'MONG'S' was one of the most popular pubs in the Acropolis thanks to its location near the hangars and the many celebrities that went there to have a drink. The bar was especially crowded that day because it was the anniversary of the last battle from the most devastating war the Confederation fought, which ended exactly a hundred years prior.

'… we are here to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Midlorian, the last and most costly battle of the Hegemony War-' You could barely hear words of the aimtroog reporter because of the racket the regulars were making.

“Quiet down a little, will you!?” Shouted the owner and only bartender of the bar, a grey skinned and stout therawyrm that that seemed to be well over a thousand four hundred years; that was when a therawyrm was considered past their prime. Groaning, the man grabbed a megaphone he had for occassions like this and shouted: “The Commeroration is going to begin any moment now, and you won't won't hear it if you don't shut up!”

His words managed to finally silence the barflies, at least enough so that everyone inside could hear the broadcast. Everybody watched with wide eyes and solemn hearts as President Rrrugan Vakarian, himself a veteran of the War, gave a speech honoring the billions of deaths.

Everybody except one that's it.

A certain black skinned therawyrm that fought in the war.

Praeratus actually got off his seat, among the closest to the holovisor, and walked off the establishment as President Vakarian began his speech.

“Hey!” He heard behind him. Praeratus turned to see the owner of the bard looking at hi. “Why are you leaving boy? The Commemoration...” He trailed off as Praeratus silently lift his shirt to show the myriad of scars he gained during the war... and the mark that all Centurions had. Only the bartended saw it, but it was all he needed.

“I'm not a person of speeches.”

The bartender, knowing what Praeratus meant (he was definitely a veteran himself) and realizing who he was, nodded to him in understanding, but before Praeratus could turn, he filled a especially large jar with ale and throwed it at him.

“Keep it, it's the least I can do for a hero!”

Praeratus nodded in thanks and left the bar, sipping his drink along the way.

'A speech. A trillion people dead, hundreds of worlds glassed or cracked, quadrillions of credits lost, twenty billion displaced... and all he can give is a fracking speech?' Thought Praeratus as he walked through the deserted streets of the Residential ward where which his house was and drank his jar, slightly dizzy but not enough to stumble. “A motherfracker is what he is.”

After the Treaty was signed, Praeratus and the other Centurions were relieved of duty and given civilian jobs (no matter how he liked his job as taxi driver and how many times he told himself he chose to be one) by High Command to keep them away from anything violent that could remind them of the nearly total extermination of their regiment, their brothers and sisters, since it was literally all the high brass could do for them at that point. Didn't stop Victus, Fadila and nearly a half of all surviving Centurions to become pirates and raid Hegemonic space.

He still remembered the fight between him and Victus that obliterated their meeting place when they refused to listen to him and live their lives. He won, but also knew that Victus would refuse to back down (despite getting his ass kicked repeatedly) and, in his own words, 'live like a fracking civilian when we could make those cats and squidfaces pay', and so Praeratus let them go under the promise of not involving the Confederation. That left him alive alongside the others, went along with him.

That was the other reason he went to MONG'S; he needed a damn drink after hearing from some bounty hunters that an Hegemony deserters outpost had been raided earlier that day by other bounty hunters; therawyrm bounty hunters. The outpost was destroyed, and the deserters exterminated, but none of the ex-Centurions survived the job.

Not that the rest got any better, what with being bounty hunters and ignoring the outright begs of him and the military to not risk their lives.

After a millenium since they were born, a century since the war officially ended, and out of a regiment of nine hundred hypersoldiers that were worth an entire squad of common Gene Warriors each, he was the only one still alive.

And he would have cried right in the middle of that street if he still had tears, but he had already cried his heart out earlier that day when he found out what happened to them.

Sometimes, he wished to simply end it all the easy way (a bullet/pulse/beam to the brain, flying into a star or blackhole, opening a hatch that led to open space, travel to the Dwarf Galaxy through that wormhole near the Acropolis and let himself be killed the moment he found something nasty...), but just when it seemed he'd do it he always backed off. He may have been suicidal, but as former Centurion and therawyrm, he wanted to die fighting, not just drop dead.

But on the days he was working and depressed, he had those possibilities in mind. Just because.

After five minutes of walking through the Residential ward, he finally arrived at the neighborhood in which he lived. The place was located right in the corner of the ward, where the reinforced plasteel floor and ceiling of the ward met to make a triangle with the walls as limit; said walls were dotted with several large windows that showed the star-dotted blackness of space, illuminated by the lights that came from the ceiling, the street lamposts, the buildings themselves...

Too bad the place itself was rifled with crime of all types all day and night (or more accuratelly all day, since the lights never always on): robberies, trespassing, burglary, graffiti,gang brawls where nobody died but everyone ended in the local hospital... Yep, it the worst neighborhood in the ward, and a a terrible place to live for more decent folk, like couples with children or, but the perfect location for veterans who didn't mind cracking some burglar's skull if they dared to get inside their homes.

His own house was at the end of the street he was walking on, a simple bungalow of red walls and roof, a couple windows on the front, one at the back, and all of it covered in covered in a thin layer of something. Overall, not exactly the most welcoming home, but for a single man it sufficed. Besides, the filthiest house was better than any trench or foxhole by default.

However, just as he was about to open the door, he heard it, an unmistakable sound that pierced the silence of the neighborhood.

A scream.

The kind of scream a man made when his scrotum was being crushed slowly. He would know.

In another occasion he would have shrugged and gone to bed, but given that there was at least someone out there instead of celebrating the day in some place, watching HV or something like that and was screaming at the top of his lungs because he was being castrated, and that the worst thing that happened around there was a brawl, he decided to investigate. Besides, he didn't have anything to do at the moment.

After using a probe to locate where the scream came from and running between the apartment blocks and houses to go there, he found himself in an alley and witnessin a most peculiar sight.

A woman beating the shit out of several thugs of various races with her bare hands and a bit of telekinesis. The screaming came from the only thug she used cryokinesis on, a nifog whose crotch looked like a strawberry slushy.

“And that's for not coming quietly, you zabs!” The woman said as she finished kicking one of her 'assailants' in the belly before spitting on his face and turning... to see a baffled therawyrm looking at her.

In another occasion, the woman would have mistaken Praeratus for a thug and attacked him, and probably would have ended just as broken as her opponents.

Not this time.

The woman somehow realized that he wasn't a thug, even with the empty jar clutched on his left hand, and also realized that the man had catched her brutalizing some guys without context. Also, he was pretty damn big even for a therawyrm, and as a skilled psionic she could sense that he was more powerful than her.

“H-ello there!” She said with an awkward smile.

“Hey...”

“If you are wondering what happened here, I didn't start it, I can explain!” She said before she began ranting.

Praeratus, not actually caring about what happened, simply nodded as she spoke and took on her features.

She was a slender älf with brown skin and long, curly silver hair tied in a ponytail, with pink sickle-shaped tattoos on her cheekbones, right under each of ther bright blue eyes, which also had lavender pupils. She was wearing a simple leather jacket over a white armor set with pink accents in the breastplate, shoulders and knees. Given that she was wearing armor, she probably was a bounty hunter of sorts, and the thugs were her quarry.

She was, in a word, beautiful, but not that good of a bounty hunter given that her armor was still visible and didn't see any weapon on her person, and a bit absent mindled, because one of her catches of the day (incidentially the one castrated) was rising behind her and aiming a Gar20 at the back of her head.

Without even thinking, Praeratus threw his empty jar over the älf's head and right into the nifog's face with enough force to shatter into a thousand shards, but not enough to cave his head in. The nifog was lucky to be knocked out by that, because the pain of having several alcohol-covered pieces of glass pierce his skin would have been just as bad as his penis being flash frozen and shattered.

The älf, who froze when Praeratus saved her from having her head turned into a plasma-burned mush, tore her eyes from the knocked out nifog and looked back at the therawyrm with wide eyes, then back to the guy, then back to Praeratus, and so forth for at least fifteen seconds, all the while muttering 'wha'.

Praeratus decided to stop her before she began acting weird...er

“Ma'am, are you alright?” He asked the älf as he approached her. Now that he was closer he could see her face better and deduct her age at a bit below 500, the mean age for adult älfs. Well, älfs and therawyrms, but the latter aged much better than the former; by the time an älf was 800 they were considered old, whereas a therawyrm of similar age was still on his prime, and would be like that until they reached 1400.

The woman stopped her mumbling and shook her head before looking at Praeratus and smiling awkwardly – again.

“Yes, yes, I'm fine! No, I'm better than fine, I'm alive thanks to you! For that you have my thanks!” She said as she bowed by bending her torso forwards, the traditional älf sign of respect, used only by nobility and royalty. It also explained why she acted as she did: she was a pampered blueblood.

Praeratus returned her bow with a curt nod. “You're welcome, but if we wait too much one of your bounties is gonna bled out, and everyone's watching Vakarian's speech so I don't think the police nor the hospital's are avaiable.” He said, pointing at the currently unconscious nifog with no balls.

The woman looked back and saw that Praeratus was right.

“Oh no! If he dies I won't get paid!” Simple and straight to the point, eh?

“Fortunately for you, I happen to have a first aid equipment back at home. It's not the best, but if we arrive in time I can save him.”

“But how do we-” She began to say before Praeratus, who already knew what she would say, grabbed all the downed thugs in a psionic field, and then walked to his home. The bounty hunter, after a few moments of stupefaction, realized he was leaving with her bounties and hurried after him.

After an strenuous hour in which the castrated nifog nearly bled out, Praeratus managed to heal his wound and stabilize him, after which he threw him with the others on his basement and had coffee with the bounty hunter, who was the one that made it while he was operating.

The woman's name was Allura, and she was a rookie psionic hunter, a bounty hunter that used psionics to catch her bounty. She was after those four lowlives with orders of catching them alive. She was also the daughter of highly influential Altean nobles, Lord Alfor and Lady Melenor, and close family to the Royal Family.

Most important of all, though, was that she too was a veteran of the Hegemony War. A Psionic Warrior to be specific.

Before the War, during a vacation on a paradise planet on the reaches of the Confederation, she revealed she wanted to be join an humanitarian effort. Naturally her family freaked out, although not all in the same way: her mother, Alfor was a bit downtrodden, whereas her mother was proud of having a daughter who wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty to help people, even though Allura wouldn't have to actually defend herself.

And then the Hegemony attacked the planet, starting with a kinetic bombardment that reduced the surface to ruins, and then sending armies to round up survivors and either kill them or take them as slaves. Fortunately for them, they were already leaving the planet's starport when the first Hegemony ship began to fire at the planet, but they still saw said ship turn its firepower towards the station, which was still filled with people, and obliterate it.

Being powerful psionics, Allura and her parents felt thousands of voices scream in terror before going silent, and even more watching the destruction of the planet in satisfaction, before entering hyperspace and leaving the doomed planet.

Melenor didn't make a fuss when Allura dissappeared one day only to to come back two months later, decked in the iconic armor of a Psionic Warrior to tell them she had joined the Garrison of a nearby system and that she would join the fight soon.

A fight that lasted an entire human century. Älfs lived longer and matured slower than humans, but even for them one hundred years of war were too much. Because of the war ((despite not being nowere as much involved in fighting as most Psionic Warriors, or troops for that matter) and, most importantly, seeing what the Hegemony did with their 'prisoners', she had developed a mean streak that could only be satisfied with violence, which was why she turned to bounty hunting after several years of fruitless nothing and nightmares and anger from the war.

Despite that, she seemed to hold much better from the war than Praeratus and other veterans given that she didn't have the typical marks of PTSD, survivor's guilt and such traumas.

(That also explained why she had been so rough with those thugs. She wasn't used to take prisoners alive)

Another thing, she too felt insulted by the speech of the President about the war, although she also believed that the treaty was the best option, something that Praeratus didn't refute.

“So, what's your story Praeratus?” Allura asked as she took a sip from her tea. They were now in the therawyrm's house, and after watching him make sure that the nifog would survive he sedated him and his buddies.

“Mmm?”

“In what branch did you serve?” She clarified. “I know most therawyrms served in Heavy Infantry, but did you?”

“At... first, but after the battle of Zion I joined the Helldivers. Heavy weapons.”

The Helldivers was a Gene Warrior special operations platoon that deployed on planets via drop pods, which were both their mean for landing and LZ cleaner, since a single pod landing had the same explosive energy of a small naval artillery gun, and the enemy troops that survived having half a ton of plasteel landing on them at mach fifty landing on them would have to face four angry space marines. Being selected from the best super soldiers, the Helldivers were considered the elite of the elite, and therefore the public didn't know much about them even during the war.

Of course, since Praeratus was a Centurion he served ALONGSIDE Helldivers, not as one of them. Besides, at last half of the Centurions loathed and held contempt from what they saw as cheap copies of them and who weren't even therawyrm in turn the Helldivers...

Uh oh.

“I thought therawyrms weren't allowed to join the Helldivers?” Allura asked in an interrogating tone.

HOW THE FRACK COULD HE BE SO STUPID!?

“Erm, well, yes but... You must remember what happened at Tyger Pax. They were down in manpower and needed some help.”

“I WAS in Tyger Pax.” Allura said as she narrowed her eyes. “And I didn't see any Helldiver tall enough to...” The älf stopped talking when she realized what she said. “Tall enough. You know, Praeratus, I have never seen a therawyrm taller than my father, who's pretty tall himself.” She said before asking something. “Say, how old are you Praeratus?”

“I'm two years shy of a thousand forty.”

Allura stared at him for a full minute (a very pregnant minute mind you) before something seemed to click on her head.

“You're tall for a therawyrm... You're old enough to have participated in all the conflicts before the Hegemony War...” She said before trailing off and looking at something past Praeratus' shoulder, at the wall of the kitchen. The therawyrm followed her gaze and internally screamed at himself when he saw what she was looking at.

It was a physical photo showing a dozen therawyrms, male and female alike, all of them relatively young and wearing the same type of armor, saluting alongside a gazam man. Nothing out of the ordinary save for three facts.

One: the synapsids towered over the porcine by more a foot instead of a couple inches, and it was obvious that most of their height was theirs.

Two: the armor they wore, while pretty much antiquated nowadays, was the Sajaak Assault armor MK.1 the first functional itineration of power armor ever made by the Confederation for its army, and the forerunner for all powered exoskeletons designed and used by the Confederal military.

Three: one the therawyrms was a certain black skinned, black eyed male.

The photo was made in the, let's call it 'graduation' of the Centurions, in which twelve of the young super soldiers had been sent to deal with a heavily defended pirate base and wiped it out with not casualties. It was one of the few memories Praeratus took when he 'left' the military, alongside his armor and his many medals. The armor was stored in a storage unit on the Commercial district, hidden from prying eyes and always watched over by cameras and military personnel posing as guards, and the medals were on his bedroom.

But since he never thought he would invite people to the hovel he called home, he simply hung the photography on the kitchen's wall, never expecting others to see it.

If not for Allura screaming and squealing when she discovered who he was, he would have hit his head on the wall.

Several times.

“So, the mighty and wise Praeratus never guessed that someday, someone would enter his home and see that photo?” Celestia said after having a laughing fit. Celestia had finally composed herself and both were walking (slowly if it can be added) towards Ponyville for no real reason.

Praeratus groaned as he heard the alicorn giggle, but this had been good for the two of them: she had forgotten about the play enough to cheer up, and he managed to not sink into depression at least for the moment.

Of course, that would change when he got to... that day.

“Yes, yes, laugh it up Sunbutt, but don't forget, I saw several photos of yours that somehow no one has noticed despite being out for everyone to see.”

Celestia's laugh was cut off as she remembered that fact, and she both glared and stared in fear at Praeratus, who didn't care and began speaking about how Allura gushed and squealed about meeting a Centurion.

He didn't notice that Celestia was holding his hand as they walked.

Sorry for the delay, I'm also writing a story in Spacebattles. This is the first of a three parter mini-arc about Praeratus' life after the war and before becoming a xeno-hunter. As always comment about the fic, fave and most importantly of all press Like.

Edit: changed Praeratus job from accountant to a taxi driver after rewatching The Fifth Element for the first time in five years. I'm starting to wonder if I'm basing him off Korben Dallas too.