Balak, Ka'hairal
What? What do you want? Shepard?
What did Shepard do for us?
You want me to tell you all about how Shepard united us.
How Shepard gave us a second chance. Saved the Batarians from the brink and led us into a glorious salvation.
How Shepard saved us all.
That's what you want to hear from me.
Fuck you and fuck your precious idol.
You think that we were there at Earth because of Shepard. Well of course we were.
Because we were just another weapon. An extra set of ships for the humans to hide behind.
What are you going to say to me? That it was all for the greater good? Or are you going to just call me a terrorist?
Its so easy for you. So easy to faun over your Heroes. You can pin medals on them and build statues and run your little cults.
Where do you think all the Batarian Heroes are?
I'll tell you, shall? They're dead.
What am I? Well I'm a Villain, aren't I? We're all wicked, we Batarians. We're the ones that you can put in the bed-time stories and the films and the video games that you give to your little children, because we are the bad guys, and we always have been, and we always will be.
But we had little children too. We had stories and films and games. And we had hopes and dreams and prayers as well.
Your great saviour killed a whole system's worth of my people. Killed my friends, my leaders and my Heroes.
My family.
Numbers. That's what we are now. That's what the Batarians come down to for the rest of the Galaxy. Faceless numbers that died on Elysium. That died in the Bahak relay "accident". Numbers that fed into Shepard's army when we got tapped to serve.
Numbers are what remain.
"The Batarian Protectorate". That is what they call us now.
That. That is what Shepard "did for us".
Are you going to include this in your "open-archive"? Perhaps you will wipe it.
Maybe you'll hold it up as an example of how stubborn and ungrateful and evil we are. Then you can evict us again and steal another of our colonies.
They say that, by the end, Commander Shepard was fighting for the Galaxy - not just Earth.
Tell me, when did Shepard ever fight for us?
You can take your Heroes and keep them.
You can take your Foundation and shove it up your blue ass.
You can leave the Batarians to die. That's what Shepard did.
We aren't useful any more.
A/N: That was cathartic.
I've been looking forwards to writing Balak for a while now, so I hope this end result is worth it.
I was originally going to upload a different entry today, but I thought that Balak would be a nice #31, considering the contrast between the tone here and that of the Avina chapter.
As for who was going to be here originally, well, I think I'll leave that as a surprise...
Let me know what you think.
-Nevery.