Changes

November 5, 2007

Xenet 71.43.1 System Msg

TTY31201.11.05

Network Connection Enabled
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There’s this old saying back on Earth, “war changes a man”. I’d heard it many times, mostly from my grandfather who had fought in World War II, but I never really got it. Sure, I could understand it in a general sense. The idea of taking another mans life to preserve your own and those of the people around you is something that is bound to change you but never having been through that type of ordeal I could never fully grasp the extent of that change.

I get it now.

A lot has changed since that November night two years ago. I’ve witnessed unimaginable horrors, I’ve watched friends die and I’ve committed atrocities that I never would have believed myself capable of just to stay alive. Two years ago I was a long haired, slightly overweight video store manager with no real ambition in life. Now I stand in Concordia Wilderness on Foreas, covered in armor and toting more firepower than Earth laws would have allowed. Two years ago my shoulder length hair was black, now it is short, the dye has washed out and it's beginning show signs of grey. My once perfect vision is now obscured by an eye patch thanks to a particularly nasty Thrax soldier whose skull now sits in my footlocker. Two years ago I would flinch any time I pulled the trigger of a gun but now I don’t even think twice about blowing away any Bane soldier that would threaten me or those under my command.

— Sebastian Bennett
Soldier, Survivor, and a Changed Man