Chapter 18

2 months ago

News agencies everywhere were in an uproar over the return of the illustrious Casey Kane. The young philanthropist had returned to the Citadel after a twenty year hiatus and was eager to once again work on helping people to further his parent's legacy. Over the years, the charity foundation had lost its luster in the eyes of shareholders and the public. It had been slowly declining in its endeavors to promote clean living for everyone.

After a lengthy press interview explaining that he had become more educated and business savvy while he was away, Casey Kane was reinstated as the Chief Executive Officer of Kane Charity and all its subsidiaries. He wasted no time in attending board meetings and visiting shareholders in efforts to turn around the company his parents had built up from nothing.

His days were busy with business, but during night hours he secluded himself in his mansion. Over the years while Casey had been away, Alfred had been prepping the large bunker underneath the manor. While he had remained with Casey all through his adventures through the galaxy, the AI's mainframe was located in the manor. Utilizing drones and mechanical arms, Alfred had cleaned and cleared space in the technological cave for use by Casey.

The AI had purchased several items that were requisitioned by Casey over the years along of his travels. Pieces of equipment, machinery or vehicle parts were all delivered under false identities to different warehouses owned by Kane Charity. Over the first few days of being back on the Citadel, Casey went around to all the storerooms and personally delivered all the items inconspicuously to the cave.

The cave started to fill up with equipment and computers that Casey had learned of while he travelled. He installed a medical corner and set up an armory that would be filled with the asari maiden's spare capes as well as extra armors. He built an extensive training area with several specializations, not all from human origin.

He brought in his personalized stealth fighter and started making custom modifications to the design. He did not have much time to put a lot of work into the fighter between his travels, other than repairs. Casey colored the fighter in jet black and upgraded the computer systems inside to sync up with the cave's mainframe. He also installed weapons that would aid in escape or detaining situations.

With nearly everything in place, Casey then spent the next couple of weeks inside the armory designing a custom set of armor, based on all of his experiences. It took several attempts, but finally he revealed to Alfred the design he was most happy with. Casey put the armor on piece by piece, save the helmet. He walked out of the armory holding the helmet, so that the AI could examine him.

"Why the bat, Sir?" asked the AI as it looked down upon armor, remarking the helmet with ear horns of a bat's head as well as the distinctive bat symbol centered on the chest piece.

"Well," Casey started as he seemed lost in thought, "do you remember when I came back from that school field trip twenty years ago?" Casey realized that he just asked an artificial intelligence if it remembered something. Shaking his head, he continued, "I never told you what happened there, but it changed me; motivated me to finally leave here and pursue something more in life."

"That day our class visited a zoo here on the Citadel. It was a privately owned wildlife park populated by Earth-born creatures as part of a diplomatic commission. There were all kinds of different creatures many from Citadel space had never seen. At one point we were led into an area where they showed off most of the creatures up close, allowing visitors to sometimes pet and hold the animals. We sat in the room and passed around rabbits, lizards and even birds. Then the trainer pulled out a cage that held an Eptesicus fuscus, commonly known as the big brown bat. The reaction of the others in the room stayed with me; it frightened them. The trainer explained how bats were excellent survivors and extremely adaptable to their environments. He claimed that the bat in the cage was a docile one and so tried to take it out to show off."

Casey smiled, recalling the event perfectly, "It got out and started to flutter around the room. Everyone was terrified of it, even the adults who were chaperoning our group. I watched and couldn't help but admire its grace, the way people cowered away from it. I was scared, but not as much as everyone else was. It was at that moment I realized that if I could find a way to put that kind of fear in people, I could stop someone from murdering someone else's parents. I would make criminals so scared, that they would tremble at the mere sight of me." He was walking around in the new black armor as he spoke, "But I knew I would need skills to fight them. That was when I decided to leave."

Casey then lowered the sleek helmet over his head, engaging the air-tight seal. Then he activated the voice modulation making his voice sound deeper, with an underlying raspy tone. "For twenty years the image of that bat scaring everyone in that room has stuck with me. And now it's time I do same."

Night filters had settled on the Citadel as the retrofitted stealth fighter sliced through the emptiness of the space surrounding the Citadel. The fighter's hull blended with the star filled space as it shimmered above the regular traffic below. It glided past buildings and other skycars before hovering above a low bearing building. A scan of it indicated activity on the rooftop, smugglers moving merchandise from the rooftop into a large cargo freighter.

A hatch slid open on the underside of the fighter as a blackened figure slipped out of it and landed on a ledge overlooking the smugglers below.

-This is what I've trained for-