Ethan hopped in his elevator and descended smoothly down his skyscraper to the 63rd floor where his helipad was. Can't be late to Colin's college graduation, he thought to himself. Ethan was going to speak at Colin's college graduation today, so he had to move fast and arrive early to greet the graduating students. Colin was Ethan's brother Ken's son, and Ethan loved him with no bounds, for it was all that he had left of Ken.

Colin was one and a half years old when Ethan found him on his doorstep. It was a startling way of learning of his brother, Ken's, death. Ethan and his father fled to Xanythar 5 years before Ken died. By Ethan's second year of college, his father was dead. He quickly contracted a new disease called mortususs, which eats all the muscle tissue in your body, leaving a lifeless pile of skin and bone. The disease killed the victim years before it was finished but usually didn't falter until the victim had rotted away, leaving nothing to remember the departed soul.

Ethan hopped eagerly onto his dropship patiently waiting on the helipad with none of the supposed lethargy of being 43 years old. He bounded into the co-pilot seat and strapped himself.

"Good morning, Jonathan," Ethan greeted his droid pilot with a bright smile. He took a seat and the plane zoomed off.

It had only been an hour when the plane abruptly decelerated, shoving Ethan and the pilot forward forcefully. The C-74 Aeolus landed on an open field with a hiss as the back door lowered gradually. Ethan strode out, only to be blinded by the camera flash of paparazzi. A tomato nicked his ear, and he heard an uproar from his right. A group of haters held eggs, tomatoes, and other soft food items, ready to strike.

Ethan, not letting the angry mob tarnish his image, ambled calmly through the paparazzi as they showered him with questions.

"What are your plans to expand KangID?"

"Why such a sudden surge in mass production?"

"Do you have any upcoming defense programs?"

Ethan seemed to phase through the crowd as he walked nonchalantly towards the backstage, unaffected by the paparazzi fighting their way to him. He walked through the hallway, a crowd of journalists behind him clambering over each other to ask him even more pointless questions.

He trudged up a flight of stairs to the stage, where a student with the last name Engel stepped up to the platform. Ethan scanned the crowd. Colin would be somewhere in the middle of the line of students waiting for their degree.

Ethan set himself down at the back of the stage, his script in his hands. He studied it for what seemed to be hours when he heard the presenter boom, "Colin Kang!", mispronouncing his last name. "It's Kāng, not Keng, sir," Colin corrected him as Colin walked onto the pedestal.

As Colin finished his speech, stepped off the platform and scurried off into the distance, Ethan again put his head down and monotonously mumbled his script to himself. He dozed through the remaining students' graduation speeches but then cries of "Uncle! I'm over here!" filled the air. Ethan glanced up at the crowd and saw his nephew waving his hands and jumping crazily up and down.

Ethan hurried down the steps on the side of the stage and embraced Colin. "I miss you so much!" Colin said. Ethan pulled away. "How was college?" "Pretty good, I'd say," Colin replied, "and how's the company coming along?"

Ethan replied, "The government needs a ton of my weapons for a project and I have to meet their demands by the end of Xani or," Ethan switched to a mocking tone, "I'm cut off from the government forever... It's tough." Colin just laughed at the comment. "You really think that? They don't have anybody else to make quality weapons. We're a monopoly."

Ethan sighed, his shoulders sagging from the weight of the Project White Ops situation. "There's a lot you don't understand, Colin. Everybody's expendable...."

He was interrupted by a booming voice. "PLEASE TAKE A SEAT. THE COMMENCEMENT SPEECH IS ABOUT TO BEGIN." "Good luck, Uncle," Colin muttered, and he hurried off the stage. Ethan tried to inhale deeply, not that he could in the smoggy, ashen sky.

Ethan made his way to the platform and adjusted the microphone. "Hello, departing seniors, butterflies exiting the cocoon, birds taking flight for the first time, or whatever other pointless metaphor you can name. As all of you know, I am Ethan Kang, and at one point I was just like you... minus the parents watching you all in the crowd."

"My father died of mortuus when I was 19, one year after I moved to Xanythar to evade the annual draft in the East Asian Confederation. We were fortunate enough to have just enough money to move here but just short of the funds required to come to this college. I had to work as a clerk at an insurance marketing firm every single afternoon just to be able to pay my tuition, much less buy a car or an apartment."

Ethan looked around and nodded to make his message clear, then he went on. "Three years later, a wonderful baby appeared on my doorstep." In the distance, Colin raised his hand, saying, "Yup, that's me!", and everybody erupted into laughter. Ethan sighed as he waited patiently for everyone to stop laughing. He could hear the professors telling the students to stop laughing as they kept chatting and rolled in their chairs in laughter. Ethan stared at Colin and shook his head. Colin lowered his head and slouched down in his chair.

"But here I am, successful and happy, and there are 5 main factors I can attribute to my success. The first main factor is ambition. Growing up, I always wanted to manufacture aircraft. Not as a worker, but as the owner. The guy on top. I read many books about legendary defense companies like Airbus, Dassault, Northrop Grumman, and many others, dreaming about being like their owners, profiting off transportation, convenience, and protection," Ethan said, being careful not to sound like he was saying things he did not mean like "I wanted to profit off bombs and destruction."

He was about to begin another sentence of his life story when the crowd suddenly erupted in chaos. A cloud of soldiers dressed in black charged through the crowd, only one of them clambered up the stage. Ethan dove behind the platform, only to find more soldiers waiting for him. He tapped his watch and a laser extended out of the adjustment knob.

A soldier charged at Ethan but Ethan quickly shot the soldier's nightstick out of his hand and landed a kick to his groin. Ethan blasted the soldier into the wall, and he slumped to the ground, lifeless. He blasted another soldier, sending the soldiers behind him toppling like dominoes.

Ethan saw an opening through the hullabaloo of people panicking and screaming as they ran in all directions. He dove through the opening and rammed through a row of fleeing students and was about to leave when BONK! A soldier smacked the back of his head, causing Ethan to go limp, sliding across the linoleum.