Water drops fall on the ground in this moist, cold and disgusting prison. I have been set there, for I was not like the system wanted me to be. The democratic government fell about 3 years ago, and it left scars over everyone's heart, especially my family. We were really profound about freedom, reason and opinions but now, we don't say what we think anymore. The opinions was one of our greatest freedom, but now, the first who says what he thinks risks his life, and maybe even more. Seasons passed as people started to disappear, gone somewhere, probably the worst place in the region called Tilabus. This place is a prison, the one that I am into presently. A lot of our history was played there, from the fall of the reign of the Lord that had the land to the signature of the conscription by the soldiers. The new regime started to rule from that death pit and since then, has established his government there. The thing that affected my life was the interdiction of all civilian aircraft to fly under a severe penalty. I was one really good pilot when they decided to close the civilian air traffic, I was so talented that I had a little aircraft stationed at the airport that held my name. Every time that I went there, they lent me the aircraft and let me do some trip unto the heavens. Until recently, our lives had all of the normal lives, we were part of the people that was still there, that was oppressed and that feared the next breath of the tyrant. We didn't realize just then that our lives were just about to shatter in a million bits and being thrown away to the dragons so they can eat the fragments.
We were eating at our table, as usual, speaking about family, friends, weather. The day was cold, snowy, windy, sad, the usual for a day in December. The doorbell rang twice, and as usual, I went to the door. When I saw who was there, my face turned white, but I still opened the door. The soldiers entered the house with their guns and one of them get out a paper and started to read with a loud voice what was written : "On this day, December 4th, you are all under arrest under the law of our dictator. You must remain silent and show no resistance or we shoot. Just come with us, you won't need your coats." Since I was the closest one to the door, I was the first to exit the house to go in their truck. The temperature was cold, and I was freezing in the cold wind. I hurried to the truck and sat down between two armed persons. The temperature in the truck was almost worse than what I felt outside of it and our trip was an ordeal because of that factor. When we arrived, they asked us to get out and as I was getting out, I froze in place, for I saw where they put us in. They could have chosen the prison of Duver but the choice was made otherwise and Tilabus was there choice. They locked us in separate prison, isolating myself from my family and my brother. The first hours were hard, looking around at the grey cement walls, not able to sit on the bed, or anywhere else, thinking and thinking. Why were we sent here? Were we innocent or something that I don't know happened? As I was about to sit on the ground guards came and told me someone wanted to see me. Without saying a thing I followed the guards around the historical blood pool and we finally arrived at a desk where the dictator was sitting. He told me to sit and asked the guards to wait outside the room. I was nervous, I was right in the face of the person that made the people suffer, and I hated the suffering of innocents. He finished writing his sentence, and he turned to me, expressing a thought that I never thought cold have been his :
- So you are the pilot that everyone considers an ace.
- I don't know, no one ever told me I was an ace.
- All right, I brought you here to talk a little. You know we are at war with our colonies and we need pilots to build a fleet and I was thinking that you could help us out. After all, you are an ace and an ace must get a post like yours.
- My answer might surpass you, and maybe offend you, but it is what I presume is the good choice. I refuse to be pilot in your fleet for two major reasons. The first one is your means of persuasions, that are not interesting at all, they are disgusting. Imprisoning and forcing the choice is not working on me, and I am ready to assume the consequences. The second reason is that I don't fight for oppression. If I am against it, I won't go fight for it.
- Your choice is cast, then.
- It is more than cast, it is final.
- The consequence is death.
As he finished his sentence, his guards came in and dragged me back to my cage. As I was put in my cage, I saw that my family was no longer there, they had disappeared from the prison cells. I was trying to reason the decision of the dictator, but nothing could justify such an act. What did he do to the ones that were close to me, where are they now? My neighbour told me that the guards took them away for execution. He also told me I was to be the next in line. He was right on that point. Four guards came to my cell to escort me to somewhere deep in the prison. The road to death was just starting, when luck came my way. The guards were separated into two groups, two in the back and two in front. One of the guards in the back fell on the ground, not moving. The guard with him just left to help his fallen comrade. The way was free to escape, and that's what I did. I ran in the snow, without a coat, in the cold winter, not stopping, staying out of the roads, running and freezing. As I arrived home a letter was in the mailbox. I opened it and there was an horrifying picture of my family in it. I put the picture back in the envelope and went in the house. I took everything that could be useful on a trip and started packing. As I was packing, a little box caught my attention. The little box seemed old and my name was carved on the cover. I took it, tried to opened it and put it in my bags. It took the whole day to pack my bags, and in the evening, I went to sleep in the basement. The next morning was going to be hard, I would have to leave this place without getting noticed.
The morning of the day when I was going away, I decided to walk around to look one more time at the places that I knew. The trees were full of snow on this early morning. The temperature was pretty nice, no snowing, no sun, just clouds and heat. As I was walking on my road I heard two loud sounds coming from somewhere. I looked around, checking if anybody was following me. No one was there, and I was panicking, something happened in the neighbourhood. I started running on the ice and snow, trying to find from here the sound was coming from. I went to the park, to walk around the sector more easily. While running in the park, my feet slipped and I fell on the ground. While getting up, I saw where the sound was coming from : I just stumbled upon a one-man fight scene. The result was one dead, one injured, but the result was pretty much hard to take.
I took the unconscious injured, a young person from about my age, transported him swiftly to the basement of my house and with the little knowledge on medicine that I had, I treated the minor injuries that the person suffered. There was one injury that I did not want to touch, it was a bloody small hole in the left shoulder, with a bullet in it. That hole was a shadow on my pride, a fly on my soup, an insult in the middle of a white paper. Finally, I got out the bullet of the hole and put some bandages to help cover the wound. While cleaning the clean pincers I used to get out the bullet, I was thinking about my family, lost in the mist of a winter day, by my fault, leading the death parade. Thinking about how it all happened, I realized something that was about to reveal something unthought of. I went to see the young injured and while I looked at his face, I saw some traits that reminded me of people I knew. Making a step back, I pulled a chair closer to the table where I installed the patient. I waited until the darkness came, and just as the room was filled with black light, I heard some sounds coming from the person. I opened a small light to break the darkness. The young one tried to speak, but I told him not to try, it was better to stay still for the night. I brought him a pen, a pile of papers, some pillows, envelopes and some food, so he could pass the night whiteout moving too much. That evening, I slept in the basement for some evident reasons. My patient was there, and had trouble keeping him steady on the table so I had to be close not to make him leave until morning. I lied down on the couch, and fell asleep instantly. Alas, when the morning came, a letter was all that was left, was a letter. I took it, opened it and realized something had fallen on the floor. I took the small object, which was a small stone with a small carving in it. Without reading, I put the letter in my coat, finished packing my bags, and after all was done, I began writing letters for my friends that I will leave behind, explaining the choice that I had to take between life and death.
Before I was going away from my city, I went to put the first half of the letters in my neighbour's mailbox. I know that this person would help me to get the letters to my cousins and all, and I though that they were the right persons to do the jobs. The other half, I would give to someone I knew well. He was playing music in the same band as I was. He was behind the drums, a place that he liked a lot, while I was behind the long white stairway. I went to his house, put the remaining letters in the mailbox. As I went away, the door opened, and my friend was there, trying to talk to me, trying to make me stay at his house for some time. I turned around let my head down and said : "I'm sorry, I can't, I have to go somewhere else. Some incidents happened in the last days, and I can't stay anymore, I have to get out. All that happened is explained in the letter. I want you to give the letters to the other persons. They need to know." As I walked away to my house, a cold wind was blowing, pulling me back, the cold was absolutely incredible, the wind was a butcher to my bones. As I arrived, I took all my bags, put them in the back of the aircraft and flew away, not even caring of the radar, flying low to keep myself shielded from such an instrument. I flew out of the continent, all the way off the ocean and went to the country of lights. I landed somewhere hidden and I went to someone I know back there, because of some family connections. This person was called Romanian and he was a jewel shop holder. In the past months we received letters saying that his little shop was going a little bit badly since people didn't really want to buy jewels, bracelets or rings, but he was still able to live from that. He was about as rich as a doctor, but he kept all his money things pretty much secret. We went to see him sometimes, and he is sympathetic, and always tries to sell something. He was small, a little bit fat, always laughing at his jokes that he mumbled to himself. He was almost a cousin for my brother, since they spoke and joked really well, as they discussed and argue about anything. When I arrived at his place, I brought the little carved stone, the letter, the box with my named carved on it and some other valuables I wanted to sell. As I arrived in his shop, I went directly to the counter put my stuff down and waited for Romanian. I opened the box with my name on it. in it, there was another stone, with the same symbol as the stone I received. I put the stones back in the box and as I pulled some rings and stones from the box, I pulled a yellowed paper from the bottom of the box. Some words were written on the old page. Unfortunately, all you could read from the paper was four, brother, Draus, space, seven and Paul. The letter seemed pretty grim, since nothing made sense, except for the last word, that was the name of my father. I took all the stuff in the box, put it back in, and I saw Romanian walk in. He greeted me with the usual form and asked me how my family was and I answered to him what I knew. He stopped for a while, kept a minute a silence to the broken memories and we restarted, dealing about stuff. We were talking about business, when a topic, not really common, about ancestors and family branches. He mentioned something about broken links. We spoke about a certain Ambroise, a broken link in the tree of people when I asked him why he was speaking about it. He only mumbled a little joke ,like he always did and he laughed. I knew he knew something, but what? It remained a mystery, until I left, when he gave me a ring, and told me that my future was not sure, since the dictator wanted my head. He told me that there was one place I could go safely : the land of the rising sun. I thanked Romanian, got out, and I was on my way to the rising sun, far east of what I knew.
As I arrived in the capital city of the island, I landed somewhere safe and I went to visit this place that I considered one of the greatest. I went downtown and I was supprised to see so many people walking around, just as if nothing happened. Luckily, they were out of this war, we all know as the diplomatic incident. The war started by an intense sentiment of hate from an intense isolationism proclaimed by the military world wide. The colonies didn't really appreciated that, since they need help to develop themselves and they want their own government. Some tensions started, and now diplomats are coming to "try to resolve the actual situation by putting on the table a result of a research conducted sometime during the year to give access to what people in the colonies think about this government." For me this sentence is full of empty promises. In my humble opinion, they will try to keep the peace but they might not succeed. Unfortunately, they only thing we could do is pray. As I walked I thought about the rumours of some shooting star falling at different places. Since we are in dictatorship, this information needed to be denied. Something happened that night, when some stars fell, but what really happened will remain a mystery. As my eyes went up, I saw some action that was preparing up ahead : some people were talking and were pointing me. As they realized that I saw them prepare, three persons started to run towards me. I turned around and tried to run away, passing through a crowd of persons, being pushed, pulled around, falling twice, but still running, against the current. Finally, crossing the mass, I saw another group trying to catch me too, right in front of me. My reaction was not really bright, but still, it was the only way. I crossed the road, in the traffic. Some people did stop, one of them cut off my retreat, but it didn't seem it was one of the persons against me, since it's a Taxi. I opened the car door, went in, closed the door and the taxi restarted to advance on the roads. While I was getting my breath back, I realized I was not the only one in the vehicle. Sure, the driver was there, but there was someone else on the front seat. The second person told me not to worry, that he was not with the other group. The told me they had something for me, and they knew who I was. That didn't really suprise me, since I just ran away from the grip of the dictator and went to shield myself somewhere. Unfortunately, he planned a trap but it didn't succeed. He got on saying that surely I would like to exact revenge on the dictator and all his companions, which I disagreed at first, but then I reminded myself of the tragic events. I replied with a small yes. As I said my answer, a proposition came, out of nowhere. He would give me a ship, but I would use it to help the other persons who have same ships and to do my revenge. I thought about his proposition that seemed all right. It was a harsh decision, but after the word freedom rung I my head, my answer was a definite yes. The first past of my life ended with the positive answer. What came after was a totally new thing for me.
The two persons drove my somewhere, I don't remember the road, but I can stay that we went in mountain entrance once, maybe half an hour ago. The car stopped somewhere, and the persons in invited me to get out and to walk to a small door that was not really far. There, I would have to wait that someone comes to talk to me. I got out of the car, started walking slowly towards the chamber, and as I got in, I immediately saw the musical instruments I knew so well : drums, guitars, bass, keyboards, and all other kinds of instruments. On a table near the instruments, a note laid down. Be back in some time. If you need to wait, feel free to play any of these instruments. As I looked around the instruments, evaluating which one would be a better choice for my wait. I went on the back of the room, sat at the instrument that laid there and I played, let the tremors and the rumbling sound of the instrument fill the room. As time passed, I was getting pretty much tired of hearing the same sounds again and again, I got up and went for a smaller, softer and pretty much tougher to learn. I played the long pole, for some time, even trying a song that I knew well, a lonesome song, for people who feel lost. It took everything I had to do it correctly, the fourth time. As I ended the song, I put the instrument down and someone finally came in, I sat down, behind the drum and waited for him to talk. He introduced himself, saying his name was Elotol, and he added that he was an engineer. He told me that the little dictator, part of the Alliance, an even bigger political movement that held the world in his grasp, was the person that was most likely to try something in the next weeks. As he told me that, he mumbled something to himself and began talking on how the present system was not good. I interrupted him, saying what I felt : "The system is corrupted from the simple private to the boss over him. The system promotes an endless battle against something that is merely a political refusal to give power to someone else. The center of the world is not here, it's the center of all living places that are ours in the galaxy. The present system will not change, especially the dictator of our country, his feet are like steel under a pile of sand. Even if we can't achieve it without changing drastically, if I have the means, I'll do a difference." With a small smile in his face, he opened another door, and told me to come in. Inside there was a radio and some papers on a table, and a big window, but the shutters were closed. On the table, the papers were plans of a big aircraft, more like a battle suit. I turned around to him as he told me : "It's yours if you want to have it, but be careful with it, it's not indestructible and you'll be really visible." He opened the windowed door, another hidden door, and showed me the machine but for how it worked, I saw it really easily. He told me that other persons could have a suit like that, but not the same model, probably another one, somewhere on Earth, because of some practical scientists. He told me that he came from one of the colonies, and planned to built it there, but he felt that it would be better to have it here for having a rebellious person from this place would be more than enough. As I thanked him for the ship, he told me to be careful since it could not retain air, not go to space by passing directly through the atmosphere. As I received the last comment, I took off, in my ship, to make a test drive. I took off, for the first time, in another kind of spacecraft, and the feeling was wonderful. My last model of ship was made on the vertical side, with pretty big wings. The cockpit was big, with a lot of controls and so many things to remember to check once in a while. This one was literally a robot. Made on the vertical side, it was pretty hard to get on it. In this machine, you could really look at what was around you and that little detail made me like a lot this machine. It had a complicated machinery, but still, I knew I could learn how it worked. I made a little test drive, to see how many functions there ere on the machine and I soon realized that my potential would be completely used to pilot this machine : Not only my navigation skills would be thrown out to the hedge, but all my battling skills would be used to a level I never would have thought possible. When I landed back in the base, I was pretty suprised to see the person who constructed the machine talking about the machinery, how to repair it and how to fight efficiently with it. After his little instructions, we had supper in the cave. We ate something I didn't know at the time. It was a dish of meat rolled in a flat bread with a white sauce and some vegetables. It was a nice supper and as soon as it was over, I was asked to get anything that I was carrying and bring them here so I could put it in a small compartment in my machine. I got up, people asked me to follow them in their vehicle and as soon as we left the mountains I hurried to the place where I hid my machine, took all my stuff and got back to the car. The transfer lasted for about two hours and when I got back, I put all my stuff in the small place that was left for it. While getting the last box of material in the compartment, I realized I didn't read the letter that the injured left me some time ago. I reached for it in my pocket, but as I was about to read it, I was interrupted by the technician who told me with a disturbed voice to get out of here with the machine as fast as I could, there was trouble going our way. As fast as I could, I put the letter in my pocket, closed the compartment, went into the machine and closed the door. I took off the ground, went out of the base. Just as I got out of the base, the fire was blazing on the ground and it was rising, and up to the top of where I got out of the mountain. The flames were raging down there. Shaking at the commands of my machine, I tried going back into the hidden base to search of any survivor but an explosion made me think otherwise and with my reflexes, I went off to find a place to leave my machine and to relax a little from the stress I just had. I found a small cave below the sea that communicated to the land where there was enough room to hide my machine without being to suspect. After, I got of the cave, walked to the city and a long thinking began : Why did he blew himself up, why didn't he leave? Was he another person trying to get me into a bigger trap or did he truly made me the gift that I could never refuse? Was this sacrifice to protect myself, or was it completely not intentional. My thought made me drift around the city, for a long time and when my thoughts found their place in my head, I was walking around, it was around midnight, I was walking around the city, aimlessly, going around. I stopped somewhere, it seemed like a place where I could sleep, on the road, but I resigned myself. I went back to the cave, got put a pillow from the compartment and lied down in my vehicle, slowly drifting in a sleep.
On the next morning, when I got up, I realized someone put a paper on the back of my seat. I took it. It was a message left by t he person who helped me understand my machine that had no name. It was a letter, telling me that he feared that people would come and find his base soon. He was afraid of being caught with this machine on his arms. That's why he gave it to me, to safe keep the machine. There was another paragraph on the paper on which I was reading with more attention : it was about the horrible system that was going on world wide. Dictatorship was making the people crawl for their lives. The rest of the comments, I knew what they meant and skipped them. I knew what they meant and I knew the anger they were carrying. I was all too familiar to the system and its twists and turns. Like a tornado that trashes everything around its path, I got up, threw the paper away got my machine up and running and let my fury guide me around. I finally stumbled with my machine on a military base of the precious system. An easy prey for a fox, but still a long way on the road of victory. The prey was easy to spot, but it must have been heavily guarded. Even with these thoughts in my head, I still went down attacking, going for my first battle with this new companion. My angry feelings guided me at first, making me trash the defences, going out for resistance, but the enemies were too strong for my battle talents. Ignoring the scanners and key targets, I was getting down, getting defeated. My angryness turned virtually to strength I was continuing to fire things around, just as if I had control on the situation. Suprisingly, after a while, no other enemies were coming my way. Instead, I could see not far ahead four vehicles, teamed up in pairs, were facing each other looking not moving, not shooting, standing still and waiting. With a subtility that resembling to that of an elephant, I came closer to them, placing myself a little bit backwards, carefully examining each machine. Each one of these pieces of machinery had something that was different from the other, but the style in which they are made was almost identical. I sent a communication, not a really important one, just to ask what we were all waiting for and doing. While I was waiting for a reply, I finally took a look at my scanners, only to see an escape shuttle. A second, later, it had disappeared and another vessel had entered the perimeter. No one had survived the attack, and my anger was swept away, and I was calming down. I opened the communication channel, to hope to have a reply from my question, but nothing came. A communication, coming from the exterior of the base came. It was a military officer, blaming the destruction of a peace delegation by some war machines. Learning that, I closed the channel, got out of the vehicle, lied down on the ground. We had an opportunity to end one problems, and it was wasted and most importantly, maybe by us. I went on the ground walked in between the machines and waited, looking at one another, trying to understand. Why would we become the destroyers of hopes? What happened today was a disaster, most certainly, but will all these troubles end one day? Finally all the machines opened their main door and four pilots got down on the ground. Discussions were starting, talking about who they were and all. I looked at them and one thing struck me : I seemed to have seen one of them before. He went to me, presented himself, and as he did, I asked him :
-Have I seen you somewhere? I think your face tells me something.
-It doubt it, but we never know.
-Have you been injured once in a cold country, in the snow?
-Yes, and someone helped me out.
-Here, I went on, giving the letter the injured gave me, looked at
this. Did you write this message?
As I showed the paper, the person to which I was talking to was looking at the paper with his blue eyes. His face turned white, as much as another person nearby, with brown hair blue eyes, and pretty much looking like a technician, turned and came to ask if all was all right. This second person presented himself as Duo Maxell, and I presented myself, as good as I could as Kyle but for my family name, since it was in a foreign language I tried to give a simpler one but having a family game like Gagnon, it's not easy at all to translate. I gave out my family name, and as expected Duo didn't really seem to understand it. I tried to translated it, said the word and the white faced person looked at me and me to repeat again. -It means something like winning, something close to that word anyway. -Coincidences, Duo went on, all we needed not to know. -For a coincidence, I don't even believe it, the unknown person said. He helped me out and he might be in the same family. -It sure is one, I said. It struck me when you came home, you had some traits that I knew. -My name is Quatre Rabera Winner, the person that I helped in the past said, if I remember I gave you something. Can I have the little rock back? Without saying a word, I went back to my mobile suit, got out the box with precious material, took both the rocks with symbols on them, took the letter with almost nothing left written on it and brought them to Quatre. He said with a little bit of a joke : "Hey, bro., I hope you still have them since they are pretty important." As I got to him, I asked him which one is his little rock. Looking at the stones, we realized they were the same, having the same little marking on it. Quatre, taking one of the stones, looked at the letter, taking his time, trying to get the most information as he could he told me not to go away, he would have to talk to me privately. Duo, Quatre and myself went to talk to the other persons that presented themselves. Listening to their conversation, I learned where I had landed : New Edwards military base. This little place was full of missiles and it was pretty dangerous to stay there. One of the five other pilots realized the mistake and hurried into the base. We all got in our machines and prepared to take off. Minutes later, the treat was taken off and we went off in teams. I followed Quatre and as we flew away, some memories from the prison came back, with the conditions, the cold and the pain. Awful pain came back, haunted me, and in seconds, my machine feel down, near the sea, and eventually was a little bit stopped by the water floor. I don't know what happened while I was underwater but when I woke up, I was lying down on a bed, close to a window that was open, looking at the shiny sea and the marvellous day that was before me. What happened in the machine, I didn't understand. Minutes later Quatre came in, asked me how I was, and pulled down a chair. He sat and asked me what happened. I was thinking at the same time, had I forgotten something from the prison. Did I see... I began talking to Quatre about my country my city and how my family was. He saw that I used that past in everything I told him so I told him what happened to them and I added to the description of the problem : "I'm not sure of they were tortured and I wouldn't want it to have happened but I have no way of telling. My memories of this moment passed at Tilabus were pulled away as I got out. All of this was horrible and I began forgetting them. While I was piloting some images came, they were worse than I thought. What have they done? What have they made me become?" A reply from Quatre came a little bit later : "Don't worry, about it, they made you someone who is going to help people because you've been pushed to the extreme limit. I don't know what they made you see out there in this prison but you have to move on. They might have wanted to get rid of you and everyone you know but you managed to make their plan fail. This machine you have, it's the same style as mine. Do not waste it and don't worry, I'll help you out with battling skills. I've seen at New Edwards that you weren't really good at it so don't worry about it, just relax a little bit and later just find me. I'll probably in the music room on the first floor." He got up, went out of the room and closed the door. I was feeling a little better now, but the fall into the ocean made me a little bit tired. I lied down and I fell in a small slumber.
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