Jax examined his surroundings as he ate, the mess sergeant had fixed him something quick with the provisions, making enough jokes about Jax's slight build that the boy could've felt like everyone else on board ought to have the build of a Krogan commando. Everyone seemed to always have something to do, some file to examine or someone to converse with that Jax didn't quite know what to do with himself aboard the ship. A couple hours had passed since they had left the Citadel and were busy jumping through the relays, Jax had been forced to ask for nausea tablets to counteract the vertigo induced by the motion dampeners. However, from his previous conversation with Kelly, his interest had been piqued and after a small conversation, he had found his destination. Taking the stairs lightly, trying to make as little sound as possible, he found himself making his way by the red light of the systems. The letters 'SUBDECK' seemed almost ominous in the clash between the red and white light as Jax wandered into the darkness. As he rounded the corner, his eyes took in the details. A single cot, a messy array of data pads scattered all over the floor, a pistol slightly removed from… Jax focussed on the woman. Her shaved head, the canvas of tattoos layered on top of one another, all with stories behind them Jax had no doubt. Her pride in them was obvious, for she wore as little as possible to expose them. Jax found his eyes lingering on her breasts, and forcing a swallow, before she turned her head from the data pad in her hand to see him. "What the fuck are you doing here?" She roared at him, and suddenly Jax felt himself flying, the very air around him seemingly turned to stone as it pushed him backwards. Biotics Jax thought as he saw a blue haze blooming from his chest. Fuck me I should've known and then he crashed into the wall. He dropped to his knees from the impact but pushed himself back up quickly to find she had snatched up the pistol and was pointing it squarely at him. She looked at him with a confused expression for half a second. "And who the fuck are you?" She added.

"Hey" Jax offered meekly, offering a smile. "I'm the new guy, names Jax."

"I'm Jack" she growled, her hand didn't drop though, "and this spot's taken."

"I know" Jax replied, "I actually came here to see you."

"Why, somebody tell you about the freakshow?" She challenged, her other hand curling into a fist behind her, Jax could see the blue glow of another biotic push building.

"Though no one actually said 'freakshow', yeah" Jax admitted, taking a risk.

The tension in Jack's fist loosened a little, surprised by his approach.

"They made you out to seem like some wild hurricane of destruction" Jax told her, "I had to see for myself."

Jack almost blushed in pride at that. She lowered the pistol and strolled back to her cot. "Hurricane huh? That's a new one, might have to get that inked somewhere."

Jax grinned, indicating her tattoos. "You do them yourself?"

Jack shrugged, "some were me, others were friends," Her expression darkened for a second. "Some weren't friends. Others were filthy Batarians in back alleys because why the fuck not?"

Jax chuckled at that, "there's always something you can get from a Batarian in a back alley that you can't get anywhere else in the galaxy."

"Yeah?" Jack asked, "what would you know about it?"

Jax pointed at himself. "Omega, born and bred. Where are you from?"

Jack looked away. "Nowhere" she replied, "and everywhere. Shepard picked me up from a prison ship in space."

"Wait" Jax said, "the Purgatory? That was you?"

Jack shrugged with a hint of a smile, "I like ripping shit apart, it's what got me my ticket on this joyride into Hell." She extended a hand and a blue biotic spark floated of her finger, the blue light surrounding it becoming purple as it melded with the red light of the subdeck. "What about you, what's your hidden talent?"

"Demolitions" Jax replied, "I blow shit up."

"Nice" Jack chuckled. "All the people here are so quick and clean, headshot, headshot, headshot, take it so business-like." She leaned back and stretched her arms. "Not enough people just lie back and have a little fun with the mayhem at their fingertips."

Jax didn't smile at that, but his eyes did light. Sensat had always called him 'Firecracker' after his passion for making lights. "Mayhem comes at a cost" he told her absentmindedly, thinking back, "you can't aim an explosion."

"You lost people?" Jack asked.

Jax was powerless as the images of his whole team poured through his mind. "A few" he relented.

"You get the bastards back?" Jack asked. "Rip them apart, piece by piece, make it slow, make it hurt?"

"Me?" Jax asked, shaking his head. "No. Someone else got to them first."

"So you got a bellyful of revenge and no one to take it out on" Jack mused. Her expression hardened, "grow up, let it go, everyone's got a sob story, if you're alive then you won and they didn't, that's the end of it."

Jax was baffled. "No, it's not the end, I should've been…"

Jack held up a hand to silence him. "I'm bored of this, you can get the fuck out now."

Jax felt a mix of confusion and anger. "What the hell" he muttered.

"When they told you about me" Jack called after him with a laugh. "They would've mentioned that I'm psychotic right? Well they forgot to add I'm a psychotic bitch."

Jax didn't bother turning as he walked away. Just as he wanted to turn and yell all manner of obscenities at Jack for toying with him, a blip in his ear stopped him. "We're arriving planet-side" Shepard said in his earpiece, broadcasting to the whole crew. "Jacob, Jax, I want you with me. Arm up and meet me at the shuttle."

Jax hailed the elevator and when it arrived, bore a dark skinned man with a deep brooding expression. "I take it you're Jax" he said, extending a hand. "We haven't been formally introduced, I'm Lieutenant Jacob Taylor."

"I'm Jax, don't really have a rank" the youth said, accepting the gesture.

"Or a last name" Jacob noted.

"I didn't ask for your family tree, don't ask for mine" Jax retorted.

Jacob shrugged, "you'll be getting my family tree anyway seeing as Shepard wants you on this mission. We're looking for my father. Do you need to go up to the armoury at all?"

Jax shook his head. "I work with demolitions, everything I need just got delivered to the ship just got delivered, should still be in the cargo bay. As for a gun," he trailed off, drawing his heavy pistol and turning it over, examining it. "This will suit me fine." The elevator doors closed and the elevator silently took them down to the shuttle bay. Jax and Jacob split off as Jax made his way to where a stack of crates labelled EXPLOSIVES were stacked. Jax pried one open and surveyed the contents inside with a grin, with everything he had he'd be able to char a battlefield three times over. Noticing a locker with his name on it slightly removed, Jax approached the panel and it slid open at the touch of his hand. Suspended inside was armour, specifically a chest plate and greaves. Jax pulled it on, noticing the many cavities and ties for storing grenades and the like on his person. Jax gave himself a small satisfied grin as he examined his reflection in the polished plates of the wall, he looked truly magnificent.

Shepard had just retrieved her assault rifle from the armoury and was making her way through the CIC towards the elevator when she was hailed.

"Commander!" Kelly's voice was soft but yet seemed to carry across the entire room, it was the talent of a mediator Shepard assumed.

The commander sighed, "can this wait, Kelly? I'm about to drop planetside for a mission."

"I would read this first if I were you" Kelly advised, swiping a document off her computer.

Shepard activated her omnitool and opened the report Kelly had transferred to her. "Jax's psych report" she mused, skimming through the finer points. Pausing on a section, she looked up at her yeoman. "This is a bit over the top isn't it?"

"It's entirely my professional opinion" Kelly told her straightforwardly.

"Of course but this? I mean you've highlighted depression, loneliness, severe post traumatic stress disorder, for Jax? He's had a rough past of course but seriously, he can't finish a conversation without a quip."

"Mental illness can take many forms" Kelly told her humourlessly, "it isn't all the quiet broodiness the vids make it out to be. I believe Jax is acting out of a heightened sense of protection of his perceived psyche, he's trying to cover himself up, but everything that's happened to him, it eats at him, like an emptiness slowly becoming larger as more of himself crumbles away. For all his smiles, I believe Jax is fixated on the point his team died, he uses it as almost a motivation to justify his actions to himself, smiling isn't synonymous with happiness."

Shepard chewed her bottom lip. "Jax is a solider, he's been through some tough times but so have I, I died and I haven't come out any worse for wear."

"Yes but I think it goes without saying that you are a special case Shepard."

Shepard reread over Kelly's report again, slower. "This is all quite personal Kelly, do you care for him?"

"I don't-" Kelly started aggressively before she composed herself. "I care for everyone on this crew Commander. My relationship with Mister Weaver is purely the relationship being a yeoman necessitates."

"So tell me Kelly," Shepard said, closing the report, "in your professional opinion, is Jax fit to fight? Because if he isn't, then he isn't fit to be a member of this crew and we'll drop him at the nearest civilised planet and let him do what he wants from there."

Kelly met the challenge of Shepard's stare for a few moments before cracking. "Just keep an eye on him, Shepard, please. He's the youngest member of this crew and his mental fortitude isn't like ours, he isn't bred for this kind of mission, he could be in denial over it."

"I'll keep an eye on him" Shepard promised, "the field will prove whether he's ready or not."

Filling the suit's ties with explosives, Jax didn't notice as Shepard entered the room, Jacob however, approached her immediately. "Shepard, we have no idea what we're going to find down there, whether my father is even alive. Why are you bringing along a kid for firing blind into uncharted territory, we could need some serious back up on this mission."

Shepard gave him a sympathetic, but nevertheless authoritative stare. "Whatever is down there, hasn't been off the planet for nearly ten years Jacob, with how fast technology has progressed in the two I was dead, resistance will be minimal at best in relation to what we're packing. The risk is smaller with this mission than with anyone else's."

Jacob looked down, acknowledging the truth in her words.

"Plus I need to give Jax a trial run, see what he can do. The only other combat situation I was involved in with him, I was unconscious."

Jacob nodded, then turned on his heel and boarded the shuttle.

"Jax! Are you going to spend all day checking yourself out or are you going to get your ass on this shuttle?" Shepard called out. Jax turned and crossed the cargo bay in half a dozen long bounds, taking a seat opposite Jacob. Shepard pressed a hand to her helmet. "Take us out" she ordered the pilot and sat down beside Jacob as the shuttle lifted off, rocketing into space towards the unknown. Jax couldn't sit still on the flight, even through the black tint of the windows, the aura of the planet still shone through into the cabin, Jax couldn't take his eyes off it.

"You all right Jax?" Shepard asked, "you seem anxious."

Jax shook his head. "Just a bit tense" he brushed off, "I'll be fine when we touch down. Thank you, for the armour by the way."

"We couldn't let you just run round in a shirt" Jacob quipped, "people try and kill us on a regular basis. It looks good on you." He nodded and Jax looked down, seeing it sported the same golden Cerberus logo as his own.

"Yeah, it's a real natural fit" he excused his temporary silence, made uncomfortable by the fact Shepard seemed to be drilling him with her eyes, and he didn't know why.

The shuttle ride only took seven minutes, but to Jax it took forever. The first thing he noticed, was the gravity, it was slightly heavier to what he was used to back on Omega, and it had been lighter still in the Citadel wards. His arms seemed to be minutely heavier, his boots seemed to be on the ground a split second longer that usual before they obeyed his command and lifted. Then the doors opened.

Jax was speechless as sunlight poured in a crack, and then filled the entire compartment as the doors opened fully. It was incredible, thick trees erupted from the ground, each twisted gnarly root spawning a thousand different leaves that rippled ever so slightly in the breeze that danced through the grass. As Jax's eyes tracked over the scenery, they fell upon another wonder. Water rippled and rolled in a seemingly endless motion over an internal surface that stretched to the horizon, wind caught the tips of each wave and lifted the spray into the air, the sun leapt from a hundred different glimpses on the surface, by the time Jax looked at it directly it was already gone, shining at him from another point. Jax was stunned, then he remembered to take a breath, which was a sensation itself. After all his years on space stations, on ships, the air of this world seemed to be almost flavoured. Jax could smell the salt of the waves, the pollen in the breeze, the ripeness of the fruit, it swirled within him and exited with a natural easiness, the void being filled in by another breath rolling in like a trailing wave. The sun glittered, it hurt to look at for more than a second but the way it heated the very air around him, it was surreal, a state of being technology could never hope to imitate. Jax stood and stepped off the shuttle, feeling the earth give ever so slightly under his feet, shifting and reforming to solidify and support him. Jax kneeled, brushing his fingers over the dirt, digging them deep and feeling the tips of his fingers encircled in moist soil, this whole planet was made of sensations he had never even dreamed existed. He had been so satisfied, so complacent with living on Omega; he had never stopped to dream of the literal galaxy of opportunity at his fingertips. Now it was all in within his reach…

Shepard stopped as she saw Jax kneeling, the gun laid down as he drunk in all the planet had to offer each of his senses. It's his first time planetside she remembered, he had never seen anything like this before. She stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, it was his luck that his first planet had been uncharted, one of the most lush left in the galaxy. "Are you okay?" She asked him.

He stood, the incredulity in his voice was palpable. His expression one of unending awe. "It's just so… green" he summed up lamely, unable to find the words. He looked over across the ocean. "I didn't know there was this much water in the entire galaxy" he whispered.

"Yeah it's beautiful, how about we be tourists later?" Jacob barked impatiently. "We have my father to find."

"Of course" Jax said, shaking his head and snatching his pistol off the ground.

The team proceeded down the coast quickly, finding the wreck of the Gernsback, the ship that had bought the alliance crew they were hunting after. It was an ugly metal blight on the environment but at the same time, Jax marvelled at how nature was taking it back over. Birds nests were littered all through every nook where the plating had come off. Moss clawed its way up out of the sea and was healing it under a deep green blanket. Vines extended to wrap around beams and insects crawled out of burrows deep in between the cracks. Jax swept the interior of the ship under Shepard's order while she and Jacob questioned the VI outside.

"Nothing but a few corrupted crew logs" he reported.

"Anything of note?" Shepard asked.

"It looks like the captain was replaced, although the crew were dubious about him. The rest of it is… weird. Like they started losing their minds, their morals, it doesn't make a lot of sense."

"The food is toxic, retards brain function" Shepard told him. "I know it's pretty but leave the fruit on the trees unless you want to become a vegetable yourself."

"Roger that."

They continued on, pushing through until a they reached a survivor. She was a woman, she reminded Jax of a lost animal, one that had lost its pack and with them, all sense of direction, just from the way she stood and the vacant expression in her eyes. She hailed them over and Shepard began to quiz her for answers. Jax zoned out as they conversed, just listening to the rumble of the waves, the intrinsic rhythm of nature seemed to be a hum and a roar, a constant battle in a deafening silence, all at once. Suddenly he heard Jacob yell "Get down!" and tackled him to the ground as a hail of gunfire flew overhead. "Get your head in the game!" Jacob yelled at him before peering over cover and loosing two shots with his Eviscerator. Jax looked to see Shepard, having pulled the woman to safety, loose a spread of bullets to halt the host of men coming at them. By the amount of wild shots they loosing without a valid target, Jax could tell diplomacy wasn't on the cards. Still on his chest, Jax reached around the corner of cover and fired, blowing clean through a man's ankle. No shields, unfortunate for them Jax though as the man fell screaming clutching at his bloody stump. Shepard noticed and finished him with two shots to the chest. Jax weighed up a concussion grenade in his hand before tossing it over. He waited for the explosion, the gel earplugs barely registering the noise. He took in a breath, feeling the sea salt mix in with the scent of popped thermal clips and blood. He opened his eyes and his mind sharpened in a moment of perfect clarity. He rose, his gun arm extending. The first shot took a man through the heart, Jax took two steps forward, dancing towards the next point of cover, releasing two more shots, the first chipping the top of a half buried pipe that the men were using for makeshift cover and the second taking the top exposed half of a man's head, the slug carving a bloody gouge on its path. Jacob pulled the last man to him with his biotics and shredded the man's insides with a messy gut shot.

"They weren't mentally unbalanced" Shepard mused.

"They were batshit mad" Jax finished. "A head-on assault with inferior weapons, no armour or shields, they basically threw themselves at us in a suicide attempt."

"It doesn't matter" Jacob said, surprising both Shepard and Jax by breaking his normally neutral diction with a much more impatient and aggressive tone, "they're dead, I need answers."

"Looks like we might get them here" Shepard noted. Jax looked ahead, they were nearing some sort of settlement, a weird idol comprised of scrap salvaged from the ship and held together by wire and messy weld marks towered over everything. "See what you find" Shepard ordered Jax as a group of women approached them, "we'll talk to the civilians, see what's going on."

Jax nodded and proceeded inwards, holstering his pistol. He brushed his forehead and noticed amazingly, there was sweat on his face. Omega had always been temperature regulated, and held a few degrees colder than what was comfortable for humans, held at degree intended more for Batarians and Vorcha but the sun beating down on his back, the excitement of feeling soil under his boots, every angle revealed some new secret he had never dreamed existed. A woman approached him, shattering his illusions of solitary peacefulness.

"You" she said, in a voice with a pitch a few notes too high. "You are man." Her voice sounded like it was amazed, as if she was literally vocalising her realisations in her head.

Jax nodded, eyeing her cautiously. "I am."

She took his hand. "Come" she said, leading him away. Jax trailed behind her as she pulled him into a tent. "I am not happy" she told him, the usually stale grey canvas of the tent was lit up in the sun, filling the cramped space with a light glow, the particles in the air almost glowing as they hung motionlessly. "I want to be rewarded" she told him, shrugging off one of her shoulder straps. "I will please you."

Jax took a surprised step back as she pulled the top of her garb down, letting her large breasts spill out. "I don't want… pleasing" he excused himself, even as he caught himself staring. He was about to tell her to redress herself when he noticed something. She stood so lamely, her arms hanging limply by her sides, presenting herself. There was no shyness or reluctance but similarly, there was no eagerness, lust or flirtatiousness, just acceptance. Her body language was all wrong. Jax stepped closer in to examine her body. Her pale skin betrayed a number of red scratches, and red stretch marks. Jax could almost have written them off as just general injuries, from life lived so manually and with the crazy groups of men running around but seeing the injuries, they were centred on her breasts, her throat and her hips, running down beneath to what her clothing still obscured. They were clearly of a sexually sadistic nature, she had been abused as an object. Given the years she and the rest of crew had been stranded here, perhaps it was unsurprising that some had given in to more base impulses but Jax remembered as they approached the settlement, every woman had been standing with that docile meekness, they had all been systematically used, until their resistance had been totally broken down. This went far further than base impulse, this was premeditated abuse. "Put your clothes back on" Jax told the woman, stepping outside.

Shepard and Jacob approached him, "anything in there?"

Jax's face was set in a grimace. "I think something is very wrong here, we need to find whoever's running this place."

"The women were assigned to officers like cattle" Shepard told him, "virtually pets for every nature of slavery."

"Let me guess" Jax told her, "including sexual?"

Shepard nodded. "Our answers for all our questions rest with Jacob's father, let's move." Jacob's only reply of affirmation was cocking his shotgun.

They moved quickly, the outdated mechs in their proved to be of little resistance, what little didn't have their limbs systematically blown off by Shepard were either completely shredded by Jacob's shotgun or blown to smithereens by Jax. Jax, having gotten over the revelation of the new world, quickly developed a focus, obeying Shepard's command to the letter and moving in sync with compliment the attacks of his squadmates. There were no more instances of him being distracted as they quickly culled through all opposition with a mix of bullets, bombs and biotics.

They quickly reached the last stage of opposition, gauging the solidity of the defences ahead, the captain would have hidden behind that as his last line of defence. The first hunter's head exploded like a melon as Shepard put a bullet through it, blood coating the crate in front of him. The next turned only to find a grenade sitting at his feet, he died without a scream as the exploding blossom of fire enveloped and swallowed him, his silhouette quickly disappearing. However, the easiness of how they disposed of their enemies soon disappeared, as a heavy rhythm of footsteps approached them.

"LOKI mech!" Shepard warned with a yell, diving for cover as a rocket flew past. A hail of bullet hammered her cover as enormous rounds were flung from its arm. "If anyone has ideas for taking it out, I'm all ears!" She called.

"Could I possibly use a bomb to blow out the earth from under it?" Jax asked, thinking wildly.

"You honestly think you could do that with the mech bearing down on you?" Jacob asked sarcastically. "You honestly have no idea how resilient nature is do you?"

"I know one thing" Jax replied, looking at the mech. It was draped in shadow from a tree that leant out from a hill, clawing to drink in as much sunlight as possible. An idea came to his mind. "It burns." He turned to Shepard. "Could you keep it distracted?"

"For how long?" Shepard asked, "my shields won't last more than a few seconds under heavy fire."

"That's all I need" Jax promised, "I just need to get in behind it."

Shepard instantly stood, her shield rippling under fire as she replied in kind, doing sparse damage to its intense shielding coating its heavy armour plating but doing an excellent of job of keeping its attention.

Jax ran, skirting around the outside of the fire zone, crossing it with a sprint as he reached the tree. Reaching for the reel of det-cord on his belt, he pulled out a length and quickly began wrapping it around the base of the trunk of the tree.

"Jax, I hate to constantly be rushing you on whatever spectacular feat you're about to accomplish but a crate can only take so many bullets" Shepard said drily in his ear.

"Well I'm…" Jax started but stopped as the LOKI mech turned around to face him. He saw the mech lean back, bracing itself against the recoil of the missile it was about to fire. Jax looked down at the det-crod he had wrapped around the tree he was behind. "Shit" he whispered as it fired. Jax had time to take two running steps before the missile hit the tree and the det-cord exploded, throwing him through the air and the world went black.

Jax woke up to see Shepard holding him by the shoulders, an omintool showing her the armours live feed into his biological signs. Jax scrunched his eyes, every organ in his body felt as if it had been lurched and were slowly crawling their way through his body back into place. "Say something Jax" Shepard told him.

Jax twisted his back, trying to find a measure of comfort. "Did…" He started, "did I get the mech?"

Shepard turned around, Jax saw past her the mech was squashed, crushed under a flaming tree. The root of it was messy mixture of splinters and spiked wood.

"Yeah" Shepard said, "I think you got it. Can you walk?"

Jax nodded, slowly getting back to his feet. "I'm fine, where's Jacob?"

"He's gone on ahead, I thought it might be best if he initially spoke to his father alone."

Jax nodded, "let's go join him."

The pair moved up to where Jacob was standing with a man dressed in old tattered clothes. They were more of a refugee origin, similar to the women back at the settlement, though he supposed ten years without a decontaminator could probably make their original Alliance uniforms get very ratty. Jax stopped early, staying fairly removed from Jacob. Shepard moved up to join the conversation but that was her right as commander, Jax knew he wasn't invited to be a part of this. A few hunters ambled into the captain's complex, Jax drew his pistol; not to aim or fire, but just a warning. They recognised the weapon and stopped, but they did not leave either, they simply stood staring at Jacob's father, the kind of stare that harboured retribution from ten years of abuse, cruelty and neglect.

"What do you think the hunters will do to him if we left him here?" Shepard called out to him.

Jax looked at her, then looked again into the faces of the hunters. "They'll kill him" he replied. "Eventually."

Jacob said something Jax couldn't quite hear, and then turned around and left. Shepard motioned at Jax and he stood aside, letting the hunters pass. They were almost like zombies, they didn't run, only shuffled, but it was with furious intent. Jacob's father saw it too. "Jacob!" He called.

Jacob turned. "You were a better man dead. As far as I'm concerned you still are."

The hunters were closer.

"Jacob!" His father yelled.

Jacob didn't turn. The hunters were closer.

One tried to strike him but Jacob's father ducked under the swipe and ran at his son. "JACOB!"

Jacob, in one swift movement, turned, drew his gun, aimed, and fired. The shot punched through his father's head, the force of it actually lifting him off the ground for a brief second before he crashed back down in a limp mess, blood erupting from his forehead in periodic squirts. "Farewell" Jacob said, turning and walking away nonchalantly as if nothing had happened at all. "Dad."