I went to a "special" school. The sort of school you attend because your parents "know" things man was not meant to know. We weren't being trained to be members of some sort of top-secret army of darkness or any sort of bullshit along those lines. Think of it as a church school but without the prostrating before God for your inherently guilty soul. Somewhere in this universe, there has to be places where people who are "in the know" when it comes to the occult and the "Secrets of the Universe" get their legwork done. Secluded boarding schools on backwater worlds people don't give a damn about because that's how the bursars and prefects WANT it to be.

While there, I fell in with the "wrong crowd." We were still tight-ass pompous snobs like the rest of the school, but we were looking for something different. We didn't crack as many books as the rest. We would spend our nights roaming the backwoods and wastelands of our pathetic little planet, intent on finding some lost treasure or whatnot. That's hardly worth mentioning if this was a normal school with average school-aged brats, but in our world it was the equivalent of juvenile delinquency. We just wanted a little action to break the theoretical monotony.

We never did find anything. No high-flung adventures or whatnot. I just happened to be the only one out of my little posse to graduate on time. That, in turn, led my profs to say I had "the Devil's own luck" for being able to pull off my delinquent exploits and still manage the backbreaking course work.

Devil's Own Luck indeed. I just cheated.

I made my first heist the day before I was due to graduate from university. I had perfect marks. Accolades from the Faculty. Even dear old dad had fronted me the money to begin a nice little research project at a prestigious think tank at which he was a partner. After pulling a few strings, I managed to liquidate the research grant and use most of it to buy the very ship I command to this day.

But that's not the heist.

Not satisfied with merely running away from home, I wanted to make a name for myself. Never mind the fact that I had no bloody idea what that name should be, infamy is infamy. During each graduation ceremony, the top student from the graduating class is allowed to take a sip of wine from a goblet that has been with the university since its opening centuries ago. Studded with jewels that have since become unobtainable for one reason or another and crafted from a precious alloy that takes roughly 1000 years to process. A real nice sippy cup.

Naturally, I stole the wine that goes into that cup. Eight bottles of unlabeled, putrid-tasting vino. Each bottle netted me close to 100 million on the open market.

I have the double-edged tendency to find and avoid danger in the same breath. I'll be having a quiet conversation in a bar, not unlike this one, and a former "associate" who feels dissatisfied with my services will barge in and begin a gunfight. Push comes to shove, bullet flies from gun, and in the end I'm fine and dandy and the poor clod who started the fight is cold dead. Danger comes to town, drives to my house, but doesn't get the nerve to knock on my door. The bitch.

Flashback to about three years ago. Fabien and I were both on the trail for an ancient city situated in the harsh southern pole of Byaus. Bastard reached the location a good ten hours before my crew. All the man needed to do was torture the word "south" out of our informant and he beat us to the goal. Only a nasty snowstorm kept him from leaving the city before we could reach him.

Naturally, we had it out. Fabien with his sabre, me with an empty rifle equipped with a bayonet. We were in a deadlock. Both of us were battered and bloodied but neither one of us could make the killing blow. Sensing he was starting to feel the sting of the bitter arctic air after ten hours of exposure, I tackled him and threw both of us into a pool of frigid water. The force of my strike caused Fabien to lose his weapon, likewise with myself. After we struggled back to the surface and resumed our fight, Fabien found himself next to my rifle and I found myself next to his sabre. I picked up his sabre with ease, but from the moment Fabien's hands touched the rifle, I knew I had the fight. No fear came across his face, no audible or visual hint of discomfort. Despite this, when you've been in the field as long as I have, you can tell when a fellow adventurer is out of his element. Without his sabre, Fabien was out of his element.

Many a man can claim he wants to succeed at life, but his actions tell you otherwise. That childhood friend of yours that gloated when he won the game for the varsity team? Sure, his desire led him to a few moments of glory in his youth but where is he now? At best he's sitting at home growing fat while he works some dead-end desk job and has a wife that tolerates his existence. He said he wanted to "do it all." He said he wanted to "rule the world." Then he faced reality and ran like the lily-livered pansy that he is on the inside.

But people like you and I, we can face reality and claim that our boasts and bragging are the real deal. It has nothing to do with how brilliant we are or anything like that. We just want it more than everyone else, and thus we get it more than anyone else.