“Hey Bolas you done with the weekend muster report yet?” I sighed as my airheaded superior brought it up for the at least the tenth time that day. “It’s in your box Edwards. And don’t forget that i’m separated starting monday and you gotta go to CS3 Jenkins for everything.” He blushed and started blustering how he wasn’t that forgetful but i just raised my hand in a last farewell. He was a great guy to work with in almost every way with the sole exception of him being ridiculously forgetful on a regular basis.

On his way out he just so happened to run into his commanding officer on the smoke deck right after walking outside the skin of the ship. “Good evening sir.” “Good evening Niko, how many planes you walked to lately?” With a grin i said “Too many for my deck to handle sir.” We both laughed and headed towards the quarterdeck, chatting while we went. We mostly talked about how he was gonna have to find someone else to bake him sweets at two o’clock underway. Before i came onboard he was a notoriously picky eater when it came to sweets, but it only took once before he all but begged me to be in charge of the ships ’Donut Factory’.

When we got to the quarter deck he stopped me and had the watch standers ring me off. Technically they weren’t supposed to but i was friends with both of them and it was the CO’s order. I could only smile and shake my head at my their shenanigans since they all knew i didn’t like sappy goodbye’s. With one last look at my home for last four years i shook my captain's hand one more time and bid my farewell. I was already in my civilian clothes so i immediately called a taxi and was on my way to the airport.

On the way i could help but think back to my time in the Navy and was a little sad to be leaving. It had been four years since i had been home but that was my own choice. My parents had died in a car accident on the way to my boot camp graduation, and since i had no other relatives that i new of they were buried that week. First thing i did after that was drive nearly sixteen hours to my girlfriends house because i just needed some support and i didn’t know who else to turn to. I walked in on my best friend screwing her doggy style in an apartment that i had completely paid for but had yet to sleep in. I new what was going on when i saw the same wallet i had made for my lifelong best friend Tyson Cole in my leather working class in highschool on top of a short skirt i remembered buying on our second date.

By that point though i was well and deep sunk into shock, i knew i was since i heard the lid of my parents slam closed as we laid them six feet into the ground. Everything felt like i was watching a movie in first person view. As i walked down the hall i could hear the moans and breathless panting but i was far past rational thought. I remember pushing the door open and the hinges squeaked just in time for my eyes to theirs. They both froze they had just got tasered. I lifted up the skirt and wallet which i still couldn’t remember actively picking from the hallway.

“I still remember when i made this you know. It was our junior year but you had accidently overloaded your schedule so i said i take the class and make you the wallet you wanted as the final project.” The wallet was in my left hand and the skirt in my right, It even still had the matching panties in it. “I remember buying you this on our second date, and saying it could be a deadly weapon of cuteness if you wore it and so happened to blush. I remember your laugh and saying it was the third corniest thing you ever heard.” I left them drop to the floor and looked into first my former best friends eyes and then my Ex-girlfriends eyes and before they could look away i let them see the soul crushing heartbreak i felt inside.

We would always joke about how my close friends could always tell what i was feeling by looking in my eyes, they would say it was like looking at a pond without ripples. They both flinched like i had slapped them as they heard the wallet hit the floor. “Do you guys remember when i asked you to come to my graduation?

Samantha, you said you were very sick and when i said i’d send my parents to check on you i remember the panic in your voice. Though i ignored it at the time and thought i was mistaken. Tyson, I remember when i called you and you said you were in a business meeting for the next week in atlanta. I begged you over the phone, i pleaded with you. I couldn’t bring myself to even say it out loud at the time but that was for my parents funeral. There funeral ended fifteen hours thirty eight minutes ago, and i drove here right after.”

He took a ring case from his pocket and tossed it so it landed open right in front of her, It was a five grand wedding ring with the price tag still attached. “I bought that the same day i enlisted. I told myself that as soon as i graduated i would bend my knee and ask that question.”

He watch the horror and guilt deepen with every word he said. He had silent tears streaming down his face at this point but he couldn’t even feel it. They all knew that scars like this never healed with time, they only scabbed over. “Never contact me again.” After that it got even more hazy and he could only barely remember driving away and sure enough as he rounded the corner he saw tysons pickup parked in the resident parking lot.

That was his first time sleeping in a roadside motel. When he woke up and checked out he immediately drove back and reported for duty. Over the next few weeks he performed perfectly in his A-school but everything else deteriorated. He slept almost constantly and would at most eat one meal a day.

Eventually people started to notice and they got him help. Turns out they have whole departments in each command just for this kind of thing, but even then they tried everything and were at their wits end. I was losing weight at a terrifying pace and they were forced to put a watch on me to even make sure i ate. After nearly six months of this i had all but asked to die. One day the command Master Chief was actually doing an inspection of the barracks happened to find out about me and took a personal interest. And by interest we spard, or rather the first two or three sessions he beat the shit out of me.

One day i just snapped, because he wasn’t expecting it i knocked the wind out of him. He now had a bruise in the perfect indention of my fist in his stomach, the trade off at this point was that my body was completely emaciated and that hit broke two fingers, my wrist, and fractured my forearm along with a plethora of strained muscles and a few pulled ligaments. It was the first time in what seemed like years i had felt anything at all, it was the beginning of my recovery. It took most of the next two years to fully piece myself together, and even now it hurts to think of their betrayal. I studied a variety of survival skills, martial arts, melee weapon fighting techniques over that time.

I never did fully understand why but eventually i developed my own mixed martial art from piecing together everything i knew and incorporated heavy weapons into it. Everything from clubs of ridiculously oversized wood to warhammers to homemade greatswords i trained with until i could wield as naturally as breathing. It was never anything more than my personal hobby to pass the time but i still got many weird looks because of it, especially when i turned down drinking because of it, of course they could only grumble the one time i accepted and they all tried to pull my shirt off once they thought they got me drunk.

One of the bartenders was the one who put them up to it and was known as an untouchable ice queen that had no interest in men. That was the one and only night anyone ever saw her go slack jawed and she said “Holy Christ your sculpted like a fucking greek god, is that shit for real.” After which he made two of them carry him back and they could only grumble after that.

One day it kinda just faded under the radar and of course there was a plethora of bad jokes made about it by my shipmates and friends. I still wasn’t completely fine but i was alright. The taxi shuddered me out of my thoughts as we pulled up to the airport, i paid and grabbed my bags before heading to the registry counter. The normal Process ensued and within an hour he was on a flight from Okinawa, Japan back to the states.