After a week of training with aunt Samara, he was finally allowed to go back to school.
"Stop squirming, Thracius! You're like an impatient rou-tan!"
"But I haven't seen Kal in FOREVER and EVER!"
"It hasn't been forever, Thracius."
"But it feels like it! It's just like when I'm hungry but you're still cooking, or when the microwave won't go fast enough!"
"A watched pot never boils." His mother told him wisely. "That's a human saying, and it's perfectly true."
Thracius heaved a sigh and settled for watching out the window as they drove to school. It was a cloudy day, and there was hardly anybody else driving.
"Now Thracius... I might be late today. In fact, I probably won't be able to make it at all. Samara's going to come get you." mother said. He looked up at her in surprise. But... mom always gets me! Always! Not that he had anything against auntie Sam, she was great, but... it just felt... off.
"Why? Is something happening at your job?" he asked. He knew she was one of the Admirals. There were several, but her job was to coordinate with the geth, whatever that meant.
"Don't tell your friends at school, but yes. We're reseting the orbital defenses, and switching to a new system." she explained carefully. "Before, we were just being protected by the measures that were put up during the Reaper War. Now, we have to adjust."
"To the bad pirates dad's been talking about?" he had only caught snatches of conversation between his father and his friends, but they all sounded rather concerned about the pirates. His mother stiffened, muttered something under her breath that he didn't quite catch, and shook her head.
"It's nothing you have to worry about, Thracius. It's nothing you should be worrying about." she assured him. "We're just replacing outdated tech; just like we replaced the extranet router last month."
"Oh. Okay." he relented, deciding not to pry further. His parents didn't like it when he asked about the pirates or 'worrying things'. He didn't know why they insisted on treating him like a baby sometimes; he remembered the Reapers, it wasn't like a bunch of silly pirates could be worse.
Could they?
"Thracius!" Kal ran at him when he hopped out of his mom's skycar, and rightly tackled him to the ground. "Where were you! Did something bad happen! Was it your parents!?"
"Oof, Kal, geroofme!" Thracius grunted.
"Settle down, you two!" his mother warned. "No rough-housing in the parking lot, get yourselves to class. I'll see you later, Thracius."
"See ya, mom, love you! tell dad bye again for me!" he called back. The door shut, and his mother drove away as Kal dragged him off to the school building.
"I was at home, I got sick, and what about my parents?" he asked when Kal repeated his questions. The little quarian bit his lip, and kicked the dirt a little.
"No reason." he commented. "Just asking. Some people have bad parents."
"Why would you think my parents are bad?" Thracius asked, shocked. His mom was the nicest person in the galaxy, and his dad was the funnest. Nobody would think either of them were bad, not even at a glance! Unless... "A-are, i-is your mom a bad parent?"
Kal's face twisted into an expression of hate, and Thracius knew he'd stepped over his bounds. "Gee, what was your first clue? She's drunk half the time, and crabby the other half! It's not so bad when she forgets I'm a school, though. Just one more thing I don't have to worry about."
"T-that sounds awful." Thracius said awkwardly as he tried to think of a way to cheer his friend up. A possibility came to him, but his parents had said to keep it a secret. To never tell anybody... but...
Kal was his friend. His best friend, and his only friend. Surely, he would never, ever tell? Right?
"Hey... do you wanna see the real reason I had to stay at home?"
That evening, during lunch, Thracius showed him. They hid in the special spot behind Building 2, and Thracius focused on his toy Alliance cruiser with all his might. Blue energy enveloped it, and the sharp, odd smell(that most would describe as ozone, though he didn't know it) filled the air as he glowed, too. The glowing used to scare him, but not anymore. Because he could make his ships fly with it!
"Ancestors. Hairy. Butts." Kal exclaimed. "No way! Dude, that's so awesome! Why didn't you tell me you were biotic?"
"Shhh! Keep it down!" Thracius asked, dropping the ship back into his hand and looking around cautiously. "You can't ever tell anybody about this, or my mom and dad will know I told you, and they said I shouldn't tell anybody, but I totally know you won't tell."
"Why don't you want to tell anybody? You could be like, the most popular kid in school if you were biotic!" Kal said, exasperated.
"I dunno, dad just said it was important. He fought in the war, so I guess he knows important stuff when he sees it." he shrugged. "Anyway, it happened at the aeronautics show, and then auntie Sam came and showed me how to use it. Well, how not to use it accidentally, really."
"Who's auntie Sam?"
"One of my aunts, duh. She's an asari, and she's pretty cool. But she can be a little too serious sometimes, and dad says she needs to learn to laugh a little more."
"All students please return indoors in an orderly fashion and do as the teachers direct you."
Thracius and Kal looked at each other and made faces. "Why are they ending recess early! We've only been out for like a minute!"
Despairingly, they gathered Thracius' ship back into his backpack, and began to trudge as slowly as possible back to the recess entrance. Overhead, there were several supersonic booms as ships entered the atmosphere. Now, it wasn't that uncommon, but Thracius liked to look up and try to identify the profiles if he could find the ships in time.
So, naturally, he stopped in the middle of the field.
"Thrace, let's go; the recess duties'll get us."
"Just a moment, I wanna see the ships!" he shrugged his friend off.
"Fine then; when you're in trouble, I'm not bailing you." Kal shrugged and walked away. Annnnd... there! There were the ships, they were...
He squinted in confusion. That was a fighter formation of the turian Hierarchy; he'd seen it in a documentary about their fighters. But the profiles didn't match turian fighters at all; these ships were ugly, and he couldn't even tell what model they were! He drew back his mandible in distaste. Ugh, at lease replace that drive core! I can hear it misfiring from here!
"All students return indoors in an orderly fashion. I repeat-oh, Ancestors!"
Thracius' eyes widened as the ship broke off... and began firing their weapons. At the ground. And the middle one was heading right for them. He screamed.
The thing about syncing geth and quarian tech to work harmoniously was that it wasn't as easy as people thought. Sure, the geth could manipulate technology, but that wasn't the same as having a defense network specially designed to work in perfect junction.
Tali's omnitool buzzed. She sighed heavily as she picked it up and transferred the call to her comms. "What is it now, Garrus?"
"Mommy, I had a bad dream!" he whined.
"Sorry, but that only works with one turian, and you're not him." she giggled.
"Awww, I was certain it would, though!" her husband pouted. "How is the little bugger, anyway?"
"We got to school without any traffic. I know we live in the boonies, but it seems like everyone thinks the network will drop at any moment! They're acting like it's the end of the world." She rolled her eyes.
"Well, some places will be defenseless longer than others." he pointed out. "We'll do what we can to keep these creeps from trying anything, but there's no guarantee we'll be able to catch all of them. Get that new network up and running as fast as possible."
"Tali Vakarian, all preparations are complete." Crypt notified her, sticking his head through the doorway. He was one of the geth that had been assigned to work with her when she was fist given this particular position.
Black and gray with several yellow accents, his full name was actually Crypt 21-3, with was stamped onto the side of his neck. At first, the odd naming habit had come across as weird, but the geth thought that, since not every geth would have an original name, they should make it clearer as to which geth was which for the sake of organics. The numbers were their equivalent to a last name, and from what she understood, Crypt's meant that he was the third geth to choose that name, from server of origin twenty one.
It was all very confusing at first, but also a little funny that the geth were afraid of organics forgetting who was who.
"Be right there." she told him, before turning her attention back to the call. "Stay safe out there, Garrus."
"You know me."
"I have a shotgun, remember?"
"Please, you'd never do that in front of the kid."
"Is Javik with you?"
"Is that even a question? Wouldn't be the demolition duo with just one guy."
"Can everyone in the cockpit hear?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Javik, slap him for me."
"Ow, hey! You're supposed to be on my side!"
"I would rather repeat the Bermuda incident than anger your mate."
"And that, Garrus, is why you won't do anything stupid." she smiled. "That, and you still owe Thracius an ice cream."
"Yeah, yeah. See you on the other side. Go do your programming stuff."
"You know I will." she ended the call, sighed, and stood. Sincerely hoping that things wouldn't go wrong, she walked out, and ordered the reset and transfer to start.
Thracius felt like his gizzard was about to take a one-way express out his mouth. Still screaming, he ran for the forest on the other side of the field.
"They're attacking, they're attacking!" someone was screaming. Loud explosions rang in the distance.
"Thracius!"
"Everyone get inside!"
"But the buildings are where they're shooting at!"
"We're all going to die!"
"I want my mom!"
He ignored all of it; the fire, the ships, the children running and scattering everywhere as they panicked. He just charged at the forest. Maybe if he ran fast enough, and far enough, he could run all the way home. He could hear massive explosions hitting the ground, and he thought he could feel the vibrations. The sensations only drove him to run faster.
He wanted his mother. He wanted his father. he wanted anyone who could just make it stop. He could feel his biotics flaring in response to his panic, he could feel his heart pounding, his surroundings were all a blur except for what was directly in front of him.
Reality snapped back into place when he tripped. His chin hit the ground with a sting of pain, and forest dirt scraped the soft skin on his hands as he landed with a grunt. He pushed himself up slightly, heaving for breath, only just now noticing the stitch in his side from all the running. He remained still, only listening. He didn't know how long he spent waiting for the next bomb to drop. Minutes? Hours? But eventually he sat back on his haunches, did the breathing exercised Samara had taught him, and eventually stood up.
He looked up. The sun was setting. Hours, then. Funny, it hadn't felt like hours. Fear spiked through him at the possibility of accidentally time travel- a ridiculous notion to adults, but perfectly a possible problem if you were a scared child with an overactive imagination.
Somewhere behind him, a twig snapped. He jumped, whirling around, and the other person froze. It was a batarian, with a gun, and he was wearing strange, pale armor that was also scorched in places, perhaps from a crash. Blood had dripped and dried down the side of his face, and when their eyes met, a sneer overtook his features. Thracius snatched a rock off the ground, and threw it before the man could react.
"Go away!" he shouted as it hit the batarian in the chest. With a frightening yell, he raised his gun, and Thracius could only watch as-
A green field of biotic energy threw the offending batarian against a tree with a sickening crunch. He didn't get back up.
"I found him." an vaguely familiar voice informed, likely to someone on the other end of a comm line. A very strange individual stepped into view, and Thracius only recognized the prothean because of the Normandy picture back home. "Alive; come to my position."
Unable to contain himself and his gratefulness, the young turian ran forwards, and hugged his father's best friend.
To which Javik was entirely unsure how to respond, earning no small amount of teasing from Goto, who of course, had to have arrived almost immediately afterwards.
Don;t think of it as a bad thing, Javik! You want Thracius to like you!
I'm going to have fun with all future conversations with Kasumi!*evil grin*
Wow, this took longer than I thought. I got seriously distracted! No promises on how long the next chapter will take, just that we'll be meeting the rest of the gang!
Spiritstrike: Yup, 'Auntie Sam' is going to have some very sweet moments with Thracius, purely for sheer fluff factor.
seabo7: Yeah. this, of course, will lead to some problems for him in the future.
RPGWarrior4824: Glad to hear you like the story and Thracius! I thought it was about time someone wrote a story about a happy ending with these two, even if Shep's gone.
Again, not sure how long it will be until next chapter, but Destiny 2's next big expansion is coming out in a couple of weeks, and it's LITERALLY a game-changer. Like, EVERYTHING is getting overhauled, from the UI to the weapons system, and there's going to be so much stuff the DLC adds. As a lore head, I'm going to spend a lot of time chasing said lore, as this expansion involves a lot of stuff that I find very interesting. Space kingdoms are always interesting. Fellow lore buffs(of ANY video game franchise) will agree with me and my reasoning for this quest.
That being said, yes; I did spend more time reading the codex in Mass Effect than I did playing the game. I'm just like that.
Fare Thee Well!