Incomplete Beginnings

He was tired, so very tired. And cold. His mind drifted just on the edge of sleep. The sounds of boots on metal intruded on his half conscious pseudo-dreams, and he let out a groan of dissatisfaction.

"Ho my, my, my. Lotus, scratch that we have a live one." It was a woman's voice. Not familiar, sounded surprised to note he was alive. He…actually he couldn't remember the last night. Or the night before that.

"Yeah, surprised me is all. Looks a bit out of it." He tried to think back and found nothing. Not a trace of a memory, a second later he fell face first onto hard metal. The pain struck down his thoughts and woke him up completely. His eyes were wide open and he cursed a little as he pushed himself off the floor. He felt drained, weakened.

"Alright buddy," a gloved hand dragged him up by the elbow "you're gonna need to help me here, sleeping beauty." he got his feet under him and rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair. Wait. That wasn't right. Where was his warframe? The chitinous armor, the sensors?

"wha…" he looked at the one who woke him and a finger to the lips silenced him. He could hear some synthetic-sounding consonant-filled language coming from somewhere nearby. Now that he had time to observe his surroundings he only became more confused. They were in some kind of medical observation room, there was a large glass window for the attending, and out of the corner of his eye he could see an operating table, and a corpse. He saw ribs forced out of the abdomen, like fingers grasping at the air. Something terrible was happening here. He felt rage and disgust welling up from within.

A finger on his cheek pushed his face back to the woman in front of him. She shook her head and he took in her features: an angular face with skin the walnut colored skin and red eyes burdened by some severe dark circles. His eyes were drawn to her shoulder, whorls of red and black spread over her arm and chest. It was a warframe, or rather it was part of a warframe, an Ember judging by the epaulette and elbow guard. Her warframe ended at her chest, the rest of her body was covered in a mesh suit like the one he was wearing.

The words stopped, and a hiss and click relaxed his apparent rescuer.

"So welcome to the present day Tenno, I know you've got a lot of questions but we only have a few minutes before they realize I stole this" She flashed a gun-metal canister at him before stashing it in a pouch she'd attached to her own mesh suit "So keep quiet and on the move." She stalked out into the corridor and he followed.

"Where is my warframe?" he whispered as he shadowed her motions, crouching low in front of windows that showed a wintry wasteland. Other questions occurred to him like: where are we, what year is this and by the by who are you and what is my name; but they were minor things compared to his warframe.

"Torn to pieces, to be dissected or repurposed. At least they left you the legs, its more than some of us have to work with." He felt empty as the words hit him, there was a ringing in his ears. His warframe was his purpose. He was it and it was he. Someone had ripped it from him while he slept. He was diminished. He barely noticed as she pressed something into him. He numbly took it, his hands unconsciously reloading the handgun she gave him. A lato, or a close approximation to the Orokin weapon. It would do. Her brow creased and she dragged him down behind a row of lockers,

"Not gonna pretend to know what you're thinking, but priority one is getting out of here intact. Got it?" He nodded. Her grip tightened on his shoulder.

"I won't slow you down." She let out a chuckle.

"Good enough." She continued to a vertical door, and half-whispered over her shoulder "But you best get yourself out too, I told the Lotus I was bringing back a new member for the cause." The door opened and a blue chicken-legged proxy walked through.

"Damn." she swung a faux-Braton up and fired a burst of bullets into the machine but not before it let out a screeching sound. Alarms rang out and he tensed up. "And now we run." He was dashing down the stairs right along with her. People with bizarre square helmets flooded into the room, wielding energy weapons he had never seen before. His shots deflected off the helmets, armored. Naturally. They kept running, depending on their suits meager shields to deflect what shots they couldn't dodge. He twisted past a crewman wielding a nasty looking electrical club and leapt the next flight of stairs in a single bound. He felt a twinge in his chest, that little exertion tired him out way more than he remembered.

"Keep it simple, our reserves are shallower than they used to be." He could barely hear her over the gunfire.

"Duly noted, and these are?" He'd switched to body shots and was having much more luck firing at their center of mass. He'd taken a few hits, but his shields were managing, and all of their enemies appeared to be behind them.

"Corpus, fun guys. Now get back." He obliged, they were at a T-intersection with all of their pursuers funneled into one corridor. He reloaded and prepared to hold them off, but the Ember had other plans. She muttered some words, and then punched the ground, a wall of flame spreading out and cutting off their opponents.

"Gah-hah-hah-HAH! That hurts like hell!" She was sweating, breathing heavily and grinning like she'd gone mad.

"Are you okay?" he slung her arm over his shoulder, and noticed several fist-sized holes in the remains of her warframe.

"Disabled the limiters on my frame. Hell of a thing. Not fun."

"Which is why we don't do it. You could have…" The limiters were in place so Tenno didn't try to draw a fatal amount of power out of themselves and their warframes. You could disable them easily enough, and in a complete warframe you probably could get away with it no problem, in these incomplete frames though… Hmm, a memory. Maybe the amnesia was just temporary. That would be a blessing in this savage place he'd been thrust into.

"I'll take the lecture some other time. Lotus." She had a hand up to her ear, some type of implant he assumed.

"Yeah, well you know that thing you told me not to do? Mm-hmm. And? Beautiful." Her arm went slack. "Extraction is to the left. We have two infiltration ships waiting for us." The going was slow, but they had made it outside. He felt the cold penetrate his suit, he imagined it would do wonders for those burns forming on her arm. For the few minutes before they froze to death. Going downhill on the ice was tricky, but they were almost to the landing pad, and there were the ships. Snub-nosed with rectangular thrusters twitching this way and that to keep them in place.

And around the corner was a seven foot tall giant of a corpus, in a red suit and wielding a nasty looking three-barreled gun pointed right at him.

"Bek sobrek" at least he thought that was what it said, but the way it was pointing that gun was unmistakable. The Ember slid her arm off of his shoulders, strong enough to stand on her own at least. They could definitely take him, if they were in their full warframes. But as is, he doubted his shields would hold up a second against any kind of sustained fire, and at this range the Corpus couldn't help but hit him. The Ember seemed to agree, and started to raise her hands in surrender.

They were so close, and he felt that anger he felt when he saw the desecrated Tenno on the table. That could not be forgiven, and he couldn't avenge them if he was caught now. He felt energy swell into him, she'd burned up part of her remaining warframe, he could do the same. He concentrated, saw space fold and time stop. He rushed at the barely moving corpus, he saw it pull the trigger and the barrel start to spin, he side-stepped and then leapt at it. His hand grabbed the corpus' helmet, and with the strength of an angry god he slammed it into the ground.

He was breathing heavily as his concentration dissipated. The corpus was not breathing.

"well damn, I was just gonna throw a fireball and run. Got a bit of a brutal streak in you." He laughed, he couldn't help it. He was utterly spent, and that last quip got him.

"I," huff, wheeze "can't deny that." They made it up to the ships, struggled a little getting in, and in a burst of thrust they were free from that horrid planet. He heard a tone, and after pressing a suspiciously blinking button heard her voice over the speakers.

"So my name is Sera by the way."

"My name is...Aiden." At least he remembered that much now.

"Well Aiden, those questions going through your head. Hold onto them. We're going to our citadel, and I think we could both use some rest before we get there." He didn't have a chance to agree, waking up had been an exhausting experience. He almost feared what he would wake up to next, but he was Tenno. He may not be complete with only a partial frame, but he would recover. And someday, he would return to this planet.