Ashlesha: Part I of Awaken the Stars

Rex Vis Tjin’s life has never been normal.

Not every kid spent their summer vacations learning tactics on paintball fields, or could strip down a .9mm and put it back together at military-acceptable speed, or had really good instincts for knowing things…including when to get out of the line of fire. By the time Rex realized the difference, he didn’t care. He’s third-eldest of eight kids and they’re all nuts, but they love each other. That’s the important part.

Four of them go into the military, thinking long-term careers. Then Rex’s brother dies in 2005 in Iraq. That’s the deal-breaker. Rex bows out after only eight years instead of twenty, and gets to spend the next decade figuring out what to do with the rest of his life. He attended a college he can’t remember graduating from. He didn’t care; it was just something to fill the empty spaces in his life.

Picking up available work through the Department of Defense fills those empty spaces nicely. Rex has a conscience and the ability to say “No thanks” if he doesn’t like a job. He gets to shoot things (or turn them into craters) and the pay is great. Awesome.

On his 36th birthday, Rex meets a redhead in a bar. He wasn’t planning on dating, but sometimes you just fit with someone, and he fits with Euan Ambrus very well.

His new favorite redhead is also sort-of the reason why 2016 pushes the envelope on what’s normal, but Rex figures that if you’re going to make an enemy out of an organization within the federal government, it might as well be the one that’s been up to sci-fi levels of weird since 1951