Vengeance

"Able Ryder I presume?"

For the second time today, a chill went up Ryder's spine. True, he'd only been greeted like that once today by Kendra Midori and even then it was more along the lines of "welcome to Pandora, now grab a weapon and shoot stuff before we place you in your avatar." But this greeting, while far more formal, was also far more ominous.

"Yeah, that's me..." said the signals specialist, turning slowly from his locker to the new arrival. "Can I help you?"

It was a rhetorical question. Like Ryder, this man (Asian as far as he could tell, though ethnicity didn't count for much in light of globalization) was obviously a member of SecOps, spouting green fatigues and a disconnected exopack in one hand. The only difference was that he had a hardened feel about him, the type of look one got from either fighting in one of all the shitty little wars plaguing Earth and/or performing ones duties on the most hostile planet (well, technically moon) known to humanity. And while Ryder didn't lack knowledge in the former category, he certainly knew that he was still a newbie in regards to the latter and therefore would toe the line.

"Perhaps you can," said the veteran, walking towards Ryder slowly and methodically. "But perhaps we should take care of introductions first." He extended a hand. "Kojo Aku, lieutenant in SecOps."

Part of Ryder's mind prompted him to salute but most of it-the part tempered by informalities and five years of space travel instead prompted him to shake his superior's hand. Oh, and there was the fact that as friendly as the man seemed to be, Ryder couldn't help but remove the chill down his spine. Something was amiss. Or at least more amiss in light of Harper's death.

With the lieutenant grabbling Ryder's hand and twisting it, the signals specialist suddenly had an idea as to what.

For someone as...weathered as he looked, Aku could move extraordinarily fast. Kneeing him in the groin and shoving Ryder to the floor, the fight was over before it had even begun. However, Aku clearly had other ideas, slamming a boot multiple times upon his face, breaking his nose and what felt like some teeth. By the time he let up, grabbing Ryder by his shirt and slamming him against the iron end of a barracks bed, it was pretty much a superfluous effort.

"That felt good..." Aku sneered. "Five years of waiting has had me on edge."

"Wh...what?" Ryder asked, dimly recalling that five years corresponded to his travel time. "What are you-..."

"Marianas, you son of a bitch! The Marianas Trench! The same trench that you fucked up in monitoring and casually walked away from after watching hundreds of thousands die!"

Although he had little feeling left in any part of his body, Ryder felt the chill in his spine return. The five years figure made sense. Five years...that was how long Aku had been waiting for...

"Revenge?" Ryder whispered hoarsely. "That's what you want?"

"Vengeance actually. Vengeance for my mother, my father, my sister and everyone else who died because of your incompetence."

Had he been the one in the dominant position, Ryder might have pointed out the irony of Aku working for the RDA given their role in the Pacific disaster. However, "might" was the key word and the signals specialist saw little reason to follow through with that. Yes, he'd been cleared of any charges of incompetence-the RDA had no reason to assign someone used to tracking human signals with monitoring the effects of their mining operations on a subduction zone. However, someone had to take the blame and while the RDA could still gain a profit from the underwater riches after paying compensation, Ryder knew that he'd have a place of infamy in the hearts of many people in the Asia-Pacific region. People that, like Lieutenant Aku, would beat him to a pulp if they had the chance. In fact, it could have been argued that the only reason this didn't happen was because of the timely intervention of Colonel Quartich, Kendra and several grunts who, much to his relief, had their guns trained on Aku.

Quartich and Aku were shouting at each other, though Ryder could barely hear. And although Kendra was applying...something to the blood all over his face while inquiring with genuine concern as to his well being, he could barely hear her either. Apart from calling him by his forename, nothing seemed to matter. Because repeating his mistakes at Marianas, after his complicity in allowing Falco to destroy and entire na'vi village and executing Harper for him...

...Ryder felt he should have been named "Caine" instead.

A/N

Taking a few liabilities with Ryder and the events of the game, but being a oneshot, I felt able to take them. Besides, I can't help but feel Ryder's backstory takes liabilities as well-if the RDA screwed up in the Marianas Trench, why was the "west coast" (presumably of the Americas) the source of Ryder's guilt? Given the trench's location, wouldn't the Asia-Pacific region be a far greater issue? Or does Ryder simply not care?

Anyway, it gave me the idea to go ahead and convey the issue.