Before any of it, he was a student. EVE University, the patient way they teach it. What stuck wasn't doctrine or fitting theory — it was smaller: how to take a frigate, cheap and expendable, and put a battleship in his sights anyway. How to punch up. Everything after started there.

They called him a Goon once. He flew Abaddons in the big fleets, bridged across the map by Titans he never saw the bridge of, only the cyno flare and the jump. Northern Coalition met that wall more than once. Carriers died under it, structures came down floor by floor. He earned a medal for it. Doesn't mention it unless asked.

Somewhere in there he went quiet — joined Incompertus Inc, part of Fatal Ascension, welcomed in like anyone else. That was the point. He didn't take the corp by force. By the time anyone understood what had happened, the CEO was out and Jaang Mei held what had been someone else's. No fleet fight, no killmail. Just a door that quietly changed locks. Names he flew beside through it all don't answer to those names anymore. Some don't answer at all. He remembers them anyway.

Then he came back to EVE University — not as a student, as a teacher. Then as something more: taking the serious ones past the classroom into covert ops, the kind of work with no syllabus. PC9 was the proving ground, fighting CFT for ground that changed hands more times than anyone counted. The graduate medal wasn't for finishing a course. It was for what he'd built on the way through.

Then he left null-sec behind. A C3, high static on one side, C4 on the other — a crossroads, not a home. He learned to read a system before it read him, to vanish before the question of where he'd gone finished forming. Wormhole space doesn't forgive hesitation. He stopped hesitating.

Nobody quite agrees on where he's been since. Not an accident.

Now he's gone quiet in a different way — Pochven-bound, Triglavian ships in his hangar, standings earned in the dark. The old stories tell of something past the treeline, that you don't summon so much as encounter, already there before you knew to look. He's not chasing that name. But it fits, and he's stopped correcting people who use it.

Jaang Mei doesn't announce himself. If you're reading this, he already knows you're here.