On the ninth day of Andromeda,
My true love gave to me:
Nine minutes counting!
Parents dead at three, watching the world they'd been hiding on burn. First allowed to practice with a pistol when he was six; his hands had barely fit around the handle, his finger barely long enough to squeeze the trigger, but it was necessary. Throwing knives at targets at the age of ten, practicing tirelessly with his biotics at the age of twelve.
It was at age fourteen that they first shoved a rifle in his hand and called him 'solder'. It was necessary; their hiding place was under attack. It was a rallying point for the military, for some large assault planned against the Reapers that he was too young to know about. Yet. He would show them. The commander that gave him and the other teenagers rifles told them, 'make them pay'.
He took the words to heart. Make them pay. There could be no survivors, not one to bring word back to the Reapers of what was being planned here.
The battle lasted nine minutes.
0
He ran out into the thick of the fight. Himself and the other teenagers, along with some lighter fighters; mostly newer solders. This was a token force, a sham. The idea was that if the attack failed, the Reapers might think this base not worth taking; that it was unimportant, if it didn't have a real guarding force.
The real guarding force was waiting in the base, perfectly safe, while he shot his first Reaper shell in the head. They were waiting either for an evacuation order, or the all-clear.
1
Flying, eye-like aerial assault drones; the Gazers, as they called them. He shot one in the middle of it's 'eye'. It closed; no damage. Then it opened, and one of the older teenagers shoved him to the ground, getting blasted instead. Instead of running in horror, an idea came to mind, and he waiting.
There was a flash of red at the Gazer charged it's beam. He shot it in the eye, and the beam overloaded, causing it to explode. he wondered if all the other solders knew that trick? If they did, why hadn't they told him about it?
One of the few things he remembered his late uncle teaching him; talking only teaches you so much. In this war, your greatest lessons are learned on the battlefield. You might not like some of them.
2
One of the familiar faces was sent flying with a hole blasted through her chest. There was no flare of mourning or grief; at least, no the way he expected it. It was there only for a fraction of a second, then is rose quickly to something else; anger.
He knew grief. Everyone did. These battlefields, his home, they all stank of it. Grief, anger, terror, defiance. A scream of a dying people. A scream he now added his voice to as he charged the empty shell of a sentient that had killed the familiar face, blasting his gun into it's stomach.
3
They did not mourn innocence. No-one was truly innocent, not even the children. Not for long, anyway. The day came, very soon, when they saw their first death, or saw it in the memory of another, and then innocence was burned away so as to begin to meld the cold steel of a soon-to-be solder in this war of extinction. He threw his knife into the throat of another teenager; indoctrinated, somehow. She'd tried to stab him in the spine.
He didn't recognize her, she was new to this place, a refugee. That was how the reapers did their work; sneaking indoctrinateds through with the refugees. He'd heard the leaders of the camp considering closing the gates to any that came from space. Not until the incoming population was gone through with sharp eyes and strong reading.
4
A beast charged through. A horrible mass, muddled together and stitched into one grotesque being by the Reapers from the parts of varying native predators. It's long neck, slavering jaw. Boney spine and dis-proportioned back legs, small in comparison to the from ones. Metal claws the sizes of himself, turrets mounted to it's shoulders.
He took cover from it's fire, as his fellows were cut down around him viciously. For a moment, one bleeding, fleeting moment, it was too much. His mind screamed out, he knew the other could sense his fear. What was he doing here? He was too young! Though with his uncle dead last month, there was no family left to miss him, the thought of his existence being silenced, for the first time, terrified him.
He was scared of dying. Of experiencing the pain he sensed all around him firsthand. Of becoming yet another face lost to this war, of becoming one of the faces he'd seen cut down the past few minutes, only to brush aside their deaths so long as the fight was going on. Why did this war do this? Why did he have to learn death and fighting so early?
Then the moment was past, and he ducked out of his cover behind his boulder, and ran to regroup with several overs behind a different formation, firing his rifle blindly at the Reapers as he ran, their bullets whizzing past him, one grazing the back of his head eerily. Anger replaced that moment.
5
They Reapers were retreating. They couldn't let them. No survivors. On survivor could mean death for all at this base. He ran after them with the others of the defending force right on his heels. Was he in front?
"Take them! Take them all! Leave none left!" he called, the battle cry from a young mouth sounding strange to his ears. He was in front. Leading the charge. Something surged in his chest. Pride? No. Something else. "Make them pay!"
Belonging. This was where he belonged. Leading the charge for revenge against the Reapers. Make them pay.
6
The beast was still in play. They scattered as it turned on them. More shells, come from somewhere else. Some looked a little like his own kind, he notice for the first time. He'd always heard that that was what happened to solders who were captured alive, but he had never seen it done. He had never faced them before now; he'd always been shoved to the back of the group, for protection, as he was too young to handle a rifle.
He could handle one now. He could make them pay for it all. He would bleed them as they bled him, and everyone else. As he leaned out of cover to pick off another Gazer, using the same trick as before, he had a strange moment that felt like an epiphany.
He would destroy the Reapers. Once and for all; not just shells, the husks of those who had once been, but actual Reapers; the machines that were trying to kill his race. He would see their end once and for all. He would see a day where he would never have to fear the sound of one entering the atmosphere again. One day... he would see an illusion called peace.
Of all the moments in his life, for some reason, that one was the surest, as he killed that Gazer. If only he had known...
7
The shells were thinning, but the beast was retreating! He couldn't let it get away. He ran after it, but several shells got in his way. A mass effect field sang around him, and he threw them all into the air angrily.
"Out. Of. My. WAY!" He screamed, using his other hand to rip them all apart with an opposing field. He kept running, following the beast to a ravine as his fellows kept fighting behind him. He didn't look back.
8
Running along the edge of the ravine, he jumped onto it's back. Everyone else had tried a frontal approach; it was time to do something different. It bucked and thrashed beneath him, twisted it's neck around and grabbed him around the middle. He screamed as it's fangs sank into the soft cracks between his armor, and heard his plating starting to crack as it thrashed it's head around with him in it's mouth. The word was spinning, and he couldn't breath, and his vision was starting to go dark. One arm was caught in it's mouth, the other, he couldn't possibly hope to move in an effective biotic attack.
In a moment of clarity that came before unconsciousness, the arm trapped within the beasts mouth charged with biotics, and slammed his fist against the roof of it's mouth. It dropped him with a howl of pain, as a mass effect field dissolved it's brain and controlling cybernetic central nodes. He rolled on the ground, still gasping for breath, as it staggered and collapsed.
9
He was having trouble getting back up the ravine. His ribs were broken, his leg was bleeding badly at this point. He used his biotics to cauterize it. The sounds of battle were fading. He let out a light swear as his feet slid in the mud again, sending him back into the ravine. He looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps, and returned his rifle to his hands, aiming at the edge of the ravine, waiting for the shell to come out.
It was not a shell, but the commander that had given him the rifle in the first place. He did not lower his gun, taught always to be suspicious.
"Prove to me you are who you present yourself to be!" he called up.
The commander looked down at him. Then looked at the slain beast that had killed dozens, only to fall to a child. There was an odd look in his eyes, and for a few moments, he thought he could sense... that his elder was impressed with what he had done. He still did not lower his rifle. The commander had naught a scratch on him; for all he knew the man was indoctrinated.
Then, he spoke.
"The fight is over. I killed the last shell just now." He raised his knife, covered in shell blood. "You made them pay."
He lowered his rifle slightly. The commander's eyes were intense, expectant, analyzing him. For what?
"I expect more of the same from you, Javik."
Part of me always wondered how our favorite fossil started out. Just to clarify, the Gazers are, in my head, what the Protheans called the Oculus we see in-game. The shells are the husks, because lets face it; they aren't going have the same words for this stuff as the new cycle does.
Anyway, I'm hoping I did Javik a little justice in this chapter. He never really got much focus as a character, I feel.
Read and REVIEW!