It wasn't often that she found herself navigating the cramped halls of a Grineer ship at anything less than breakneck speed. Never mind the fact that the so very comforting weight of her weapons rested on her hunched back instead of her hands, never mind the fact that a figure sporting the same blobs of armor that the rank-and-file Grineer marines who she usually saw filling these tubular hallways was currently guiding her through the winding innards of the ship.
It was much emptier too, and though while the interiors of the Grineer ships she had boarded could never have been described as being uniform in design, the halls here all sported a patchwork of mismatched colors. Walls of olive would cut off and seal together with rust red ceilings, and she'd find herself stalking over the occasional grate separating two different hues of blue on either side of her.
It was…
Fascinating.
She smiled a little. That was by no means how she was thinking of describing the feeling of being led through a sparsely crewed, jigsaw Grineer ship.
Her Rhino continued its ever dutiful march in silence, thickly corded legs moving at her will, with no further elaboration coming with that flickering notion. Not that she could expect that much. Not yet at least.
She was taken away from those familiar musings as the tunnels worming through the ship spilled out into a vast bay, lined with, to her surprise, rows upon rows of empty... slabs. Again, a seeming sort of hodgepodge of differently shaped lumps of alloy, but all relatively flat and set down uniformly. Almost like tables? She felt her angular head tilt quizzically at the sight, and not entirely of her own accord.
Her gaze swept over to a distant corner of the room as three lanky figures rushed in, all but one heaving along another misshapen slab of metal. The last of the three towered over the other two, her irregularly long mechanical legs propping up her thinly armored figure. Her eyes, one of them a beady red, were rigidly set on a portable electronic display cradled in her hands, apparently paying the errant Warframe and its little (well… comparatively 'little', she supposed) escort no heed as they passed through the otherwise empty room.
"Almost at bridge," grunted out her escort as he stopped in front of a door, tapping at a glowing orange interface crudely welded into the side.
"Oh. Okay," she muttered out, not really knowing what else to say.
The seconds she stood still seemed to drag on a bit too long, the thick alloys composing her skin feeling like it was tingling, as though the air was exceptionally cold and sterile. Her hands clenched, and she could even feel a thin sheen of ferrite starting to crystallize over her chassis.
She spared one last glance back at the room as the door hissed open, realization dawning on why the scene seemed so eerie.
It looked a bit like an empty med bay.
0-0-0
"-approximately still three hours out from the target. My scans indicate that spore saturation has been reached in 78% of sectors outside of the safe rooms."
She was surprised to hear the Lotus' digitized voice booming out from around the corner- she hadn't been expecting her to be so directly involvedin this. Or… well, it had been the Lotus which relayed the message regarding this vague emergency to her, so maybe she wasn't?
She came to a pause just outside of sight of the bridge, the sprawling expanse of that room blocked off by a large stairwell just past where her escort had motioned for her to wait.
"Life support systems are still functioning ship-wide, but you will require specific countermeasures against the spore if you are to get the crewmembers through safely."
An unfamiliar voice, recognizably female but laden with a buzz that sounded a little too mechanical for the comfort of her ears responded. "I take it that's what the pods we picked up back at Kupier are for?"
It's the Grineer.
That was it- maybe it wasn't so much just that she was hearing the Lotus' voice outside of the confines of her head, maybe it was more about who exactly she was addressing for once. For all she'd ever heard the Lotus say about them, talking to the Grineer was probably one of the last things she expected out the Sentient.
Steel Meridian. Not Grineer.
Right. Importance difference. One that she'd evidently have to get used to.
…
It certainly sounded like they were already in the thick of the briefing on whatever was going to happen. She hoped she wouldn't stick out too much amongst whatever other Tenno had answered the call for help, apparently coming in late.
"Correct. The med booster pods will have to be deployed at key locations along the evacuation routes however, as they will only be able to disperse the airborne countermeasure within a limited radius when active. The Kavor will still have to endure some exposure to the spore as they move from pod to pod."
A pair of beady yellow eyes peeked out at her from behind the corner, sending an instinctual twitch down her fingers. Her Rhino's didn't budge.
She hadn't even noticed her escort duck out of sight earlier, and seeing that signature Lancer mask adorning his face staring right at her now was a little something that jumped her 'It's the Grineer' nerves a bit too much for her liking.
The marine reached out with a stocky arm and gestured for her to come into the bridge.
She tried her best to remain innocuous as she stalked in from the side of the room, creeping along the edges towards the stairs and trying her hardest not to pay too much heed to the ludicrously large holographic projection of Lotus' head practically smothering the entirety of the bridge's viewport.
Her attempts at climbing up the staircase to join the few other Warframes and the one Grineer woman she could see standing up at the central platform without disturbing the briefing were halted by a voice that she began to realize was maybe just a few decibels too loud. She could've sworn she saw the array of speakers lining the walls quivering as the Lotus caught notice of her.
"Tenno. Good to see you've made it."
She could've also sworn her Rhino flinched more than she did as it found itself the center of attention in the bridge. The Grineer woman's one-eyed gaze looked particularly stern. So much for making a good first impression.
"We were just beginning with the briefing. Take position with the others and we can continue- your team can review what you missed after."
She did her best to march upright and maintain a steady pace, but frankly speaking she wasn't really sure if that much was under her control anymore. There were a few other Rhino frames up in the crowd, and realizing that seemed to make it that much more difficult to climb the stairs while not acting like an… awkward schoolchild.
She ended up falling in near the back and to the side of the small gathering of Warframes, hunching over and trying to avoid the all-seeing orange gaze of the almighty Lotus.
First day at school?
She stifled a chuckle, figuring that talking to her Warframe in public was the last thing she needed to do at the moment.
First day at school. She couldn't say those were times she wanted to think about much these days-
-but as she saw a pair of Warframes peek back at her before leaning into their own little discussion, she also couldn't deny the comparison was too far off the mark.
0-0-0
So um…
Yeah, the start of the bridge scene did turn out to be a bit sillier than I had planned lol
I'd just like to imagine that Grineer hologram/sound comm systems must be very… powerful because of Vay Hek :P
I am dubious about whether this can continue, I've pretty ambitious plans for the overarching plot behind it but frankly am a little worried about the characters- trying to continue with the whole Do Warframes Dream of Electric Moa thing, and I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it. (addressing a Guest review about the title of that btw, I'm pretty sure Do X Dream of Electric Y is a pretty widely used reference to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)