early draft 4 Erich's background prolly not gonna work [hider=Early Life][indent][color=gray] Erich is the second son of Klaus and Anna, the current heads of the von Demirci family. The Demircis are old money in Germany with a line extending back to the first men to leave the Burrows and re-settle the world. Their company, Iron Defense Solutions, made its millions selling weapons to anyone willing to open their pocketbooks to them: raiders, contractors, independent settlements or the many subsidiaries of their parent company, Paragon. It didn't matter to them, so long as there was a profit to be made. The many von Demirci children were all raised to serve the family. They were taught from their first day that their own, personal ambitions and desires came secondary to the needs of the whole. Erich, desperate for his parents' approval, did everything he could think of to prove that he was loyal and willing. He devoted himself wholly to the family and the company, and that dedication caught his father's eye. His efforts went ignored for the first few years...until he tested positive for Neural Combatant compatibility. Klaus began to pay much more attention to his boy. He 'convinced' him to go through with the plug surgery and enlisted several military officers to personally mold Erich into the perfect little soldier. It was a cruel process designed to work Erich to the bone until every bit of individuality had been scrubbed out. He was made a tool, a weapon, and Klaus had managed to convince Erich that this was all happening because Erich was his [i]favorite[/i]. That he only wanted what was best for him. Maybe, in his own twisted way, his old man meant it. [/color][/indent][/hider] [hider=Military Service][indent][color=gray]When he had finished his training Erich was finally deployed. He was made to shadow the command officer of a unit of corporate soldiers, the Black Steel Battalion, with the hope that Erich would eventually take the man's place when he was ready. The battalion was sent to crush an insurrection in the territory around the Gulf of Guinea. It was the closest thing Paragon had to a frontier, making resupply difficult and reinforcement non-existent. Worse still, the local rebels had mastered the terrain, especially the tropical forests, and took every opportunity to use that to their advantage. They launched night raids, ambushed patrols, poisoned water sources and never allowed themselves to be caught in an extended fight. Guerrilla tactics were not a new phenomena for Black Steel, but they'd never seen them enacted with such skill before. The soldiers took to calling the rebels the 'Shadow Army,' as it felt like the only thing they ever saw of the terrorists was their shadows. It was a demoralizing kind of warfare, meant more to chip away at a man's will to fight than anything else. Erich wasn't immune to it, even with all of his extensive training, but he fared a great deal better than many of his comrades. He made a point of always pushing himself a [i]little[/i] further than anyone else in his squadron was willing to go. Always seemed ready to volunteer for any sortie, no matter the circumstance or danger of it. He wanted to make his father proud. That constant push to be better than everyone else rubbed many of his fellow soldiers the wrong way, especially as it continued on for [i]years[/i]. Nobody liked Erich much, even when he was a grunt. But when the major eventually- at his father's directive- put him in a leadership position? Their annoyance turned quite quickly to outright disdain. Nobody knows precisely what went down at Queensway Harbor. The mission report has largely been redacted, leaving little outside of rumors to fill that large void in information. What [i]is[/i] known is that Erich's squadron, the Marked Men, was sent into the city to capture a high-level member within the rebel movement and extract him for questioning. An unknown set of events caused the operation to go sour, and when the Marked Men went weapons free they demolished a large portion of the city's residential area, resulting in catastrophic causalities among the civilian population. The mission was a disaster by every metric. The loss of life brought a great deal of sympathy to the rebellion's cause, dragged the eyes of international observers and other megacorps that were quick to jump on the bad PR, and the man they were after managed to escape in the chaos. The major shifted the blame from himself to the man he put in charge of the operation, claiming that the plan itself was not the problem, rather the leader that failed so spectacularly at executing it. Erich, still reeling from the disaster, wasn't able to properly defend himself against the accusations. The media circus went so far to give the young officer a nickname: [i]The Black Butcher of Queensway Harbor.[/i] [/color][/indent][/hider] [hider=House Arrest] [indent][color=gray] Erich was returned to his family's estate in Saxony shortly after, where he was immediately greeted by a punch to the face from his dad. Klaus was absolutely furious at his son's failure, and made it readily apparent that his bosses were, too. Paragon executives wanted the incident buried and Erich gone. While the meaning of 'gone' wasn't elaborated on, Erich had a good idea what it meant even as he was confined to the premises of his childhood home while Klaus went to work scrubbing the massacre, or at least his company's involvement, from history. The disgraced second son didn't leave his room for a week straight. He refused to eat, refused to bath, refused to see anyone- anyone but his baby sister, Karoline. Erich had never been close with any of his other siblings. They were either never around or jealous of all the attention he was getting from dear old dad. But Karol never seemed to care about that. She was just happy to have someone to play with, and she was absolutely [i]fascinated[/i] by his NC training. She always wanted to hear him talk about it when he finished, but Erich was always too exhausted to so much as stand afterward- still, he tried to muster up the energy to tell her about it every time. It was when he found himself a prisoner in his own home that the two became truly inseparable, however. She was the closest thing he had to a lifeline during those tumultuous days. It was a little embarrassing, given that she was seven years his younger and little more than a kid at sixteen, but he didn't care- she was all he had at the time he was at his most vulnerable. He wasn't sure what he would've done to himself if she wasn't there to talk to him, to [i]listen[/i] to him as no one else seemed willing to. Karol was the only one willing to hear the truth about what happened, to hear [i]his[/i] side of things. And his story made her absolutely furious. Their talks must have pushed her over the edge. Karol became emboldened and started to listen in on their father's conversations. She started going through his notes and following him around the premises when she could. It was during one of her little espionage operations that she claimed to have learned that Klaus planned to disappear her brother. She was quick to tell Erich. He was stubbornly resistant to the idea, at first; some part of him still looked up to and idolized Klaus. But Karol had a way with words that few others could match, and she managed to convince him that he had to leave if he wanted to survive: [b]immediately[/b]. 'Immediately' turned into 'a week and a half later,' unfortunately- they needed time to coordinate with their contacts and ensure that everything would go off without a hitch. Eventually, however, their daring escape was enacted. With the help of some of the estate's staff and more than a few friends in Defense Solutions, Erich and Karoline were able to disappear on the same night that the [u]Reichsritter[/u] went missing from its storage unit at the company's headquarters, right out from underneath Klaus's nose. [/color][/indent][/hider] [hider=Reborn] [indent][color=gray] Eh [/color][/indent] [/hider]