There was a lot of blood.
As the current Avatar of Truth, Pirsis had seen plenty of messed up things. But the young captain who's mind, memories, and Echo Shard she'd just gone through... well, his appearance spoke for itself; covered head to toe in blood, mud, and dirt. Not an inch of him, skin, mind, or armor, was clean.
And yet he just... sat across from her the whole time, hands folded on the table in front of him, casually as if his wrists were not, in fact, bound, as she determined whether his report was true, or if he was the one who'd been indoctrinated.
She didn't know what was more disturbing; that he was capable of killing a twenty-one man crew without being injured, that he'd been captaining him for years... or the fact that a twenty-one man crew had all been indoctrinated while their captain had somehow managed to avoid that fate. The implications of that were disturbing, horrific, and troubling. Where and how had they been exposed? And where had their captain been during that time?
"Again; you are certain you can confirm you destroyed the objective successfully?" she asked.
"Yes." the young captain said quietly.
What a waste. That technology could have won us the war, or at least given the new Empire an advantage. If there was a new empire; there was still no telling whether the Avatar of Knowledge's insane cryostasis idea would work.
"Then... you are dismissed." she reached over, and deactivated his restraints. He stood. "Report to showers; the results of your mission will be told to command. In the meantime, get some sleep; you are wanted by Kavrok early tomorrow morning."
"What would another Avatar want with me?" though he was covered in blood, she still thought she saw him pale a shade or two. There were only a few reasons for the Avatar of Vengeance to get involved missions gone sour... and punishing kin-slayers was one of them.
"You killed the enemy, not other protheans." she assured. "As for what he wants, I do not know. So let me repeat my order; go sleep, Javik."
There was... a lot of blood.
Oh, spirits above...
He was going to yap. It was everywhere, the blood. The floor, the walls(and it wasn't just blood on the walls, oh spirits...), the... the bodies...
Oh, spirits and stars...
"Come on, Nathan; don't you leave that kid!" As a turian, most attempts to resuscitate a human(who in this case was Nathan Butler) would be harried by the complication that the most effective human CPR technique required lips. Which turians didn't have.
And Butler had lost too much blood anyway, so why was he even trying?
"G-Garrus?" a shaky voice rasped from the stairway. Shocked into giving up his attempt to revive Butler, the turian looked up to see Sensat peeking downwards, the salarian pale and covered in his own blood, but looking relieved at the sight of his leader.
"Sensat!" he jumped to his feet an bolted up the stairs, fumbling for the medigel on his belt. Sensat tried to meet him, but nearly fell into his arms instead. Garrus helped him to one of the couches and started smearing medigel into his wounds, all the while his brain telling him it wouldn't be enough; the salarian was in too bad a shape.
But... he had to try. He had to try.
"They came out of.. know-where." Sensat grunted as Garrus treated him. "Guerrilla-style attack, took out... Erash and Krul right away, Montegue soon after. They got... ripped apart."
"I saw." was all the turian managed to get out. "Don't talk, save your strength. I've got to get you out of here."
He spent the next ten minutes applying medigel and searching desperately for a safe way out.
He didn't find one.
Why wasn't Javik surprised? The boy had already proven he was too intelligent for his own good(and more so than most primitives he'd met), and he'd had a literal lifetime to study the patterns in his and Garrus' hunt for the Horizon Syndicate.
Of course he would come to the conclusion I know more than I tell.
It was an open secret among the Normandy crew that something had happened in the Exodus cluster, two months after the end of the Reaper War, resulting in the loss of Garrus' right leg, the looting of a cache of high-tech prothean weaponry, the exploding of a mountain, an ensuing odd but close kinship between the two of them, and a righting of his own mental state resulting from a literal and figurative ass-kicking from the turian.
And now, Thracius Vakarian, Garrus' son, was standing across from him; arms crossed, stance indicative that he'd give a fight if Javik tried to get out of this, fiery colony markings standing out accusingly, a whole two heads taller than Javik, and very much demanding answers in a confrontation that the prothean would have happily sang,danced, or done any manner of ridiculous things to avoid.
Because this was a story, a very shame-filled one, that he would rather not tell. And yes, he would tell it in words. Because if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he didn't want to show anyone his memories of the event. They were things he didn't want anyone to see.
It was already... bad enough. And it was looking like he was going to have to tell. A watered-down version of events, perhaps; just as things had happened on that thrice-cursed planet that Javik considered personal ghosts, there were things that Garrus probably wouldn't want his child to know about him. Huh, that was funny; he'd just made a moral conclusion that the turian would probably actually approve of.
Too bad he wasn't here to see it.
"Well?" and he said it in khelish. Vakarian number two only meant business when he lapsed into khelish. Javik sighed.
"This... will take very long."
And here you have the prologue for The Parting Shot. This is the prequel for Out of Tricks. It will follow a once-a-month update pattern like Losing Time, Taking My Own Way Down. It will be long, with some scenes of heavy violence, and an attempt at suicide near the end. Be forewarned; this is not a happy story, even if the ending does lead to positive things. These characters are basically doing self-surgery; this takes place right after the Reaper War, and everybody is messed up inside. They need to let it all out.
There will be blood, angst, and massive explosions for the sake of massive explosions. There will be existential crisis with a side order of violent unpredictability. To quote Lemony Snicket: "This is a very tragic story with no happy beginning and no happy end, and very few happy things in between."
There will also be a pineapple joke. You know how I work.
Fare Thee Well.