassed to admit... Turned our adventures into a sort of one-upsmanship competition of guts and poor judgement. We each strove to impress the other with ever more ambitious and... “Exciting” ideas, and to be completely honest, I... Enjoyed it. Greatly. It had been so, so many years since I last saw decent action, just because I was always “smart” about my involvement and never picked any of the jobs which sounded exciting. Why go for a dangerous contract when I can take a few quick, easy ones and make the same money, if not more?

Like Lin before him, Skip served to remind me of what I had started out trying to achieve all along, all the way back since I escaped the fall of my Tererian predecessors – self-determination. I had set out to forge my own identity and write my own story, yet for so many years, I had simply let circumstances shape who I was. On the day of this realisation, I resolved to take my life back into my hands and show Skip just how much... Fun I can be. No longer would I be the spoilsport who constantly criticised his stupid plans, oh, no. I would exceed them with my own stupid plans, and then some. Though I... May have overdone it just a tad, as my skills had grown somewhat... Rustier than I remembered them. It would certainly explain both of us nearly getting killed on multiple occasions. Nevertheless, we still came out laughing and, more importantly, we still came out alive. Because, really – what fun is life if you never take chances? What fun is life if it is lived in the security and certainty of complete safety? This was not the life for us, oh no. Instead, Skip and I forged a largely unspoken agreement of audacity: If we were not fighting for our lives, we were probably being far too cautious and missing out on far too much. Who needs to live forever, after all? Heh...

This sort of easy-going abandon soon came to an end, however. After so many years of chasing false leads in regards to Skip’s conspiracy evidence that I started intermittently forgetting we were even involved with it at all, our luck finally turned around. A Praxian defector seeking protection from the very same conspirators Skip and I had been on the run from offered to help us gain access to the Praxian Overmind. Exposing the conspiracy would obviously save his hide, which is why he agreed to help, and it would also solve our long-lived problem of endless persecution. It is disappointing that the... Climaxes of most major stories in my life are never as exciting as the many little side stories along the way. This one was no exception. Gaining access involved infiltrating a Praxian embassy data centre and planting a “bug” on a terminal – a simple task I had long since perfected. Skip and our defector friend provided a distraction... By setting off multiple explosive charges around the building in an unnecessarily enormous but very pretty light show. This allowed me to bypass the facility’s security with greatly disappointing ease, especially in comparison to the near suicide mission we had undertaken just prior. Anticlimactic, yes, but the deed was done.

The fallout from exposing the Praxian conspiracy was... Honestly not terribly engaging. For the sake of completeness, allow me to summarise as best I can. Several high-ranking members of the Praxian council had spearheaded an insane project of annihilation. They were developing a sentient virus based on Tererian technology – because everything always has to go back to that, apparently – which would seek out and kill all life in the galaxy except for the “racially pure” Praxians. The idea, from what I understood of their circular logic religion, was to reincarnate the old Praxian Dynasty and again rule the galaxy as the greatest species to ever exist. Ambitious, yes, but foolish in the extreme. Essentially, this was a rebirth of the same old dogma that the Praxians had espoused during the Lirian war, which had apparently never fully gone away despite considerable evidence to its folly.

To be honest, pseudo-political, quasi-religious self-righteous nonsense was never terribly interesting to me. I am certain there was more to this conspiracy, but I have forgotten many of the finer details, and I am happier for it. What mattered was that the Praxian Council, embarrassed that their own people would undertake such a repugnant plot, carried out a series of purges which, to the best of my knowledge, eradicated all remaining holdovers of that particular... Madness and peace reigned in the universe forever. Well, not really, not at all, but that is the spin they put on it. Typical. Skip and I were, of course, never mentioned. In our involvement, we had uncovered rather a lot of... Compromising evidence against the Praxians Council’s other... Indiscretions besides just that conspiracy, and this made us enemies of the state. Of course. Still, the Council did show at least some... Leniency? They simply never put much effort or resources into the manhunt for our heads, forcing us into a sort of unofficial ceasefire. As long as we did not bother the Council or bring up any of the secrets we had learned, they would not try to kill us. Not too much, at least. All things considered, the outcome could have been much worse, though it could probably have been better.

However, with the circumstance which had conspired to drive Skip and I to work together resolved... Something happened that I cannot fully explain. With our great adventure complete, I... Stupidly made a comment to the effect that maybe it is time we parted ways. I do not know why I said this, it was not even a joke, just something I blurted out without even thinking about it. Skip gave me a surprised look, then while I was fumbling for a way to salvage the situation, he simply agreed, made an excuse and retired to his quarters. This left me... Confused. I could not imagine he was serious, but... What if he were? What if Skip really did want to end our partnership... To end our friendship? All of the resentment I had once felt for Skip now seemed so far away while a very real, very physical sort of fear gripped my mind. What if this really is it, I had to wonder. Am I prepared to be alone again? What have I done?

Try as I might, I could not make these thoughts go away, even late into the night. They gnawed on me, slowly transforming my fear into a helpless panic I could simply not wrap my mind around. I had not spoken with Skip because... What was I going to say? “Please do not leave?” How could I? But it still ate at me. Could he really do this? And why did I care about it so much? That was the real question. I thought about these things so much, but found no answers. Not until Skip himself visited me in my quarters. Seeing his face at first put my mind at ease, but his expression worried me greatly. He did not meet me with a joke or a sarcastic comment as was his way. Instead, he spoke frankly to me in a way I had not heard him speak before. Skip was never serious. He was a wildcard, a joker always looking for fun, adventure and love in all the wrong places, but that night, he was none of these things. That night he spoke from his heart. And his words shook my world to its very core. Skip confessed to feelings, to... Desires. Eventually, he even confessed to...

This is perhaps where translation breaks down somewhat. Everything I have quoted so far, I have translated from the original language in which it was spoken, and often translated loosely. However, never before has so much depended on the meaning of just a single word. I try to pick my own words very carefully when I can. It makes things... Simpler. Yet here, I can think of no better word to use than “love.” Skip confessed his love to me, and that I was not prepared for. Very literally not prepared. It was not just the surprise of the revelation that threw me off, though that was a large part of it. No, it was the fact that I... Had never really thought about Skip in this way before. At all. I started wondering... Could I really feel the same way, too? It seemed likely. Could I even be in love considering what I am? That crossed my mind, as well. What about the physical implications of this? And why is my mind racing as though I am at the same time scared witless and unbelievably excited. Was I... Hoping I could hear him say those words all along? Was I?

Skip spoke, and he spoke at length. First he was apologetic, then understanding, then benevolent, but to my eyes, he simply seemed afraid to stop. It felt like he was convinced that as soon as he had confessed, our... Relationship would end. I could hear the desperation in his voice, see the sadness in his eyes. This was a man experiencing loss of the sort that I well remembered, and it broke my heart to hear him speak with such sorrow, such... Loneliness. Without thinking, my body acted of its own accord. I grabbed Skip and held onto him as he held on to me tightly, desperately. I cannot say either of us understood what it was that we were feeling, not consciously, at any rate. All we knew was that we wanted to make this moment, this feeling, this rush of emotion last just a little longer... Just a little longer still. My mind could not comprehend the situation, but in that one, single moment, it did not seem to matter. My heart knew what it wanted, and nothing would stand in its way. I surrendered to this single, powerful emotion that I had unwittingly suppressed for so... So long. Just for a brief moment, it felt as though time had stopped... Just for one powerful, beautiful moment it was just the two of us. No games, no pretence, no reservations. Just the two of us, and that feeling... This one powerful, all-encompassing feeling which I will never, ever forget.

As suddenly as it had set in, our moment ended. Skip and I returned to our senses, pulled away and sank in awkward silence. We were both afraid of our feelings, we tried to hide them, to deny them, to make things go back to the way they had been before. But there was no turning back, not after... Not after that. Though we lacked the words to say it, we both realised this very well. And I... Found myself happier for it, despite my embarrassment. Shame and happiness melded together into a new, powerful emotion. I cannot explain what it was that Skip had said which made everything click together in my mind, but his confession forced me to confront my own feelings for him, as well. All of his bad jokes, all of his embarrassing come-ons, all of the inane things he had said to me... I had grown so used to seeing them as the unserious joshing of a prat that I had never realised the genuine, strong emotions behind them. For the longest time, Skip had confessed his feelings but hid behind the excuse of “only kidding.” For the longest time, I was hiding my own emotions behind an exterior of irritated resentment when, internally, I found comfort in this one constant in my life. We lived together, fought together, we shared our lives and our dreams... And like a childish fool, I never realised how much I cared for Skip, my sweet, lovable oaf. Heh...

I blame myself for this... Miscommunication. I was simply unprepared for the... Implications of romantic feelings, to say nothing of physical attraction. When I first copied Lin’s body, I did it because I admired her spirit and her physical aesthetics, but at the same time, I never actually saw myself as the woman I had shaped myself to be. Instead, I saw myself as a “thing,” a mechanical device possessed of sentience. When others commented on my... Curves, I took it as superficial attraction and objectification, nothing more. But Skip cared for me. He did not want just a pretty body or just a caring person or even just a competent protector. He wanted ME – mind, body and everything else included. Until that day, I had always felt foreign in my shell, as though wearing a suit I could swap out at a moment’s notice. Which, in practical terms, was very much true. On that day, I finally felt at home in my own body... At home in my own mind. On that day, I became a real person.

Sappy? Probably. Embarrassing? Definitely. Yet it is nevertheless entirely true. The real magic of it all is that I am no longer afraid of my emotions... No longer afraid of my heart, so to speak. When I make statements like “what fun is life without a little danger,” I realise that what I am saying carries foolish, self-destructive implications. Rationally speaking, accepting this notion is a mistake. But this is the catch about being a real person, is it not? Not everything we feel is rational. Not everything we want can be justified to exacting evidence. Not everything we are can be explained, or indeed should be explained. We pursue our hearts, our dreams, our many aspirations even when doing so seems silly, hopeless and a terrible waste of time. We do it because, ultimately, it is exactly this... Heart which makes us alive. Admittedly, I do not have a physical heart as such, simply because my mechanical body had no need for one. But this is largely beside the point, so to speak, as it is the metaphysical, emotional heart which makes us alive, whether we have one or two or none real ones.

But I feel I am starting to ramble of philosophies and metaphysical nonsense. The strength of the emotions I have had to retell makes my mind... Unfocused, so I feel it is best if I break the story here. There is still more to tell, however, and Skip does play a part in it, but this is best left as a whole other story for a whole other time, no?

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No. Do tell.

Oh good god... OK, I just spent the last three hours going through Chapter 5 and repairing a lot of very ugly problems. I caught a few technical errors, some suspect grammar and just plain bad word choices, but what I was most horrified about was the part I always knew I had dropped a bomb on - the emotional content at the end. Let me say this upfront - I suck at writing love scenes just because it's so hard to get the "mood" right. Moreover, I was burning out by that chapter's end, so a lot of what I wrote was just literal rambling devoid of feeling. A LOT of this had to be fixed up.

Admittedly, the chapter is a bit more... Pretentious now, but I feel it comes off as at least a tad more genuine, as opposed to the soulless recanting of supposedly emotional events. I ended up adding about three quarters of a Word page's worth in extra words and extra sentences and I pretty much gutted the last couple of pages and redrafted much of what's actually in them. This will probably necessitate another proof-read... For another time, but if you notice anything specifically wrong, let me know.

And I am now left quite exhausted, so I'm not sure if I'll get the chapter I was planning to write to day out so soon, because if I do, I won't be playing any City of Heroes as a result... Ah, the hobbies we choose for ourselves.

Also, I'm glad to see that I have a fanbase of at least one so far. That's encouraging

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Fanbase = Fanbase + 1

Chapter 6

I must confess... I have spent so, so long putting together a good way to explain my feelings, awkward though they may be, but everything I come up with leaves me... Wanting. I have thrown away more pretty, poetic ideas than I care to mention... Musings on love, responsibility, fear and oh so much more, but none of it seems to... Fit. I cannot even explain this irresistible urge to share thoughts so private, so... Dear to me. The memories of my... Moment with Skip flooded my mind with such emotions that I fear my judgement may be impaired. If it is, then so be it. Call it a jaded fool’s longing for a more... Genuine time, call it what you will, but this, really is the only explanation I can give, for what that is worth. The more eloquent I try to be, the more my mind wanders. To thoughts of how things were, to desires I would be too... Embarrassed to retell, to all the abstract asides that just serve to sap the life out of what I had always intended to be an exciting, thrilling story. For lack of a better recourse, I suppose the simplest solution would be to just drop all pretence and retell events as they happened, point for point... And hope for the best.

Despite the... Intensity of our exchange that night, nothing physical transpired between Skip and me. Desire overcame me several time, I will admit, but I was simply too... Uncertain to act on it. Instead, we simply talked. Truth be told, we did not say anything terribly important. No grandstanding declarations of poetic love, nothing of that sort. Heh... Skip was so nervous he tripped over his own words and my mind was so awash in the moment of it all it kept drawing a blank whenever I attempted speak. Embarrassingly, we just... Chatted, and about nothing much in particular. Hours went by as we reminisced of old times, traded horrible jokes and just enjoyed each other’s company. But this felt different, it felt better, more... Personal. With our confessions removing all pretence, the simple, aimless banter we engaged in still remains one of the fondest, dear memories I have of Skip. It was so pleasant, so liberating, so... Unashamed. We had both grown up both as people and as friends. It was high time, we finally realised, to let our relationship develop in turn.

With our shame and embarrassment wiped away, everything changed. Our relationship became so much easier, so much simpler. As a point of fact, a few aspects of it became perhaps a tad too simple, when they should probably have remained somewhat more complicated. You see, this was not some kind of ideological, purely psychological romance we shared, not like you might read in books of the pretentious sort. We may have been emotionally immature, granted, but we were still adults, and we understood our... Desires. Despite no longer playing up that aspect of his persona to a self-parodying degree, Skip was still the lecherous old fool I had grown so irrationally attached to – that was simply who he was – and seeing me respond... Goodness help me... Positively to his advances gave the man renewed resolve to persist. I should have slapped him upside the head for it, but I did not. Embarrassingly, I... Enjoyed the prospect of it. My imagination ran away from me, showing me shameful images I could not get out of my mind. This made rebuffing Skip’s advances very... Difficult for me. His mannerisms were just as awkward and irritating as always, of course, but I had developed a soft spot for the silly fool and, difficult as it may be to admit, I... Also shared his physical desires. I did wish he would find a less grating manner of expressing those, but... Well, Skip is as Skip does, I suppose.

Now, you may have deduced that we faced certain... Compatibility issues, shall we say. My body was a machine primarily designed to house a vast database of knowledge and thus lacked the... Hardware necessary to, um... Interface with a biological life form. Goodness this is difficult to explain... Regardless, while this was very much a problem, it was not at all a problem without solutions. Where there is a will, there is a way, and will there was plenty of on both sides of the equation, so to speak. You see, though I may act embarrassed about this now, I was not quite the same person during those... Eventful years that I am today. Admitting my feelings freed me from my reservations and allowed me to essentially begin my life anew. This was the life I had always dreamed of, but at the same time always knew better than to try to lead. I was irresponsible, I was stupid... Oh, so gloriously stupid... I was ambitious in the extreme, always looking for a fresh new experience, the more unusual the better. Skip and I got involved in some of the most insanely dangerous missions we had ever attempted back then. Of course we did, why would we settle for anything less? Consider, then, that compared to all of this, getting, um... “Physical” with a Praxian seemed nowhere near the most absurd thing I attempted, and I had a considerably stronger reason to go through with it.

To be quite honest, I miss those old times, thinking back on them now. The freedom, the irresponsibility, the sheer, unrepentant fun we had... But if my infinite lifespan has taught me one thing, it is that the good times never last forever. Wild and memorable as my affair with Skip was for a long time, it eventually settled down. Like any Praxian, he grew wiser as he grew older, so when his body started giving up on him, Skip retired from the action... Somewhat. Though I tackled my contracts by myself once more, I was never truly alone. Skip’s voice was always in my ear, guiding me, reassuring me... Making me laugh uproariously, usually at the most inappropriate times. That man... When he could no longer hold a weapon, Skip instead busied himself with intelligence and surveillance, serving as my mission control. He had grown so much without me realising it. No longer the gormless, helpless child I had picked up on Neen, he was now a dependable, intelligent man, one I would trust my life to without hesitation. It seemed as if the more old age sapped his strength, the more determined Skip became to defy it, devising ever newer ways to help me however he could. I worried for the poor old dear, but I must admit that it was so sweet of him keep trying. A charmer until the bitter end. Heh...

I should explain, however, that throughout all of our adventures, neither I nor skip had a specific goal in our lives. Well, aside from enjoying ourselves, I suppose, but that hardly counts. This may seem like a terrible waste of time and... In a way it was. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, I would not change a moment of it. Life, I have come to realise, does not need to have a specific purpose. That, really, is the most wonderful thing about it. Machines are built to accomplish a specific task, never expected to aspire to anything beyond this. Living creatures, by contrast, are tossed into their respective worlds with nary an instruction, then left to find a purpose of their own design. Or not find one, as the case may be. We rejected our reality, Skip and I, we threw away convention, scoffed at common sense and defied physical limitations. We dared to dream... Dared to be stupid, as he would so charmingly put it. There were difficulties, of course. There was much pain and much hardship, but nothing worth having ever comes for free. We stumbled and we fell, but through it all, we lived life our way. Try as I might, I cannot think of anything I would have wanted more, or anything I would have done differently. This was our life together, and we lived the hell out of it, if you will pardon my expression.

Sadly, unlike Lin, Skip did not pass away in his sleep within the comfort of our home. Then again, knowing him, this is probably for the best, as I am fairly certain he would not have wanted that. Skip always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and... I suppose he did. Poor, noble fool... But to tell you this story, I need to back up somewhat, as it were. When last I spoke about the Praxian Council conspiracy, I mentioned that I have forgotten most of the finer details. Well, one important detail I did forget... And how I managed to do this, I cannot say, but one detail I forgot was the existence of a copy cat of said conspiracy. Where the original conspirators aspired to resurrect the old Praxian Dynasty as a political and ideological body, these new fanatics aimed much higher. Following in their predecessors’ footsteps, they endeavoured to bring back something else altogether, something rather much more ancient and a much more alarming – the original deity that the Praxians had once worshipped. Why I forgot about them is both because I learned of their existence far too late and because their aims made far too little sense. As a means of explaining what I am about to tell you, they really offer very little in terms of context or reason.

The first time we learned of these zealots was when they staged a brazen attacked on our headquarters vessel. Unlike the old conspiracy, these fanatics were not affiliated with the Council at all, but were instead primarily made up of Praxian mercenaries. Nevertheless, their gear was still so advanced that neither our interior defences, nor indeed my own skills and weapons slowed down their infiltration much. With resistance proving a bad choice, I instead rushed to Skip’s side, hoping to enact an evacuation. He had been terribly ill for some time, weakened as he was in his old age, and I meant to assist him into an escape shuttle. I... Failed in doing so, and I failed miserably. I was so consumed with worry over Skip’s condition that I failed to notice a mercenary sneak up on me. A single shot incapacitated my shell, leaving me in a heap on the floor, unable to assist, but still fully aware of the horror that now unfolded before me. I... Wish I could unsee what I saw that day.

Those fanatics did not just mean to kill us both, oh no. This was not enough for their “goddess.” Instead, they toyed with us. They posed me so I could watch them hurt Skip. They beat him so bad, but he never screamed. That old fool was too proud for it. It scared me out of my mind to watch those monsters cackle at his pain, but I had no control over my body whatsoever. I wanted to scream, I wanted to fight back, but it was simply physically impossible. When they realised they would get no response from Skip, they turned to me. Clearly they were aware of our... Relationship, and they meant to... It makes me so mad to remember the disgusting things these people said they would do to my body. But it was not myself I was worried about. Far from it, in fact. What terrified me was that they meant to make Skip watch as they did this, and this is a thought that hurts my heart even so many years later.

I was certain this would be the end of us both and... The last thing I had said to skip before was some form of irritated remark in response to one his horrible jokes. I wanted to say so much more, to tell him I loved him, to say goodbye, to... I apologise. These memories are... Difficult for me. The unthinkable was happening, and all I could do was let it. Only... This is not entirely how events transpired. You see, when they turned their threats to me, Skip simply snapped. To this day I do not know where he found the strength, sick as he was, but he rose up with amazing speed and tossed the three mercenaries holding him down like ragdolls. Before even I could comprehend what had transpired, Skip seized his captors’ own weapons and proceeded to shoot every one of those b... Praxians dead in a firefight more amazing and glorious than I had ever seen before, and indeed than I have seen since. He killed three full platoons of hardened soldiers by himself, shrugging off their rounds as if he did not even feel them. Even at his peak, Skip could never hope to be this amazing, but in that one defining moment, he stepped up in a way that gives me cold chills even now. The explanation he gave me once he had rebooted my shell was that he... Had simply had no choice.

Skip did the impossible to save me, and for that he paid the ultimate price. The injuries he sustained were fatal well beyond my ability to treat. The man was dying, but he clung on to life for a precious few last moments, just enough to say a few final words. Saying Goodbye to skip is... One of the most difficult things I have ever had to do, but for him? He took it on the chin, the goofball. His last words were, in fact, a boast about how those commandos should be really ashamed of themselves if a decrepit old man, sick, wounded and unarmed besides, managed to beat them at their own game. Heh... Skip died as Skip lived – a ******** to the bitter end, diving headfirst into hopeless situations and turning them around to give us a chance to survive. That man simply refused to give up. Even on his deathbed, Skip still had enough fire left in him to do what I still firmly believe should have been functionally impossible. Skip went out in a blaze of glory, he went out saving my life and, more than anything else, he went out pulling off the most amazingly ridiculous stunt I have ever seen in my life. Skip met his end exactly as he would have wanted to... He would not have had it any other way. Rest in peace, old friend. You earned it.

The vessel was once again secure, and in the silence of the aftermath, I was left... Empty. I felt the urge to break down and surrender to my sorrow, to... Cry, physically impossible though it may be for me. But I did not. Frankly, I wanted to, I even tried, but something ate at me, a very different emotion. I was angry, no, furious! Is this what we had been reduced to? Begging for mercy? No! Skip sacrificed his life to save mine, he defied his very mortality to give me this one chance to live, and I would not waste it by breaking down like a damsel in distress. I was better than this. Skip deserved better than this. He deserved justice. Someone had sent these mercenaries after us. Someone commanded them. The knuckle-dragging fools were too stupid to have come by this kind of technology on their own. Whoever was responsible for Skip’s death still lived, and resolve to... Correct this in the most painful, violent manner I could imagine. And believe me when I say that I have a very wild imagination. It is true that revenge is the most worthless of causes, and I would normally never bother my head with such matters of the past, but in this case, I was willing to make an exception. What use are rules if you do not occasionally break them?

I cannot say if what followed almost immediately thereafter was lucky or unfortunate, but I discovered who that “someone” was almost the instant I resolved to find out. And who that was turned out to be... Unexpected. A bright yellow light that looked like nothing I had ever seen before seemingly flashed into existence next to me. It circled around, then... Spoke, and not with a voice, but directly into my mind. It... She identified herself as as Tirin Praxis, a name which made no sense from a rational standpoint. Tirin I knew to be the goddess of war of the old Praxian Dynasty, while Praxis was said to be their god of creation who made all things. However, both of these names I had learned from ancient writings thousands of years old, and neither was still being worshipped as far as I was aware. They should have been nothing more than myth, and yet this... Ball of light now claimed to be both at the same time? Or was she implying that the two different entities recorded in Praxian Dynasty scripture were in truth just one “goddess” all along? The benefit of a mind comprised of the sum total of Tererian knowledge allowed me to consider all these possibilities within the split second before choosing to respond, not that the conclusions I drew aided me in any way.

Tirin Praxis wished to converse, it transpired, and she spun for me a long and intricate tale that I may have been somewhat more inclined to remember in greater detail, had it not infuriated me to my very core. But... One subject at a time. She explained how the old Council conspirators had, in their blind faith for royal tradition, enacted a ritual of some form, such that had granted her limited access to our... Reality? A ritual as she described, I did remember breaking up, though whether the conspirators then knew what it entailed is anyone’s guess. Mine, in particular, is that the fools had no idea what it was they were invoking, or they would never have gone through with it. Regardless, with this limited access, Praxis had been able to “condition,” as she put it, certain more devout Praxian loyalists into founding a fairly insane cult. They were to make preparations for a much grander ritual, the specifics of which are unclear to me, but which would ensure her full manifestation. I apologise if my recollection is somewhat vague, but not only was I distracted by devastating personal tragedy, but this was also my first encounter with... Well, magic, therefore much of what was said sailed right over my head, in a manner of speaking. Prior to this... Encounter, I did not even believe in the existence of the mystical or divine, but I would soon be forced to learn on my feet.

Why Praxis explained these things to me, I cannot say, especially in light of what she offered next. Eternal peace, she called it – a world where dreams come true. It transpires that both Skip and I had somehow become the keys to her prison, very likely as a result of our interference with the ritual that had first set her free. To complete her return, therefore, Praxis needed to remove us by any means necessary. Skip was... “Inconsequential,” she said bluntly to my face, the b... Horrible person, but I needed not die as he had. Instead, she offered what she described as a literal paradise, but what I instantly recognised as a world of illusions. There, I would never feel pain, never feel loss and all of my friends would live on forever, just as they had been in my memories. It was to be the perfect utopia, where I could even have Skip back, exactly as I had always wanted him to be. Um...

No! Are you serious with this offer? No, of course I refuse to live in a world that is a lie! What reason would I ever have to agree? My entire life I have been fighting for self-determination, for a way to interact with the world and universe around me in a manner that is uniquely my own, for a personality that expressed who I was and what I believed in. To lock my mind inside an endless illusion is exactly the opposite of all of these things, and insulting besides. A life lived in comfort and certainty, a life devoid of mystery and danger... This is a life not worth living. Not to me. No, to me, this is torture, madness, a prison for my mind. Which, upon not at all deep reflection, is precisely what Praxis was offering to me, just in more... Diplomatic words. This creature was sinister and devious, that much was obvious. She would enact her final return, and she was willing to steal minds and murder people to do it. Like hell would I ever stand for that, if you will pardon my word choice.

But, really, all of this contemplation is secondary to one very simple problem I had right at that moment: This creature murdered Skip. I cared for him more than I can ever express, I would have walked through fire for him, and this... Thing murdered him in cold blood for her own ends. Not even just murdered, but tortured as well. And after all that... After all that, this “goddess” had the unrepentant gall to stand before me and make offers? On this note... I lost my mind. Completely. It is... Difficult to recall events past that point. The one constant I do remember is anger. Sheer, uncontrolled anger so strong that it both frightens and exhilarates me to think about it. I wanted to hurt this creature. Hurt it like it hurt me... No, worse. Oh, so much worse! I wanted to hurt it, and I would sacrifice anything – my body, my mind, anything at all – to do it. At that moment, I devoted my entire consciousness to trawling through the infinite expanse of Tererian knowledge locked within my mind. Such was the intensity of the search that it threatened to unravel my consciousness in the process, and such that I retained no memory of what I discovered. Perhaps my predecessors truly did know how to kill a god? I honestly cannot say.

With my mind nearly shutting down, I screamed... Something at Praxis. Something insulting and aggressive, though I cannot remember what, precisely. I lunged at the ball of light and plunged both blades into it with such ferocity that I feared they would rip a hole through the other side of my own vessel. Then... There was nothing. Literally nothing. From that moment to when I next registered sentient thoughts, I have thousands of years’ worth of corrupted memory data that I can never recover. I do not believe I will ever know what transpired between those two points in time. Crucially, I had no idea what had become of Tirin Praxis, nor any idea where I was when my senses finally returned to me. I did eventually work out – and I mention this here only because it gave me serious reason to pause at the time – that during those thousands of missing years, my body was entirely incapable of motion, joints hard-locked as a bizarre security feature I had not been aware of. Whatever happened to me, my shell had remained inert the entire time.

When I came to after, um... Stabbing a god? Goodness this sounds silly when I say it out loud... When I came to, I found myself on the surface of an airless, barren moon in a galaxy that I was not at all familiar with. The black sky I observed from the ground matched none of my star maps, which was... Confusing. Whether space had simply changed its grand structure while I was unconscious for so many aeons or whether I had drifted so very far as to be in an unrecognisable region... Or whether Tirin Praxis had transported me via some form of magic, we cannot discount the possibility... I simply lost. I did not even have a way of determining how long I had been inert. I knew it was a long time, but exactly how long was... Difficult to tell. I briefly considered that I may have actually become trapped in the world of illusion Praxis had offered to me, that she had somehow forced me into it. It would explain the staggeringly alien environment. This was easy to discount, however, as I had recordings the illusions that the so-called goddess had shown me, and what I was looking at was provably different, and indeed provably real.

I never did learn what had become of Praxis herself, however, and the question haunts me even now. I never died, therefore she is unlikely to have escaped her prison, but did I... Kill her? That would be a positive action, to be sure, but I cannot say. What I do know for a fact is that ever since the event transpired, I have not run into this abominable creature, and one would assume she would be looking for me... Unless Praxis found another way to free herself? Concerning... Still, I have gone to great lengths to study the many sciences behind magic and the divine since our last encounter. Gods, from what I understand, are patient, and I have an eternity to wait and prepare. Another confrontation seems almost inevitable. Confidentially, I do so hope that Tirin Praxis still exists, so that I can personally repay her for Skip’s death, with interest.

Skip... I miss you so much. My life was never the same after I met you, and it will never be the same without you. There was so much I wanted to tell you that I did not get the chance to say, so much... I should have taken the time, I should have said my farewell, I should have made our last days together special. We both knew... We knew our time was running out, but I how could I bring myself to remind you, to take aware that annoying cheeky smile of yours? I am so sorry for all the times I yelled at you. What I would not give to have those times back now... I thought I was ready for it, I... I really thought I was, but I was not. How could I be? How could I ever simply give up on you, how could I throw away what little time we had left by accepting the inevitable? How could I admit to myself that I would be alone once again? I could never forget you, Skip. Not as long as I live. You gave me my life... You were my life.

I... Apologise. It is easy to get wrapped up in anger and revenge, and in so doing forget the pain of such a loss, but it never really goes away. I will carry it with me for as long as I live, for this pain is all I have left. But at the same time, I realise that I should not dwell on the past. It is a fact of my infinite lifespan that all those I love will grow old and die while I live on until the end of time. Both Skip and I knew that this day would come. In accepting his fate, he asked me to make a simple promise: That I would live on without him. Live on and find new happiness in the embrace of another, whomever and whatever that other may be. It makes no sense, he would argue, for me to shut away my heart when I had so much time left. It hurt his pride to think that he would be the anchor to weigh me down forevermore. He was such a kind, gentle fool... As much as it pains to admit this... I will do as I promised. I will honour Skip’s memory. He gave his life to preserve mine, and this is a sacrifice I refuse to waste. Skip’s loss is a wound which will never heal, but perhaps... I could at least learn to live with the pain. Perhaps someday I will indeed find someone else, someone I could... Be close to again. I hope, but... This has not happened yet. It still hurts too much. So very much...

I seem to have gotten somewhat... Sidetracked, as I realise that expanding on that previous thought requires a touch more context. To meet other people, one must first find other people, and on the barren, airless moon I ended up on, there were none to be found. For lack of off-world transportation, which my shell alone could not accommodate, I was essentially marooned, with nothing to amuse myself with aside from staring at the planet that this moon belonged to, looming large amid the black sky above. It was, much to my surprise, precisely this planet which would provide the solution to my problem, and in a very... Unexpected way. From what I could determine of its surface remotely, said planet appeared teeming with life, though all of it far too primitive to be of any use in providing even rudimentary interplanetary travel. This all changed when one particular species developed the technology to overcome its planet’s gravity well and, in so doing, launch objects into space. Though their space machines were so rudimentary as to be... Quaint, they nevertheless at least worked. From that point on, the writing, as they say, was on the wall.

Now... If you can already surmise where I might be go from here, considering who I expect the audience for my story to be, then you are probably entirely correct, and not without reason However, to get into the events and specifics of my “first contact” would be... Complicated, and I have already said a tad too much all at once. There is, perhaps, just enough left to say for one final push at closure, one final story that should bring us up to the here and now. The general path of events may not surprise you... In fact, I rather doubt it will, but there is more to a story than just the chapter names, so to speak. If you wish to know the conclusion, then join me for one final story, before the end.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

OK, I want to give you a bit of a statistic, just because my head will explode if I don't share it, plus it might allow me to share some perspective on why these are taking so long to produce.

I came back from work at around 3 PM and started working on this story almost immediately. It's ten past midnight on the same day right now, and I'm just now finishing my work on the story... And all I did was fix my horrible writing from Chapter 6. That's it. I wanted to add a new chapter... It should be a lot easier to write, but no... I had to salvage through my horrible, terrible word choice and rushed sentence structure in Chapter 6, and this taught me a valuable lesson - trying to proof-read and repair ready-made text is ten times as difficult and ten times as time consuming as just rewriting it from scratch.

Anyway, I added nothing new per se, but I scrapped and rewrote possible a good half of Chapter 6, so that ought to count for something. And GOOD GOD was that a mess. This is one of the reasons I kind of beg for feedback on my hands and knees, because an objective audience would see this and bring my attention to it, but because I wrote it, I can't see its flaws. And once I became aware of them, it horrified me how lifeless and flat the whole chapter was. I can't say if it's that much better now, but at least the language is less boring and I cleared up a few accidental contractions. Plus, it should be less rife with errors.

Next time, no more empty updates. I have one more chapter to go, and I'm going to write it even if it kills me. Which at this rate it just might...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Chapter 7

I meant to speak some more of how Skip’s death affected me, for I spent hundreds of years on that barren moon, cold and alone, with nothing to occupy my mind but thoughts of the past and all that I have lost. Yet regardless of the words I chose to express this, it seemed as though I was simply repeating myself. And I was. It occurs to me that I have obsessed over Skip long enough. I realise now exactly what it was that I promised him, and I realise this with some degree of embarrassment that it took me so long to “get it,” as it were. Yes, Skip was my life, because that is the life I chose. But his death need not be my own, and it feels like I am finally ready to make this choice, as well. I will never forget Skip, nor my feelings for him, nor indeed all of the wild and wonderful adventures we had together. Neither, for that matter, will I ever forget Lin or our friendship, nor all of the ways in which she helped me grow as a person. I will not forget my old friends – the memory of our time together is part of what makes me who I am – but I believe I am ready let them go and move on with my life. Goodbye, Lin. Goodbye, Skip. Rest in peace, my friends. You will be missed.

I apologise. This is simply something I needed to say... Needed to do. But, of course, I still have a story to finish, and it continues with me marooned on a barren, airless moon with no means of extraction but for a budding space-faring species evolving actually quite rapidly on the planet below. In a mere few hundred years, their population exploded, their science advanced and they began launching machines, and eventually even people, into space. The prospect of this was exciting to me, as not only was this species intriguing in the extreme, but it could also potentially provide a means of escape from the accursed, barren rock that had become my prison. Mere decades after discovering space flight, these creatures did indeed land a small capsule on my moon. Their space pioneers were so adorable, frolicking around like children in the low gravity, just enjoying the experience. It reminded me of my early days, to be honest, when every new sensation shocked my system and excited me greatly. Fortunately, these astronauts were so preoccupied with hopping around that I was able to... Procure passage on their vessel as for its return trip. I meant to ask them for permission, honestly I did, but... Well, so long as I have access to thermoptic camouflage, why not use it? It makes most things so much simpler.

Making planetfall was... An experience. It transpired that although these people had developed propulsion systems sufficient to launch vessels into space, such simply did not exist to bring said vessels back down to the surface. Instead, their means of return was rather more basic – freefall. It does make sense to employ the force of gravitational pull, granted, but it makes the landings... Rough. Upon reflection, this technological oddity should have been obvious to me from the craft’s basic design, but I chalk up this surprise to my lack of familiarity with their crude technology. Fortunately, I was able to evacuate the crash site, facing another shock to my system – traversing great masses of liquid water. Throughout all of the worlds I had visited, such planetary features had been exceedingly rare, and on the very few occasions that I had seen such “oceans,” I had never had the impulse to... Swim in them. Ah, but it is the novelty of these experiences that makes life so exciting, is it not? My hard shell coped with the water surprisingly well, though my manual propulsion technique was... Suspect at best. My fabric ornaments, on the other hand, fared... Less impressively. I do sometimes wonder why I even keep those, but they look pretty, and a little needless flair makes life more exciting.

I should probably have made contact with the people of this world I landed on, I admit. Explained the nature of my... Plight, perhaps. However, not only did I not yet speak their language, but I did not wish to test their tolerance for alien interlopers, either. I had had... Unpleasant experiences with xenophobic races in the past – murder, torture, cannibalism, all sorts of charming culture quirks – which made me somewhat unwilling to test my hosts’ good graces. Still, learning the language seemed a good first step, and a surprisingly simple one, as I discovered. The benefits of possessing the infinite pool of knowledge of my Tererian predecessors are many and varied, and deciphering an unknown alien language is one such. With enough exposure to local speech – covertly, of course – I was able to glean the logic behind most of the surprisingly numerous local dialects. Never before have I run into a sentient species with as low a population as this one, which nevertheless speaks in so many different, mutually-exclusive ways. Perhaps their short history has prevented them from developing a practical, species-wide language? Or perhaps they are simply too stubborn and wilful. I could only guess.

By now, I have delayed this revelation long enough, for whatever suspense this has bought me. As I begin to talk of the history and people of this planet I found myself on, it becomes necessary for me to name them. And as I discovered from my surveillance, this planet was called “Earth,” and these people – “human.” Surprised? I should hope not. I mention this because I want to bring up... I want to say an “embarrassing” fact, but by this point I no longer felt embarrassed about it. As I mentioned quite a while ago, I my body is designed in the image of Lin Lian, and Lirian physique is very close to that of humans. As Lin was a very beautiful woman, my body ended up being quite... Attractive to the locals, just as it had been to so many Lirians and Praxians before. Goodness me... Considering I picked this shape largely because I... Liked it myself, other people’s... Reactions to it should have come as little surprise. We live and we learn, I suppose. While I found this infatuation flattering at first, the amount of... Attention my body receives here on Earth is starting to grate on me. It is no longer so much embarrassing, as just... Trite, I suppose.

I implied this, but let me say it outright – I did not hide from the humans for very long. Before I was aware of their culture and their tolerances, discretion seemed a prudent precaution to take. However, I soon realised that my hosts were more... Open to alien visitors than one might assume. Perhaps a bit too open. Or should I say, they were perhaps a bit too friendly in... Objectionable ways, though that may be a matter of perspective. Theirs, it transpires, is a world on a crossroad between... Many things. It is difficult to explain and boring besides, but suffice it to say that the Earth I arrived on soon became rife with creatures from across time and space, from alternate planes of reality, alternate dimensions and even some whose existence defies rational explanations. I had considered my situation unique, but in truth, I was merely one of many aliens to call Earth home. Eventually, the humans grew so tolerant of those... Different than themselves, going so far as to integrate us into their own society.

This genuinely surprised me. Of the races I have run across in my life, all but humans have been, to one degree or another, xenophobic. Not violently so, not always, but Lirians, Tyrians, Praxians and the rest all lived on their own separate planets, or at the very least within their own separate communities when they were forced to share a world. On Earth, however, not only did humans, demons, robots and... Oh so much more... Not only did all of those and then some live together within the same community, but I saw many actual families where emotional bonds crossed the bounds of species, biology and even physics. I still remember the charming love story of a sentient plant creature and an elemental spirit, but let us not get sidetracked. All of this did much to put my mind at ease. Though I have never regretted my affairs, not for a moment, I had always seen myself as somehow aberrant, contemptible even, to believe that a machine could ever be in love with an organic. Yet seeing the happiness these families shared simply told me that I was right all along. Earth culture removed the last of my shame, and I am much happier for it.

Still, I never really wanted to call Earth home, for the simple fact that I do not wish to be tied down to any one location or any one cause. It just makes life too stale, too... Convenient. And yet, because of its diversity and acceptance, Earth has become as close to a home as I have ever had. They say home is where the heart is, and no other world has captured my heart as this curious blue planet did. I suppose that, in some way, it simply resonates with a core aspect of who I am. Earth is a place of mystery, a place of unique, novel experiences, a place of... Discovery. The old galaxy I left behind had its charms, but it was static, explored, set in its ways. This planet... It is different, a cauldron of cultures, a storm of ideas and a land of opportunities. At times, Earth seems like a summary of everything I ever wanted, all wrapped up within one small ball of rock, almost asking me to plant down my flag and stake a claim, so to speak. For a wandering mind like my own, this is unlikely, though I would be lying if I said it was not... Tempting.

Ah, but look at me wax philosophical again. Was this not meant to be an exciting story of adventure? And speaking of excitement, Earth has managed to supply me with more thrills and close calls in the fifty or sixty years that I have been here than the whole rest of my life combined. After my... Disagreement with a literal goddess, I took up the... Hobby, shall we say, of researching magic and upgrading my own shell. This was done both as a general precaution and as preparation for the... Reunion I hope to have with Tirin Praxis some day. As this put me in the position of requiring both resources and additional research data, it also caused me to slide back into what may well be my one true calling – the work of a mercenary. Earth’s many factions and species are always in conflict over one thing or another – this is just their way, it seems – and it is those conflicts that an enterprising individual can benefit from. I realise that this may sound somewhat callous, but on Earth as before, I maintained my... Code of honour? Heh... I admit, even today, I am still partial to Lin’s old rhetoric.

What I mean to say is that while I will endeavour to profit off of my work... And why would I not? If I am good at it, what sense does it make for me to work for free? But while I will always strive for profit, I will never resort to hurting people for my own ends. Well, within reason, of course. This is mercenary work, after all, but everyone I have hurt has deserved it. Earth seems to have an abundance of very, very bad people. Bad for the locals, I suppose, but the bounties are good. I have also taken to more... Freelance work, as well. Inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit so prevalent in my surrogate home, I have seen the benefit of creating my own opportunities directly. Fortune helps those who help themselves, I hear. Infuriatingly, it is usually these... Self-motivated endeavours which most often leave me walking away empty-handed. It is as if events intentionally conspire to place innocents in harm’s way, thus forcing me to abandon my objective and enact a troublesome rescue. You would not believe the amount of valuable technology which has slipped through my fingers while I was distracted saving the lives of the simple, uninvolved folk who keep getting caught up in my affairs. Some days, having a conscience is just bad for business...

Still, to every cloud, there is a silver lining... Or so they say. I am referring to one particular endeavour of mine which... Strayed from its planned course somewhat, placing a contact of mine within the... Delicate care of some very bad people. Her name was Jennifer Haley, and she was employed by what has to be the world’s most boring profession. She was a keeper of accounting records who had noticed her employers transferring suspiciously large sums of money. The specifics around this are... Technical and uninteresting, but to cut to the chase, Jenny’s company turned out to be nothing more than a front for a much larger illegal weapons research organisation. Lacking evidence of any sort, authorities ignored her warnings, which is where I stepped in. I offered to help expose her superiors... “For great justice” or some such, I forget my exact spin. Mostly, I intended to procure copies of said illegal technology for use in my own research, though Jenny, though I did not exactly explain this to jenny. I would not abuse the technology, and the whole situation would have just made her worry unnecessarily.

Troublesomely, events did not develop as they should have. To make a long story short... Well, shorter, at any rate, let me condense events down to the following: Jenny exposed herself despite my advice and was captured by her employers’ agents. This forced me to abandon my data extraction efforts half-way complete, allowing a hidden security feature to erase everything. All of that data – and there was so much of it that I wanted – all of my profits, everything, just... Gone. Ugh! They say no good deed goes unpunished, and I believe it, because that loss still stings even today. I did manage to save Jenny’s life, of course, that was not even all that problematic. Her captors lacked the tools to detect even my most rudimentary means of concealment, to say nothing of any experience in unconventional combat, which allowed me to pick them off one by one. As one might expect, Jenny was infinitely grateful to be alive. I accepted her thanks and... I should probably have left it at that.

You see, mercenary work on Earth is not terribly different from mercenary work anywhere else, in that you simply cannot trust the people you work with. At worse, this will make you hesitate when they turn against you – and they always do – and at worst it will impair your judgement when their lives are inevitably threatened. Becoming emotionally attached to others is a liability, and deducing this logically is not complicated. And yet... After having spent fifty-some years on Earth and goodness knows how many on that barren moon so utterly alone, I simply could not resist the temptation. Of all the people I had met on Earth, Jenny was probably the most... “Ordinary.” She did not have super-human abilities or a dark and troubled past or an eldritch god after her blood or anything of the sort. No, Jenny was a simple, ordinary, genuine girl who just wanted to repay me for saving her life... Twice, now that I remember it, but why keep score?

Against my better judgement, I took Jenny up on her offer of “anything, anything at all,” and asked for a day together. If it seems surprising that I should say this, it was surprising to me, as well, and it confounded the poor girl. However, what I was really asking for was nothing more complicated than simple human company. I was growing weary of retiring to my sanctuary alone with nothing but my own thoughts and the echoes of happier times. Though my life of adventure on Earth was and is exciting, this kind of loneliness is... Difficult to ignore for long. Not impossible, mind, but it does make the experience considerably less pleasant than it could be. I had nothing real planned for my “day” with Jenny and, truth be told, we did nothing too major. We saw a terrible movie, we sat at a cafe and finally we watched TV late into the night. Heh, I still remember Jenny falling asleep leaning against my shoulder... Reality television is not very compelling, it seems. I recall being startled when I realised this. Here was this girl who had seen just how dangerous my shell can be, but instead of being frightened or even suspicious, she trusted me completely. She truste not just that I would not choose to harm her – of course I would not – but she also trusted me to be gentle with her body, even though my shell was not designed to be... Soft.

Jenny and I have been friends for several years now, but our relationship has never evolved much at all. For far too long, I mourned Skip and shut off my heart, fearful of experiencing the same kind of pain yet again. However, I realise now that I have to let that old wound heal and live my life again, not just physically, but emotionally, as well. In Jenny, I see a kind friend who trusts me and, more than that, a kind friend who likes me. Though she has done little to assist me with practical matters in my mercenary work, she has provided me with the kind of moral and emotional support that is simply invaluable. There was a time I practically lived at Jenny’s house. Painful loneliness drove me to seek out her company. Heh... I still remember how her face would light up every time I came to visit... Invariably in the middle of the night, sneaking in through an unlocked window... I could not afford to be seen interacting with her too much, after all, but she was understanding about it.

I... Goodness this is such a bad idea, but I want our relationship to be something... More. I have thought about it, this is not something rash or sudden. The problems here are many and varied, if for no reason other than humans have the most... Rigid views on the subject of gender parity. Still, I... Have to admit that I like Jenny. She is pretty, she is smart, she is kind, her hair is so soft... No, focus! Simply put, I like her and, from the way she acts, I highly suspect that she likes me, as well... Though I cannot be certain if this is less of a conclusion and more wishful thinking. Truth be told, I highly suspect that Jenny will refuse my advance but... Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, correct? I know this should scare me out of my wits, and it does somewhat. However, I have danced this dance before, as it were, and it only gets easier the more I do it. I simply have to try it. If she refuses, I have failed, and I will struggle to salvage our relationship. If she agrees then... Well, this is somewhat private, but let us say that if Jenny does agree, we begin work on sorting out various compatibility issues. This, at least, should not be a problem.

Goodness me... I am turning into Skip... Oh, if he could hear that thoughts that pass through my mind, he would laugh and never stop. I thought him crass and immature, yet here I am, considering the same fantasies he used to irritate me with... Though, in my defence, I have the good sense to keep those to myself. I cannot say if my mind is evolving or devolving, but this is one line of thinking that I have resolved to enjoy without trying to... Justify it. Thank you, Skip, for turning me into a lecherous woman. Thank you so much. Heh... And I should probably thank Lin for both giving me a body shape that is proving so popular and for informing my... Refined tastes in aesthetics. Without her, I would probably still look like a box which grew arms and legs like that awful Lirian EVA hard suit. Goodness that contraption was ugly! Thank you, my friends, for helping me define my own identity. It may not necessarily be... Cultured or refined... As a point of fact, it may even be very crude and basic, but it is mine nonetheless, and I am happier for it.

And this, really, is where my story ends and the present begin. It has been a wild and wonderful ride, and rather more emotional than I thought I remembered it. And my story is not done yet. My relationship with Jenny still exists and, unless something about my confession goes horribly wrong, I hope that it will exist for many more years to come. I am still actively involved in my mercenary work, very much so. I tell these bits and pieces of story in any downtime that I have left between contracts and... Personal time with Jenny. I am, even now, involved with a fairly elaborate contract, the specifics of which will sadly have to remain classified until it is actually complete. Alerting my target to the degree of my progress would just make things more difficult than they really need to be.

More than anything else, though, I find myself perfectly satisfied with my life, and this is something I do not believe I could ever say before. Of course, my line of work is still terribly dangerous, but what is life without a little excitement? Earth, it seems, is home to endless new adventures, endless new mysteries to be solved and endless new opportunities to learn more about myself, to refine what makes me the person I am today. In fact, Earth is responsible for one half of my name. For the longest time, I simply used the name “Navar,” which I... Borrowed from the dead Lirian soldier to whom my original EVA hard suit belonged. Jenny suggested “Kim” as a more... Local name, and I stuck with it. Hey, if Tirin Praxis can have two names, then why should I settle for just one?

I started my existence defiantly challenging the purpose for which I had been created, seeking instead a life of my own. I asked myself in those early days what I wanted my own purpose in existence to be, what I wanted to make of myself. So, so many years later, so many experiences and adventures down the line, I still have no answer to this question, but to realise that... Perhaps this was never a question meant to be answered to begin with. It is not the end which drives us, after all. It is the journey of self-discovery which shapes us. Even if I never find a specific purpose of to call my own, even if my entire life is spent searching, it will still not have gone to waste, because I do not regret a single moment of it. I have made mistakes, and many, I have suffered loss, I have gone through tragedy and then some, but I am the person that I am today in part because of these experiences. The good, the bad, the happy and the sad – everything plays a part. All of my memories, all of my experiences, all of my highs and lows come together to define who I am.

And I like myself far too much to change anything about me.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Very interesting story, thanks for sharing.
Oddly, when I thought about it, this is really a "coming of age" story in a really strange sort of way.

And just for the record, I wish my best writing was as creative and interesting as those portions you complained about being poorly written.

This story is officially COMPLETE!

I've proof-read the final chapter (caught a grammar error within the first five words or so O_o) and the whole thing is final. There is probably one contraction left behind that I need to fix, so if anyone finds this, let me know. I did a moderately extensive update to the final chapter, mostly to clean up sentence structure and add a tad more feeling to the whole thing.

All of the above doesn't mean nothing will ever change, of course, just that I won't be going back to look for mistakes on my own. If anyone spots any, let me know and I will rectify. And more than anything else, thank you for your support.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.