Welcome to Gaia! ::

Standing leaning against the wall of a store on Stirling 7. Jard Divine was just typical 20 year old who was out of a job. His snow white hair flopped in his eyes and trailed down to his shoulder blades. He always like to look fancy so he was always wearing a white dress shirt with a vest and a silver and black tie with black slacks. He also keep his shoes polished. Top it off he kept a fedora with an Ace of Spades in it with his black trench coat. He keep his blade with as well. The mighty Zenkou((sames as Salfos' sword)) wat the old geser told him. said it had the powers to increase his reflexes and stuff. But he never believed that kind of crap. He saw someone up on the hillside looking at the spaceport. He didnt know nor cared why. Just see something interesting as there was one ship in the port. He walked to the hill to take a closer look. Maybe the captain will hire him, since he was a great navigator and the filthy pirates left him on this rock without pay as well. he whistled. "nice ship isnt it. one of the top of line fighter ships i seen. a bit small though. I bet it packs a lot of speed in it though. say what you doing up here anyway bucko?" he gave a questionable look and then noticed the grave. and he fell silent looking down.

"Well thats something you dont see everyday now dontcha? hehehe mind if i tag along. you gonna need a navigator to get around out in space. im one of the best, traveled over a fourth of space. Plus you will need the help with that ship. i want room and board, food and also revenge on the pirate scum who left me here. plus i got my trusty sword." he flashed a grin."watcha say bud?

((I know I said I wasn't going to...but I kinda want to now. I promise I'll keep up with it. smile ))

Finola Courtise sat in the corner of a very crowded bar, watching. Her brilliant silver hair was the only visible part of her. Quickly, she thought "Black hair, please" and an ebony mane replaced it. She was completely invisible. She sat and drank only club soda, keeping her wits. It's what any trained assassin would do. She was here on a mission. Not sent by anyone, but here of her own accord. She needed work. Someone who hated his boss and wanted him dead, a downtrodden wife wanting to rid herself of her cheating husband...anything to earn enough money to leave here and find a real home and a steady government job. Two idiots were standing in the middle of the bar, about to duel. Finola rolled her eyes at them. "Immature," she scoffed. "Unprofessional." She spun the remainder of her drink in the glass as she watched the events unfold. Both were amazing fighters, but lacked stealth. However, she was intrigued by the younger of the two. When the older fell, nearly dead, something was passed between them. Finola's mind flicked to spy mode, immediately. As the younger man lifted to older over his shoulder and walked out of the bar, Finola dropped a few coins on the table, drained her glass, and followed him. As she stepped out the shadows, her body shifted from purely obsidien to a red-headed, green-eyed woman in a pale purple dress. None of the inebriated patrons of the bar noticed and Finola chuckled to herself. Rediculous, she thought and hurried after the young man.

She followed him to a hill and hid behind a tree, becoming bark colored, not too far away. The dead man was buried, and his grave was kept company for a while by the young man. A shadowed figure in a trench coat and fedora walks up. Finola's hand automatically moves to the knife in her boot, ready to protect the young man for some reason. But nothing happens, there is an exchange of words and they both proceed to a ship in the distance, that had gone unnoticed by Finola. Silently, she follows, until they reach the ship and proceed to open it. She returns her color to the red-head, then steps out. "Lovely ship," Finola says, stoically, looking up at the vessel before her. "Blue and gold are fabulous colors together." At the mention of color, Finola becomes a blonde wearing a royal blue dress. She smiled slightly, mysteriously.

((The horrible speech is on purpose. I am (despite popular belief) actually very fluent in English and very knowledgeable about grammar and spelling.))

If you read long enough, I might be kind enough to tell you my name. If you enjoy reading about space pirates, guns, swords, adventure....leave. Nah, just kidding, you're in the right spot. Now, this story isn't really about me; I'm just in it. But I'll explain all that later. If you'd care to listen, I'll tell you it....are you ready? Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down. And I liked to take a minute just sit right there,
I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air....okay that's actually a song....and I'm not a prince....and I've never really been to Bel Air, although I hear it's nice this time of season....anyway back to the story. My part, the part I was involved in begins here....on a ship. Surrounded by adoring fans...well surrounded.

"You don't want to do that." Calm. Confident. I repeated myself. "You don't want to do that."

The big burly man in front of me burst into laughter. The amount of odor seeping from him astounded me. I don't think it's possible for someone to smell so horrible. He stood about 3 feet away from me, a gun pointed straight at my head. I could go into how I got into this little predicament, but it'd take a while. To make a long story short, we'll just say I haven't always been too nice to some people. Well anyway, the man, who we'll call Ol' Disgusting from now on, cocks the gun. He gets this wild look in his eye and yells, spit flying everywhere, "And wat arrr ya goen do ta stop me!?"

I wait a couple seconds, holding my breathe....finally releasing with a huge gasp. *Pant* *Pant* "Well first off, you need to shower and eat a breath mint or 80. Second, I'd appreciate it if you didn't spit all over my new jacket. I had to steal a lot of your bosses money to get it and third..." He didn't appreciate that comment; good Ol' Disgusting. He pressed the trigger with all his might, ending my rant and my life. Now I'm dead, because I did some bad things in life and hung with some bad people. I regret it now....*sigh*. That was fun, wanna know what really happened now?

As he pulled the trigger, I ducked to the left and drew my sword. I sliced upward, cutting the end off of his gun. I brought my leg around and hit him square in the back; hard, knocking him to the floor. His cronies, somehow even less intelligent (and probably even smelled worse) tried to come at me next. Morons. If I remember correctly, there were about 10 of them. All used guns. I don't really know why. Who needs guns when you can control fire? Oh right....not everyone can control fire. I can. And it's a wonderful advantage to have against 10 people all armed with guns. I held my hand up and ignited the gunpowder in the chambers of their guns and laughed as they all exploded in their faces. "Now that we've leveled the playing field, anyone want to take me one-on-one?" They all drew their weapons: swords, scythes, daggers, knives, and began to surround me again. "Cheaters never win you know."

Now, I could go into extreme detail about how I completely owned every single one of them, but you don't want to hear that. Too bad. I'm going to do it anyway, because you see; I love bragging.

The first came at me with a scythe. "Now now, didn't you learn anything in physics class? The heavier an object is, the easier it is for me to dodge." He swung hard at my head as I ducked lazily. I tripped him and gave him a hard punch to the face, knocking him out. I bet your asking, "What the hell, why didn't he kill him!?" Well to answer that question, I like to keep at least one or two alive. That way, they can tell all their friends who gave them the huge black eye.

Four more came at me, all at the same time. Armed accordingly: twin daggers, knife, spear and, oh this is my favorite-all-time-stupid-weapon-to-use-in-a-fight, spiked gauntlets. I took him down first. He came at me, swinging his arms wildly. I brought the sword to his wrists and cut through them. He screamed in pain. "Hey, next time use an actual weapon." The next three all charged simultaneously. I hopped on top of the spear as the man wielding it swung at me, jumped in the air, parried a blow from the man wielding twin daggers, and as I landed, cut through the back of the very confused man wielding the knife. I kind of felt bad for him; he wasn't a very good fighter. I parried another blow from the spear and touched the tip of it, lighting the entire thing, and the person holding it, on fire.

You're probably thinking I'm a pyromaniac. You're probably right. A quick cut to the throat ended the life of the man holding the daggers. At that point, the rest had closed in to attack. I bent low and sheathed my weapon, bringing my arm close to my body. I spun quickly, A burst of flame emanating from my palm which incinerated the remaining men. All that was left was Ol' Disgusting and the man with the scythe; one of which was unconscious, the other of which was charging at me angrily. I spun to the left and elbowed Ol' Disgusting in the back, dropping him to the floor again.

I drew my sword, turning over his body and held it to his throat. "I warned you." I slit his throat, blood spilling everywhere. Man...that odor made me want to throw up. I stood up and checked my clothes. Good, not a drop of blood. I looked over the the monitor above the bridge of the ship and looked to where their ship had been headed. Some backwater planet. Excellent, I can hideout there, maybe find some work for a little while. I wrote a quick note and tied it to the unconscious man's wrist. It read, "Next time, send 100. With love, your friendly-neighborhood-Spiderman." I know I know, I'm not spider-man. I don't think I am. I prefer to think of myself as Batman actually, but hey, it was my note, I'll sign with whatever name I want. And at that moment, Spiderman sounded fun.

I walked up to the control panel and changed the ship's direction back towards the spot where I was captured. I could explain how I allowed myself to be captured by the same people I just easily took on, but that's another story. Besides, I was drunk. I jumped in one of the escape pods on the ship and set a course for that backwater planet. Little did I know that landing there would change my life, and the life of the man who this story is really about, forever.

I pointed the gun back at the man.

"You just said that you were working with her. Start talking some damn sense before I blow your head off with this caster. Have you seen what these shells can do? Cause it's not pretty."

I was thinking this guy was kinda totally insane. He was speaking like a crazy person and I was about one step away from vaporizing him.

I lowered the gun...just a tad.

"No...the old man was looking for death. I bested him, so I got his ship. I don't know much about him. Why? What's it to you?"

Session 0: Quick-Step Prologue

An escapse pod boundced off my ship. "What the hell?!" I roared at the air around me. Damn thing wasn't accecpting any transmissions. "SHODAN! Vaporize the thing!"

...Nothing happened.

I looked through the archway into the main room where SHODAN's harddrive sat with her other useless parts. Oh yeah. I had uh... "unplugged" her. Eyes jumping back to the planet now looming before me, I decided to make the jump and land in the small port near a bar. Zero reviews on the Boards. 'Course. Why would a place like this have any reviews? The pod suddenly jettionsed to life and began to fall to the planet; not even bothering to use one of the entry gates. The Enforcement Sirens didn't even blare. Whimper is more like it. This place really is back water.

I'm gonna show that p***k. Repairs aren't cheap!

The pilot's chair stayed immobile as I vaulted the back and landed with the grace of a ballad in the seat. Bleep! The ship made a wonderful sound as I turned it on. It was a sound I found in a really really old data file... called, "PS_ONE_START.MP3" What the hell's an MP3 anyway? Hello, August. Materialized before me as the controls shifted out of the console before me. The big blue "X" for XCELERATION never seemed more inviting to push.

Except that one time I was breaking out of Spice Pirate territory...

I mashed the parallel buttons simultaniously! The enegines roared to life!

...then abruptly shut down.

Damnt.

Out of fuel cells. Again. Gods, why always me?! Why always broke?!

Now I couldn't do anything but sit and drift slowly towards the planet docks and watch as that damn pod fell to the surface. As this thought filled my head I checked the handgun I had picked up. Full Clip. Three spares.

Damn! Why am I always out of the two things I need most?! Fuel and ammo! They're expensive!

...then my stomach complained loudly.

Okay, I'm always out of three things I need most. Food being the third. "God I could fo for a bowl of Ramen..." I said getting up to check storage. The Firebran's storage room is more of a pantry with a single hanging light and large metal containers on each wall. I opened each one begging the air for food. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and nothing.

I sighed another deep jazz creshendo and returned to my pilot's seat, stomach and wallet complaining loudly. A message appeared when I sat, "Request Docking?" Yes. As the festivities occured, I pulled up a list of known bounties in the area. All sorts of bounties and hunters scrolled before me. Rock ones, Punk ones, Samba, Funk...but one in particular caught my eye. A changling, that meant no picture could be considered accurate. This planet was her most recent rumored sighting! Worth over 1,000,000 Dollars! Her difficulty indicated she was "out of my league".

"Well hell, I'm not going to date her. But maybe if I catcher her I'll buy her a nice Galatic Prison dinner with part of all that money."

The warm blue light from the planetary rings pulled me to the port and saw that my good ship landed safely. The second she was docked and locked I strolled out with smooth jazz in my steps and blues in my heart. With nowhere to go I stopped a moment and leaned over the rail, staring into space; literarly.

Three characters gathered on a hill way in the distance. Call it Heart's Intuition, but something felt strange about the group. I pulled my old 7X SilverEye from my pocket and attached it to my eye, zooming in. While the wonderful scope wasn't clear enough to let me see what the people looked like, it was clear enough to let me see the woman when he shifted her hair and clothes as she revealed herself to the two... men?
And so my date with Destiny begins.

Thinking quickly I ran to an old tin shack with the word "Weepoons!" Painted on the roof's sign. I dearly hoped that was a clever name, but somehow doubted it. The owner was an old toothless fella. Asked me what I'd like to buy. "A rifle. One with really long range..." I said, trying to figure out how the hell I was going to pay for/steal this. "Well, I've got this. It's called the L83-FarEye." He hefted an archaic rifle onto the metal counter. The damn thing was still made of wood! "I'll take it!"

"That'll be 20,000 Dollars, son."
"Put it on the Galatic Bounty's Tab,"
"The...wha...?!" I heard him call as I ran out of the shop with the free box of ammo he included. I hoped that dimuendo bluff wouldn't come back to byte me someday.

Returning to my ship, I climbed on to of it, and lay prone, looking through my SilverEye to line up my shot.

s**t! One of those guys is pointing a gun at her! No time left!

I took a deep breath, whispered, "Thanks, Lady Luck."

And pulled the trigger.