Corpus Battlecruiser X-167, somewhere near Eris
The humming of the machinery of the engine room surrounding John was periodically interrupted by the garbled shuffling of a plastic bag as he sat with both his crossed legs on top of a table, watching some distorted figures on a screen directly in front of him.
With no prior warning, the door in front of his post opens. Another crewman emerges from the other side and inquires:
"John?"
To which John acknowledges, while chomping on seemingly chips:
"You know this channel's pretty shit. When are we getting cable?"
The crewman walks up to him as to see what he was watching.
"You know" John further adds "I think the white circle had an affair with the orange rectangle, which hid it from the purple octagon. Then it turned into a dodecahedron. That was great."
"You do realize this is a white-noise processor? It receives a random input of data and then transforms it into random graphical shapes." The crewman states.
"Wow… That is entirely pointless."
"Well, yeah I didn't design this ship."
"If you did, you'd have put the female's locker room right next to your room, huh?" John states, while smiling inappropriately.
"Right. Shouldn't you be guarding the engine room?"
"I am. It's pretty safe, the occasional plasma bursts are great to burn your garbage."
The other crewman then looks down, and notices the bag John is holding, which reads:
'Rubee-to's, 98% pure Rubedo'.
"I don't think Rubedo is edible."
"Me neither." John says, while grabbing another handful and promptly shoving it inside of his mouth.
"Look" John adds while throwing the now empty bag onto the floor, where his Dera and helmet resided, among some other discarded chip bags, "Relax, alright? Everything is fine. We're just doing a scan around Eris and we'll be soon be back to Neptune so we can sniff some ice again. God, I hate that place."
John then picks up his helmet, shakes the dust off and puts it back on.
"Just tell board I haven't messed up. Yet. I think."
John then looks to the back room to assure himself.
"Yeah I did the right thing."
"Why?" The other crewman inquires. "What did you do?"
"Oh. Nothing. You can go. Shoo, shoo. I'm sure board has a job for you to look at some buttons."
"John, I'm your supervisor. I demand to see what you have in the back. Now!" The crewman starts walking to the back.
"No, no, no! Don't! I have nothing!" Says John, as he tries to intercept the crewman's movements. However, the crewman remained unfazed and circumvented John who, in return, stopped him once more.
"At least… let me keep him! Okay? He's gonna be our pet!"
"Pet?"
The crewman glances over the back room, only to see an incapacitated charger chained to the wall.
"What the fuck?!" The crewman loads his own Dera and aims it at the unconscious abomination, to which John intervenes.
"No! He's docile! I promise!"
"Where did you get it, John?!"
"Oh, you want one? Just go to the underdeck. There's a whole bunch of them. There's been more and more by the day, actually."
"What?! Infestation is serious business!"
"I know. Seriously cute, am I not right?"
The crewman sprints off to the nearest console so he can report the infestation outbreak to board. As he does it, the charger seems to awake from its slumber. John turns his attention to it and squats.
"Who's a good puppy?" He says.
The abomination limits itself only to snarl violently at John as he tries to pet one of its many appendages. As it reaches its mouthpiece, or something closely resembling a mouth, the abomination snaps and bites John once.
"Ow! Not you! You bad, ugly, turd shaped puppy!" John shouts.
The crewman returns to John and shouts:
"John! Pick your goddamn stuff and run to the pods! We need to evacuate immediately! And god damn it, put that thing down!"
John retrieves his Dera, points it at what he thinks is its head and remarks, before pulling the trigger:
"Just like Lassie, huh? Well I'Lassie-you in hell, you monster."
"I think that was Old Yeller." The crewman states.
"You try to come up with something with Old Yeller in it. Come on, let's go!"
As both the crewman and John run off the engine room, the violent snaps and growls of various infested flood the ship.
"Alright, here's the deal. We run for the pods." John says between deep exhales by his sprinting.
"That was the board's orders!" The crewman interjects.
"I know, I come up with these ideas on the fly!" John remarks.
They stop in the main control area of the ship, to which they notice the heavy lack of any personnel whatsoever.
"Kick everything, I'm sure there's a MOA hiding somewhere." John inadvertently says.
"Did they just abandon us?" The crewman shivers. He then takes another look at John, which further reinforces his own statement.
"We just need to make it to the pods and…"
As John tries to wrap up his statement, a group of four metal-clad persons erupt from the recently made darkness. Upon sight, both crewmen point their weapons at them.
"Man, it's insane how quickly infestation grows in a matter of four weeks."
"This is all your fault! Now we have Tenno to fight!"
"These wimps are nothing but a target to me. A short, metal, fast moving target to me. God, how I hate them."
John, for the first time in a while, burst into a never-ending rage and fired indiscriminately towards the general direction of the four armed Tenno. All four of them, fell swiftly before his rage-induced plasma swarm. In the background chat, the Tenno are heard saying: 'OMG lvl 200 crewman wtf this shit game'.
"You call yourself Ninja warriors? I call you… fucking dead."
The crewman seems to now see John in a different scope. His power seemed so low given his attitude towards life in general, but now, his true power had finally showed. He showed his true colors in a pressure situation. To protect him. He knew that he couldn't get hurt. He knew that he could've walked it off. He wanted to protect the rest. Him. He wanted to protect him. As this fleeting thought passes through the crewman's brain, a well-placed bullet pierces his helmet and skull from one of the revived Tenno, efficiently throwing him on the floor.
"No!" Says John as he stops aiming for the Tenno and tends to his fallen comrade, whose face was missing.
"You were so beautiful. Your carved lines in your nose and eyelids. Now, it's all red-like goop. The worst goop. Oh, crewman! Oh how I envy your low level! I wish I could see it in your eyes, the world is fresh, new and so, oh so small."
John then looks up and finds the Tenno now missing. He silently sprints towards the pods, in the hopes to catch the ones responsible for his newly-made comrade-that-he-didn't-like-very-much's death.
He follows his built-in mini-map towards the pods and meets the gaze of one of the murderous Tenno. They both stand still, watching one another from the distance. The Tenno fires a volley of MK1-Braton bullets towards John to no avail, as the bullets are absorbed by his bloated shields.
At the same time, the alarms of the ship go off, startling the Tenno. John remarks:
"It's high-noon."
Once this was said, he diligently aims his Dera towards the Tenno and tears it to pieces. He notices some other Tenno fleeing from his general direction whilst the downed Tenno screams in an unknown language. In the distance, 'darkness1998 has left the game' was heard.
"You're wanted. With Lead or Alive, you're coming with me." John remarks, while charging behind the fleeing Tenno.
To his surprise, he entered the escape pods room, to find three of them gone. As he stares to the empty void of space, while somehow not being sucked out of the airship, he swore to find these metal monsters.
John then lumbers out of the evacuation area, only to be stopped at the sight of a Toxic Ancient. The Ancient slowly steps his way to meet John and, with his unholy might of combined flesh, prepares to let out an ear piercing roar. In the midst of his vocal contraction, John jabs him in the jaw with the butt of his Dera.
"Take it up with someone who cares, J.K. Rowling."
John then returns to his quarters back in the, now shut down, engine room, a room that infestation doesn't seem to dare to infest. John sits down, removes his helmet, robs his personal container for some Rubee-to's and resumes his post.
A few weeks later, the space hulk of his once-upon-a-time-ship is retrieved by a Corpus capital ship and then sent to a recovery station. Since the infestation was dealt with and the irrecoverable parts destroyed, a few Flux Crewmen slithered down to the engine room. Once the door was pried open, they discovered the scene:
John, asleep, covered in Rubee-to's bags and was lying down with his belly down, snoring violently. One of the Flux Crewmen eyed the other one and sighed.
"John? You again? Why do you appear every single time I have a scavenging assignment?" The crewman on the left let out.
John jolted awake, although reluctant to get up. He moaned as he tried to get up and saw the two Flux Crewman wide-eyed, he assumed, at him.
"If I had a penny for every time I heard that." Says John, still half asleep, trying to get up with his best effort.
"Although, I have done my job, you know. The engine room is in perfect condition. I Jugg-arantee it." John adds once more.
The crewmen limit themselves to sighing, as to not praise his surprisingly well done job at keeping the room in pristine condition. None of the cancerous tumors of the infested had actually penetrated into the room and as such, to every extent of the word, John had done his job.
Without breaking the silence, John simply starts walking out of the room, while the Flux crewmen resort to escorting him out. John then uses a breach in the wreckage to hop out, and once more discover the lively, busy community under the heavy and frigid atmosphere. He scanned the surroundings and found MOAs patrolling the automatic machinery, heard the gracious intercom voice instructing the crewmen around and felt the artificially-warmed air on his cheeks. He was definitely home.
As John inhales the planet-bound oxygen with great satisfaction, one of the crewmen states:
"Welcome back to Neptune, John. Just try not to destroy anything. In fact, just… don't touch anything."