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RP [NSS Highlander] Prologue 1: Success is ashes, so make a deal at a crossroads, the devil only wants your soul

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Firebrand

Inactive Member
RP Date
9/25, YE 41
RP Location
Family Villa, near La Hanya
Planet Nepleslia
Hanya Continent
Near La Hanya
9/25, YE 41


Four months ago, Menelik Berhane was just a Corporal, had a prime posting, and had fallen in love. Now, as he sat in the garden of his family's villa, he reflected on how things had changed: He had achieved one of his goals and become a Second Lieutenant.

That hadn't been easy, he reflected. Officer Candidate School was three and a half months or 14 weeks of grueling training to turn enlisted marines into badly needed officers. Turning them from the rough and ready bastards who were the bane of bars across known space, into gentlemen and scholars who could use their brains and lead aforementioned 'rough and ready' men while doing quite a bit of damage themselves. Mornings, early mornings, were spent in training that would've made Yamatai's Giretsu blush; afternoons and evenings were spent doing book learning, with courses ranging from the more 'usual' offerings like Military Science to more 'esoteric' fields like History & Moral Philosophy and Proper Etiquette for Gentlemen(or Ladies, not in his own case). That left roughly eight hours to do everything else one needed to do in the day, though a robotic assistant to take care of domestic tasks had lightened the load from "impossible" to merely "extremely difficult."

'But,' Menelik figured, as he mused over those 98 days, 'it was worth it.' He was an officer now, and that opened up opportunities, opportunities that he had made for himself through hard work and a can-do attitude. Right?

Wrong. Dead wrong. Sure, the Second Lieutenant was satisfied at having graduated and achieved his rank. He was even happy that he had gotten leave to visit his family. But then, why was it that whenever he drank coffee or saw a bird, his mouth tasted of nothing but ashes and that worst feeling of all: regret.

That was a rhetorical question. Menelik knew why he was depressed, despite being surrounded by a loving family for the first time in what seemed like years. Why his next posting, to one of the new PunkBuster's, seemed worthless to him, despite the opportunities it gave him. Why, if he could, he would give up everything he had ever worked for in a heartbeat.

He was in love. Love with someone who he had to abandon at his last posting, someone who had trusted him only to leave them behind on a ship he couldn't even get a letter too just so he could get what? The privilege of being an officer? Of moving listless through life until his family married him to a safe, wealthy heiress? To have an empty, loveless marriage?

'No.' It wasn't worth it. It hadn't been worth it. For the second time in his life, Menelik saw everything clearly. The Marines, Nepleslia, his family? They weren't what he cared about anymore, not if he admitted it deep down inside. Not if he had to spend another Yule Tide season as an aimless husk.

"Excuse us," Came the voice of a man, as crisp and clear as the winter weather that framed the villa. "Are you Second Lieutenant Menelik Berhane?" The voice asked, Menelik standing and turning in a single motion, ready to ask who they were... before instinctively snapping into a textbook salute. There, approaching him, were a trio that he definitely had not expected to see: A clean shaven Nepleslian right out of a drama in the uniform of an NSN Commander, a Lorath woman wearing the same uniform, and... a gaunt, skeletal man in the uniform of an IPG Major.

"That would be me, Sirs." Menelik answered, dropping his salute but not relaxing, old habits hard to kill. "But, if you'd excuse me asking, why are you here?" His eyes darted from the Nepleslian and Lorath Commanders, to the jovial looking man who stood taller than him despite being so... damn slim. His eyes had a problem saying on that one, a sense of fear that he'd never admit to having. Unfortunately the man spoke, forcing Menelik's eyes onto him.

"You see, Second Lieutenant, we're putting together a crew for a ship." His voice was jovial, light, and would be friendly along with his smile if it didn't seem so strange, like flesh stretched over a frame.

"A very special ship. If you agree to join, well..." His smiled broadened, revealing teeth that nearly gleamed- even the Lorath and Nepleslian seemed put off by the tall man.

"You know what it is you want, most of all. I can give it to you." With that smile, and that offer, Menelik knew that he was at a metaphorical crossroads. Like all crossroads, everywhere, this too had a devil at it. Not the spiky red skinned devil who poked sinners and let them burn for eternity, but still a devil. A devil in plack, with a smile, offering a deal. The man might've said that he just wanted Menelik for the crew, but the Hanyadi knew that his soul was on the line here. That was all the devil really wanted, souls. He'd say anything, offer a man's deepest desire, debase himself to any extent just to get the souls he desired.

Menelik should've been smarter than that, wiser than that. His mother was a holy woman, and he had been raised right.

He said yes, because as smart as he was, as pious as his soul was? His heart was in love. And thus, the NSS Highlander had another officer.
 
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