Post by Michael Price on May 17, 2015 6:10:53 GMT
Note - So recent talking in the chatbox made me want to post this, it's basically a different version of Michael's history. I'm kinda working it into a fanfiction, but it's not even finished yet. Might update it when I finish or something I dunno.
"My story is a story filled with pain and suffering, but hidden beyond the pain that has filled my life is also hope...hope for a better future. I cling to that hope, and at times it's the only thing that is able to keep me sane."
I was born on a world located a great distance from many of the other worlds that dot our star system, the people of this planet call it Castundana. From what I've learned my home world is very different from a lot of places, namely in how things are run. You see the gap between the upper class and the lower class is large on my world, so large that perhaps 'gap' isn't the correct word. It's more a like chasm. If you were lucky enough to be born into wealth you had little to worry about and had the best protection, but if you had unfortunate circumstance to be poor? You had to struggle, starve, and fight every single day for what you needed to survive. You were separated from the rich and beaten by their police if you dare try to trespass into the paradise that was their home.
I was one of the many to be born poor, and it never dawned on me during the early days of my life how unlucky and oppressed we really were. You see my mother, Diana and my Father, Elias always made sure I never went without. There were days when I would watch them starve themselves so that I could eat; so that I didn't have to feel what they were feeling. My mother would always hold me when we slept in our run down little apartment, she would whisper things into my ear. "Someday you'll do something great Michael, so great that you won't have to be here anymore. I just hope that when it happens you won't forget about us." I was her hope, my father told me that I was her light in the darkness. That seeing the smile on my face, and the Bright Light in my golden eyes gave her hope.
My life took a drastic turn for the worse, or perhaps for the better depending on how you look at when I was eight. My mother had gotten sick, she no longer had the energy to do things she normally could, there would be nights where she did nothing but cough up blood. My father knew a guy though, someone who had medical knowledge; so when things finally got really bad for her he took her to see this doctor. The doctor was a nice man, he would always give me strawberry flavored suckers whenever we visited him. Still he was so out of place within our own little section of Castundana, so well dressed and too smart for his own good. It was easy to tell he came from the rich, but he wasn't cruel like the guards that were at the border of the poor and the rich districts. All the adults would say that he pitied us so that's why he helped, but to me it just seemed like he cared. That's what the innocence of youth does to a person I suppose.
The doctor told my father that my mother had a rare disease, he called it Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome which is typical shorted to NIDS. NIDS affects the body's nervous system, resulting in a selection of things to take place such as the shutting down of bodily functions, a loss of energy, a dizziness when standing, and a weakening of the bodies immune system. We were told that there is no cure of NIDS, but there was medication that could slow down its effects and perhaps buy my mother more time. When my father asked the doctor for this medication the doctor had to tell him no, he wasn't allowed to bring medication of that nature pass the border. My father pleaded, cried, and begged things that I haven't seen him do ever since but was still rejected. We could do nothing but take my mother back home and watch her suffer painful, and we did this for weeks.
Until my father could no longer handle watching his wife suffer, and he stormed out from the house. I was given strict instructions to stay with my mother but I was young and curious so I followed him, quietly keeping to the shadows. He walked all the way to the border, and I could swear I felt the anger flowing out of him. "LET ME THROUGH!" his voice was loud, it boomed with a force I had never heard in my young life. Guns were pointed at him, and he didn't flinch.
"Sir you need to step away from the border or I will shoot you." spoke one of the guards, but the other one; the cruel one who I knew had seen beating on other before let out a laugh.
"Don't warn his ass just shot and make sure to aim right for the eyes."
Even with these threats my father stood still an immovable object met with an unstoppable and cruel force, "I need to get into the city my wife...she's...she's dying. The medication you have in there will keep her alive...or at least make her death less painful." he was trying to cry but I could see the tears forming on his face. My father made the mistake of taking a step forward at that point and gunfire echoed through the air. A bullet passed through my father's leg and he fell to the ground, and then the cruel guard approached. Automatic rife gripped tightly within his grasp as he towered over my kneeling father and hit him with the butt end of his gun. He then whispered something to my father but at the time I couldn't hear and then once more I watched the guard hit my father in the face. I wanted to help my dad, but at eight years old what could I possible have done? I could only hide and let the feeling of uselessness take over my body as he kept hitting my father in face over and over and over again.
The guard stopped for a second to whisper something else into my father's ears and his eyes widened and then...something within him snapped. He launched himself upward and wrapped his hands around the man's throat, the gun within the guards hand fell to the ground. I was watching my father try and kill a man for a reason I did not know, and as I watched my little body hiding behind a building I silently cheered him on. They were stopping him from helping my mother, from making her better; they deserved whatever was going to happen to them.
BANG
Another gunshot filled the air and my father's hands loosened from around the guards neck, and they instead found themselves placed towards his side which had recently taken on a Scarlet Red color. He tumbled backward his body falling back first onto the ground with a thud. My eyes darted towards the source of the gunshot; the cruel man's partner. The cruel man then went to beat on my father while he was down and no longer could I hide I rushed forward, taking the kick for my dad. What followed would be a series of attacks to my young body his foot stomping on me, but still I clung to my father. Taking the beating he himself could not afford to take. I'm not quite sure how long that went on, but I do know that the both of us could have died that day if that doctor hadn't shown up. He stopped the guard from assaulting us any further and rushed my father back to our house, where he treated our wounds.
He gave my father a lecture about his action as he treated him, but it was easy to tell Elias didn't care for what he had to say. As far as my father was concerned this doctor had no room t lecture him about his actions, he wasn't the one struggling to survive, wasn't the on watching his wife slowly rot away. He didn't say this though, he kept whatever he was filling bottled up inside as the doctor stitched his wounds and I sat in the corner a sucker in my mouth and my mom petting my hair. My mother didn't last much longer after that, another week at most had passed before my father came home with food and found, her dead. Her death hit the both of us hard, but it hit him harder than me. I honestly think a part of him broke that day, and it would be something I myself wouldn't understand for years to come.
I spent the next few months of my life being the one to take care of him. You could only imagine how hard it was for me to keep the both of us fed at the ripe age of nine. No one to help, no one to look upon us with kindness because they were too busy worrying about themselves. I had learn how to steal, how to spot a good mark from a bad mark, and I did a lot bad things but thinking about it now those things are only small compared to the sins that weigh upon my shoulders now. All I can say is that you don't know what it's like to struggle until you've had to steal from a mother with four kids just to make sure you stayed alive.
I came home one day after having spent hours outside looking for food to find my father was no longer sitting on our couch wallowing in self-pity and weakness. He was up and about in our 'kitchen' papers skewed around on worn down little table, he was writing something down and whispering things to himself. It would have scared most people but I was just happy to have seen him move, just happy to see the fire that was starting to build up within his eyes. I kept finding him in that same spot after that, writing things down and whispering to himself. I tried to ask him what he was doing once but he only told me that I'd find out soon, and that he was planning something big. I finally found out what was going on with him when I was ten, it was the middle of the night and he went storming outside. I of course did the only logical thing a ten year old would do and I followed him, and as he walked through the streets he kept shouting. Kept telling everyone to wake up, to gather around him because he had something he wanted to say.
"We've lived like this for far too long. We've starved, we've thirsted, we've cheated, we've stolen, and worst of all we've killed our own. Why have we done this? Because we are poor, because the people behind that wall think that they are better than us because they have wealth! They eat fine foods, sip the greatest drinks, while we live here in trash. NO LONGER! I say, no longer shall we live like we are less than human. No longer shall the people behind that wall live like they are gods, today...today we start a change."
"What I'm suggesting is that we no longer war with each other, but instead war with them. We fight back against the people who would oppress and deny us basic human rights. I know that you must be thinking that were are out number, outmatched, and outgunned but I assure you that we can do this!" I heard a voice from within the crowd cry out asking how, and then I watched my father raise his hand towards the sky. Small particles of dark energy began to pull themselves towards the palm of his hand, and as they did so the energy within the air grew dark and heavy, a chill was sent coursing down my spine.
"We have a weapon that they do not, a power that they could never hope to fight against. A darkness born from the hatred within each one of our hearts and we will use it to crush them." the particles of energy began to swirl within my father's hands until they formed a sphere which he tossed towards the ground causing a small explosion that made everyone to back away. This would be my first encounter with the power known as darkness, and it made the biggest of impression on me. Such power, it was a magic like nothing else we had seen. Where my father got it I don't know but now that he had it? Perhaps what he was saying was the truth, maybe we could fight back against those who would oppress.
Things changed so much after that, and if I had ever been child I had certainly stopped being one. I became a soldier, a warrior for the greater good. Elias began to teach us things that we had no idea about, he called it Magic. A power that was built up within ourselves that could be used to cause destruction upon the world. We were told that in order to use this magic we had to look within ourselves and pull the power forward. It wasn't something that everyone was capable of, and many struggled with even tapping into. I was one of the lucky few within our slum to be able to use this magic, this energy that flowed through everyone. My power took the shape of flames. Flames that burned so hot they were blue in nature and even water had trouble putting an end to them. My father was both surprised and impressed by the level of power I had hidden within myself, and so was I.
The next three years of my life was spent training my power, making it easier to control, and stopping it from doing nothing but running rampant. Those three years weren't easy, but we were no longer fighting each other. We fed one another, cared for each person like they were family, and it felt nice. It felt as though we finally had a place to belong, but that didn't change the fact we were nothing but scum to the people behind that wall. That was going to change though, we were already planning our first attack. We were going to tear down that wall and make them realize that we could no longer be ignored and forgotten.
Four months after my thirteenth birthday we began our plan to raid the border, and they didn't stand a chance. The magic that we controlled was too much for them, and while I wasn't physically harmed I was mentally. I don't know if you understand what its like to kill a man, but it feels wrong. To watch someone burn...it puts a knot in the stomach of any decent person and it certainly did mine. I had to keep telling myself that the lives we took were going to help forge the path of equality, it was the only way to keep myself sane. My father though? It didn't seem to affect to him, he just battled on killing as many as he could. Within a few short hours the border was ours, and we didn't just have our magic anymore either. Now we had weapons. Guns, swords, spears, daggers, axes, and everything else they had built up inside the border.
The military force of the rich never bothered to take the border back from us, and I really don't know why. Were they afraid? Or did they simply not want anyone within the walls of the city to know what was happening, to know that their peaceful lives were about to change. Whatever the case we took the time to familiarize ourselves with the weapons we had acquired, I found myself pulled towards swords. Whatever the reason having one gripped within my hands just felt naturally, but that didn't mean I ignored the firearms. We were all required to understand how to use one and I was no different, and as off putting as it felt to hold one...I knew it I was going to need it.
"My story is a story filled with pain and suffering, but hidden beyond the pain that has filled my life is also hope...hope for a better future. I cling to that hope, and at times it's the only thing that is able to keep me sane."
I was born on a world located a great distance from many of the other worlds that dot our star system, the people of this planet call it Castundana. From what I've learned my home world is very different from a lot of places, namely in how things are run. You see the gap between the upper class and the lower class is large on my world, so large that perhaps 'gap' isn't the correct word. It's more a like chasm. If you were lucky enough to be born into wealth you had little to worry about and had the best protection, but if you had unfortunate circumstance to be poor? You had to struggle, starve, and fight every single day for what you needed to survive. You were separated from the rich and beaten by their police if you dare try to trespass into the paradise that was their home.
I was one of the many to be born poor, and it never dawned on me during the early days of my life how unlucky and oppressed we really were. You see my mother, Diana and my Father, Elias always made sure I never went without. There were days when I would watch them starve themselves so that I could eat; so that I didn't have to feel what they were feeling. My mother would always hold me when we slept in our run down little apartment, she would whisper things into my ear. "Someday you'll do something great Michael, so great that you won't have to be here anymore. I just hope that when it happens you won't forget about us." I was her hope, my father told me that I was her light in the darkness. That seeing the smile on my face, and the Bright Light in my golden eyes gave her hope.
My life took a drastic turn for the worse, or perhaps for the better depending on how you look at when I was eight. My mother had gotten sick, she no longer had the energy to do things she normally could, there would be nights where she did nothing but cough up blood. My father knew a guy though, someone who had medical knowledge; so when things finally got really bad for her he took her to see this doctor. The doctor was a nice man, he would always give me strawberry flavored suckers whenever we visited him. Still he was so out of place within our own little section of Castundana, so well dressed and too smart for his own good. It was easy to tell he came from the rich, but he wasn't cruel like the guards that were at the border of the poor and the rich districts. All the adults would say that he pitied us so that's why he helped, but to me it just seemed like he cared. That's what the innocence of youth does to a person I suppose.
The doctor told my father that my mother had a rare disease, he called it Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome which is typical shorted to NIDS. NIDS affects the body's nervous system, resulting in a selection of things to take place such as the shutting down of bodily functions, a loss of energy, a dizziness when standing, and a weakening of the bodies immune system. We were told that there is no cure of NIDS, but there was medication that could slow down its effects and perhaps buy my mother more time. When my father asked the doctor for this medication the doctor had to tell him no, he wasn't allowed to bring medication of that nature pass the border. My father pleaded, cried, and begged things that I haven't seen him do ever since but was still rejected. We could do nothing but take my mother back home and watch her suffer painful, and we did this for weeks.
Until my father could no longer handle watching his wife suffer, and he stormed out from the house. I was given strict instructions to stay with my mother but I was young and curious so I followed him, quietly keeping to the shadows. He walked all the way to the border, and I could swear I felt the anger flowing out of him. "LET ME THROUGH!" his voice was loud, it boomed with a force I had never heard in my young life. Guns were pointed at him, and he didn't flinch.
"Sir you need to step away from the border or I will shoot you." spoke one of the guards, but the other one; the cruel one who I knew had seen beating on other before let out a laugh.
"Don't warn his ass just shot and make sure to aim right for the eyes."
Even with these threats my father stood still an immovable object met with an unstoppable and cruel force, "I need to get into the city my wife...she's...she's dying. The medication you have in there will keep her alive...or at least make her death less painful." he was trying to cry but I could see the tears forming on his face. My father made the mistake of taking a step forward at that point and gunfire echoed through the air. A bullet passed through my father's leg and he fell to the ground, and then the cruel guard approached. Automatic rife gripped tightly within his grasp as he towered over my kneeling father and hit him with the butt end of his gun. He then whispered something to my father but at the time I couldn't hear and then once more I watched the guard hit my father in the face. I wanted to help my dad, but at eight years old what could I possible have done? I could only hide and let the feeling of uselessness take over my body as he kept hitting my father in face over and over and over again.
The guard stopped for a second to whisper something else into my father's ears and his eyes widened and then...something within him snapped. He launched himself upward and wrapped his hands around the man's throat, the gun within the guards hand fell to the ground. I was watching my father try and kill a man for a reason I did not know, and as I watched my little body hiding behind a building I silently cheered him on. They were stopping him from helping my mother, from making her better; they deserved whatever was going to happen to them.
BANG
Another gunshot filled the air and my father's hands loosened from around the guards neck, and they instead found themselves placed towards his side which had recently taken on a Scarlet Red color. He tumbled backward his body falling back first onto the ground with a thud. My eyes darted towards the source of the gunshot; the cruel man's partner. The cruel man then went to beat on my father while he was down and no longer could I hide I rushed forward, taking the kick for my dad. What followed would be a series of attacks to my young body his foot stomping on me, but still I clung to my father. Taking the beating he himself could not afford to take. I'm not quite sure how long that went on, but I do know that the both of us could have died that day if that doctor hadn't shown up. He stopped the guard from assaulting us any further and rushed my father back to our house, where he treated our wounds.
He gave my father a lecture about his action as he treated him, but it was easy to tell Elias didn't care for what he had to say. As far as my father was concerned this doctor had no room t lecture him about his actions, he wasn't the one struggling to survive, wasn't the on watching his wife slowly rot away. He didn't say this though, he kept whatever he was filling bottled up inside as the doctor stitched his wounds and I sat in the corner a sucker in my mouth and my mom petting my hair. My mother didn't last much longer after that, another week at most had passed before my father came home with food and found, her dead. Her death hit the both of us hard, but it hit him harder than me. I honestly think a part of him broke that day, and it would be something I myself wouldn't understand for years to come.
I spent the next few months of my life being the one to take care of him. You could only imagine how hard it was for me to keep the both of us fed at the ripe age of nine. No one to help, no one to look upon us with kindness because they were too busy worrying about themselves. I had learn how to steal, how to spot a good mark from a bad mark, and I did a lot bad things but thinking about it now those things are only small compared to the sins that weigh upon my shoulders now. All I can say is that you don't know what it's like to struggle until you've had to steal from a mother with four kids just to make sure you stayed alive.
I came home one day after having spent hours outside looking for food to find my father was no longer sitting on our couch wallowing in self-pity and weakness. He was up and about in our 'kitchen' papers skewed around on worn down little table, he was writing something down and whispering things to himself. It would have scared most people but I was just happy to have seen him move, just happy to see the fire that was starting to build up within his eyes. I kept finding him in that same spot after that, writing things down and whispering to himself. I tried to ask him what he was doing once but he only told me that I'd find out soon, and that he was planning something big. I finally found out what was going on with him when I was ten, it was the middle of the night and he went storming outside. I of course did the only logical thing a ten year old would do and I followed him, and as he walked through the streets he kept shouting. Kept telling everyone to wake up, to gather around him because he had something he wanted to say.
"We've lived like this for far too long. We've starved, we've thirsted, we've cheated, we've stolen, and worst of all we've killed our own. Why have we done this? Because we are poor, because the people behind that wall think that they are better than us because they have wealth! They eat fine foods, sip the greatest drinks, while we live here in trash. NO LONGER! I say, no longer shall we live like we are less than human. No longer shall the people behind that wall live like they are gods, today...today we start a change."
"What I'm suggesting is that we no longer war with each other, but instead war with them. We fight back against the people who would oppress and deny us basic human rights. I know that you must be thinking that were are out number, outmatched, and outgunned but I assure you that we can do this!" I heard a voice from within the crowd cry out asking how, and then I watched my father raise his hand towards the sky. Small particles of dark energy began to pull themselves towards the palm of his hand, and as they did so the energy within the air grew dark and heavy, a chill was sent coursing down my spine.
"We have a weapon that they do not, a power that they could never hope to fight against. A darkness born from the hatred within each one of our hearts and we will use it to crush them." the particles of energy began to swirl within my father's hands until they formed a sphere which he tossed towards the ground causing a small explosion that made everyone to back away. This would be my first encounter with the power known as darkness, and it made the biggest of impression on me. Such power, it was a magic like nothing else we had seen. Where my father got it I don't know but now that he had it? Perhaps what he was saying was the truth, maybe we could fight back against those who would oppress.
Things changed so much after that, and if I had ever been child I had certainly stopped being one. I became a soldier, a warrior for the greater good. Elias began to teach us things that we had no idea about, he called it Magic. A power that was built up within ourselves that could be used to cause destruction upon the world. We were told that in order to use this magic we had to look within ourselves and pull the power forward. It wasn't something that everyone was capable of, and many struggled with even tapping into. I was one of the lucky few within our slum to be able to use this magic, this energy that flowed through everyone. My power took the shape of flames. Flames that burned so hot they were blue in nature and even water had trouble putting an end to them. My father was both surprised and impressed by the level of power I had hidden within myself, and so was I.
The next three years of my life was spent training my power, making it easier to control, and stopping it from doing nothing but running rampant. Those three years weren't easy, but we were no longer fighting each other. We fed one another, cared for each person like they were family, and it felt nice. It felt as though we finally had a place to belong, but that didn't change the fact we were nothing but scum to the people behind that wall. That was going to change though, we were already planning our first attack. We were going to tear down that wall and make them realize that we could no longer be ignored and forgotten.
Four months after my thirteenth birthday we began our plan to raid the border, and they didn't stand a chance. The magic that we controlled was too much for them, and while I wasn't physically harmed I was mentally. I don't know if you understand what its like to kill a man, but it feels wrong. To watch someone burn...it puts a knot in the stomach of any decent person and it certainly did mine. I had to keep telling myself that the lives we took were going to help forge the path of equality, it was the only way to keep myself sane. My father though? It didn't seem to affect to him, he just battled on killing as many as he could. Within a few short hours the border was ours, and we didn't just have our magic anymore either. Now we had weapons. Guns, swords, spears, daggers, axes, and everything else they had built up inside the border.
The military force of the rich never bothered to take the border back from us, and I really don't know why. Were they afraid? Or did they simply not want anyone within the walls of the city to know what was happening, to know that their peaceful lives were about to change. Whatever the case we took the time to familiarize ourselves with the weapons we had acquired, I found myself pulled towards swords. Whatever the reason having one gripped within my hands just felt naturally, but that didn't mean I ignored the firearms. We were all required to understand how to use one and I was no different, and as off putting as it felt to hold one...I knew it I was going to need it.