Fighter
Legacy Name: Fighter_957

The younger man shivered slightly in his arms, although Caleb held him close. His thin clothes did little to protect against the cool night air, and although Caleb had offered his jacket, Aidan had turned him down. He had offered again, only to be rejected a second time. He knew better than to offer the jacket again. Perhaps Aidan simply wanted to feel something real.

"I think everyone should come up here sometime, like this," he said, softly, with his lips grazing Caleb's ear as he spoke.

"It's dangerous," he responded.

"That doesn't deter us."

"We're not normal."

Aidan's response was silence, and Caleb followed suit. For some amount of time, he was not sure because it did not matter, the soft symphony of the night was composed of merely the low thrum of the machine, their breaths, and the slight breeze.

"Everyone seems so insignificant from up here," Aidan finally whispered.

"Perhaps they are insignificant." Then he added, "to us, at least. Not to them."

"Everyone matters to someone."

"Everyone should matter to everyone."

Caleb Vandeski was born poor. He never let this bother him. Growing up in the slums beneath the plate was hard, yes. But growing up any where was hard, for different reasons. Certainly, coming into existence trapped underneath the city, out of sight and mind of the wealthier "citizens", cast a haze of despair over some of his fellows...but Caleb never caught that disease. Just because the topside city was deaf to the telltale heart of its subplate sister, did not mean that its people lived for nothing.

He guessed he was lucky. He actually had a family, at one point. A mother, and a father. He was five years old when he was due to have a sister, but that sister never came. His mother died in childbirth, and her infant died as well. Although the loss of his wife devastated Caleb's father, he held on for the sake of his only son.

Caleb was always aware of how difficult this was. The thing about the slums was that if you were going to learn something, you had to learn it on your own, and Caleb was gifted enough to pick that up at a fairly young age. But once he latched onto that philosophy, it became him. He created his life, his ideas, his knowledge. As there was nothing worthwhile to be learned from school, he learned from observing the people around him, and as he grew older, the people above plate. No one will pay much heed to a little kid by himself if the little kid is dirty. After all, in accordance to the topside mentality, it is better to pretend you didn't see what you didn't want to see.

As his father grew older, and Caleb matured, he took the mantel of breadwinner. Grateful to the man who struggled to raise him, Caleb vowed to look after him as he grew to an adult. However, employment opportunities were scarce for those who were from beneath the plate. After holding a few odd jobs, Caleb took to thieving.

And he was good at it.

No one ever really bothered to access his capabilities, but he had tested them many times before. He found he was cunning, quick thinking, and more importantly, quick on his feet. By the time he was sixteen years old, seventeen years old, eighteen years old, he had a formidable criminal record and the kind of reputation that comes with it. The names they came up with were ones he didn't feel suited him, though. They were all derogatory, with the hint of offence that he would dare steal people's conveniences. But the way he always saw it, he took things that were unnecessary. Televisions, computers, music players. He could never understand why people got in such a fuss about them.

It was by chance that he ran into Aidan Marandelth, son of Vincent Marandelth, the governor. In fact, it wasn't even much of an encounter. He happened to glance in his direction and then it came to him, for no particular reason, that that young man was completely miserable. The only natural conclusion from this assumption was that Caleb had to meet with him in person. He found it wildly intriguing that someone who seemed to have it all could be so unhappy. And while the fact in itself did not surprise him, he wanted to know the reason.

So that very evening he appeared on Aidan's balcony, and the two engaged in the conversation of their young lives.

No more than a year and a half later, they were married.

No less than a day later, the authorities, sent by Aidan's disapproving father, caught up with the master thief, who was given two choices: life in prison (because while years of thieving do not merit such a sentence, marrying the son of a governor without aforementioned governor's consent, was) or five years of service to the army, to fight in some interplanetary war with some species of alien with some precious resource that Earth wanted. Feeling slightly more optimistic with the second option, Caleb joined the service, only to be pulled out of regular training and turned into a Viper.