A loud banging sound resonated trough the halls, reverberating on the golden walls and decorated columns adorning the hall. At the end of this several dozens meters long hall, stood a door, which stood impenetrable for centuries.

In front of this door, there stood two people. One looked like an armored pharaoh, his body the color of sand with red and blue details, while the other looked less like an armor and more like a creature, it's skin a grayish color, with slightly pulsing feelers protruding from various point on his body and two majestic horns on his head.

"Remind me again Nidus," said the first one, "why are we here doing this shit when we could be doing something useful with our time?"

"Come on Inaros, we've been over this what, four times already?" replied the second one, moving to try a different tool on the door, "We barely understand the warframes, let alone the sentients or the ancient technology of the Orokins. We need to understand more, or we might end up like the child playing with the loaded gun".

"And wasting time trying to pry open a door that nobody has ever opened will help us how exactly?" asked Inaros, moving to grab another tool and going back to working on the door.

"You know what, you mummified old fart? You already know all that, so either shut up and help or get out and deal with the general" replied Nidus, although there was a smile in his voice.

"Alright alright… the drinks are on you tonight though," said Inaros, moving to examine the door more closely.

At first glance it appeared to be a simple door made of the metallic alloy the Orokin used in almost all of their bases, but indentations and connections on it made Inaros quickly realize that brute force would not move their obstacle.

"It's a security lock-down door." Moving back to where the two had left most of the instrument, a few meters away, he picked up a tablet with a map of the area. "We will need to re-activate the main energy generator, then find the control room, and from there disable the lockdown."

"You're kidding," begged Nidus, "We already spent over an hour in this damn place… now I'll never manage to prepare my lesson plans in time".

"Weren't you supposed to prepare those over a month ago?" asked his partner, packing what instruments they had taken out.

The biological looking guy made a grunt that didn't really mean anything and the two moved back in the corridors, following the map to the generator.

"So, what's the deal with this place anyway?" asked Nidus, probably to make conversation in the face of the oppressing silence of the corridors; "I mean, for months now the brass has been obsessed with this school, but out of the blue they call us away and send us to Mars to explore an old Orokin tower, a crashed Orokin tower mind you, in hope of finding… what? Some super secret Orokin weapon? The secret to eternal life? The Orokin Emperor's porn stash?"

Inaros chuckled. "I think it's mostly a matter of caution. Most people in the military alliance don't trust each others, let alone us. We're a bunch of people exposed to extra-dimensional crap who can suddenly shoot beams out of their hands and pilot weapons of mass destruction. Makes sense then that they wouldn't tell us about this place unless they believe we're needed to unlock whatever secret is hidden here."

As he finished talking, the two turned a corner and found an elevator. Entering it and looking up, the Egyptian looking one asked: "Wanna race who can climb faster to the top?"

"Fuck you man" replied the other one, jumping and starting the ascension.

Once on top, Inaros stood up, legs slightly spread apart, hands balled into fists on his waist, and asked: "You know what I could use right now?"

"An exorcism?" asked back Nidus, clapping his hand on his partner's back with enough force to make him stagger out of his ridiculous pose.

After the elevator there were a few more corridors, until the two finally reached their objective: the generator room.

"Alright! Let's get this baby up and running again!" Exclaimed Nidus.

There was a long pause until he asked: "How do we do that?"

Shaking his head, Inaros moved towards the controls on the left of the generator, while motion to his partner to do the same on the other side.

"If this place was closed in lock-down, the keys to the generator should still be in the consoles. All we need to do is turn the keys at the same time. That will initiate a generator restart. If there are any other problems, the sequence will stop and highlight them for us."

So it was that at the count of three, the two turned the keys and the generator sprung back to life with a powerful humming sound reverberating all around the two warframes and losing itself in the corridors. In rapid succession, the various screens and consoles all around turned on, showing various statistics and messages in the long lost language of the Orokin.

"Well, that worked well enough. Strange that nothing bad happened to us while we were here..." As Nidus was saying that, a long howling was heard resonating trough the halls and corridors, making Nidus' feelers stand at attention and sending a shiver down Inaros' spine.

"Nidus?" asked Inaros.

"Yes Inaros?" asked back Nidus.

"Do me a favor and try not to choke on your own foot".

And as Inaros said that, all the lights, including the consoles and the ceiling lights, turned off, leaving the two in the darkness.


Nidus and Inaros, forced to move along the corridors using only the lights on their Braton rifles, were inching carefully back to the room with the door they had originally come to open. As soon as the light had gone out, the two had fallen on their training and whipped out their rifles, turning on the lights on them, and prepared themselves to face whatever had howled.

However, after over an hour of slowly walking back, nothing had shown itself. Instead of relaxing them, this made the two warframes tense even more.

After all, it was one thing to face an enemy charging at you, but it was another completely to face one capable of waiting in the shadow and ambushing you.

Upon reaching the main hall, they found the vault door wide open and no signs of whatever was in the tower with them. Looking at each other, Inaros motioned towards the door with his head, moving to cover their backs at the same time.

Nidus moved carefully towards the door, keeping a careful eye in front of him and knowing that his partner would do the same behind him.

He inched around the door, exposing as little of himself as possible while trying to see the most inside the door. He was surprised when he found that the room was remarkably smaller than they originally believed, containing only a large pod, a smaller pod right next to it, both open and without content, and what looked to be an independent generator behind the two, still functioning without problem.

Seeing that there was nothing moving inside, Nidus fully entered the room, moving to check if the two open pods had any information on them. The larger one was completely barren, not even a writing or scrap of data on it. The second one appeared the same, but the inspecting warframe was quick to notice how tick the void presence was inside it.

However, before he was able to report what he had found, he heard Inaros shooting something. Quickly whirling around and taking aim, he only managed to see a rapidly moving shadow and sparks of golden energy from time to time.

Nidus was about to send out his infestation in hope of blocking his target, but as he was raising his leg to do so the shadow launched itself at him, grabbing him in the one moment his guard was down. Before the captive warframe could even attempt to struggle to get free, he found himself unable to move, his limbs refusing to obey his commands.

Seeing his partner grabbed and the shadow still for the first time since he first saw it, Inaros wasted no time in casting out his sand, hoping to blind the thing and giving him time to plant a bullet in its head. However, before his ability could reach it, a blue flash came away from it and landed right behind inaros. The warframe quickly spun around unsheathing the blade on his back and bringing it down on whatever was behind him, trusting his sand to keep the first enemy blinded for a few more moments. However, a breath away from hitting its mark, the blade stilled in mid-air. And just like the blade, his arm and the rest of his body were still, locked in place, as if frozen.

And even if he hadn't been held in place by whatever it was that kept him there, he might have frozen on his own, as in front of him stood what he could only describe as a boy. While he stood confidently and poised, his face showed no signs of aging, making Inaros think that he couldn't be older than 18. His face was framed by reddish brown hair, reaching about his shoulders. However, no matter how young the boy may look, his green eyes were piercing Inaros, going beyond the shell of the warframe and straight to the person piloting it, making the man feel naked and defenseless in a way he never felt before while using his warframe.

He and the boy stood there for what felt like forever, but was probably only a few seconds, the shadow coming to stand behind the boy. Now that it was still and closer, Inaros could identify it as a warframe, but it was a strange one. It looked like an Excalibur, but it had the golden details of a Prime. However, the design was different than Excalibur Prime, leaving the man wondering what exactly this was. Plus, it was wearing a black scarf.

As he was wondering, the boy spoke:

"You're strong. But you could be stronger"

Having said that, he turned around, walking away with the warframe following him like a puppy.

It took at least a full minute before the two warframes got back control of their bodies. Upon being fully able to move again, the two ran after the boy, fearing he would take their ship to leave the planet.

But he didn't. The two reached the ship without meeting him again. Their ship was left as they left it, sitting quietly on a half-broken balcony. No trace of the boy or of the warframe with him.

"so, that's your report?" asked General Marius Creed.

"That's our report" replied Jack Vadham, pilot of Inaros. He and Reo Hinata, the pilot of Nidus, had left their warframes upon boarding the flagship of the military alliance fleet and reported to General Creed.

The general was easily two meters of height, made of muscles and lacking a visible neck. He was the perfect representation of the military muscle-head stereotype, but he was surprisingly deep and insightful.

And right now, the man was deep in thought.

"We have about a couple hundred registered warframe pilots. Of those, only a few are capable of piloting a prime frame. Now however, we find ourselves with this person, coming out of nowhere, capable of freezing a warframe without even touching them, and accompanied by what could easily be considered as a prime Excalibur."

He left that hanging in the air, considering both the info and the two men in front of him. Jack Vadham and Reo Hinata were the very first capable of piloting a warframe. Thanks to them, humanity had found the ancient Orokin tower containing the method to create new warframes, giving them all a chance to survive the war with the aliens currently invading them.

However, they now had many, many more pilots, all thanks to controlled exposition to void energy. However, they were all teenagers or little more, untrained and unprepared yet. This was why they were preparing a school for them, to hopefully prepare them and avoid massive casualties when they were finally ready to be deployed.

Until now, the situation had been hard, but simple. Sentients, damn aliens made of machines, capable of taking over technology unless properly shielded, attacked Earth in waves, acting like animals, with no strategy or clear objective except to kill as many as possible. Warframes, now that they had them, could be used against these monsters in defense of the planet.

However, the arrival of this new unknown made the situation more difficult. This boy came out of nowhere, left in that pod in that vault for who knew how long. He was capable of some degree of control over warframes with their pilots already inside, and had a warframe of his own that followed him around.

Warframes were exceedingly powerful. Having even just one unaccounted for was a recipe for disaster.

"We will deploy all available resources to find this mystery warframe," declared the General, "In the meantime, we cannot forget our priorities. Vadham, Hinata, you two are to return to the moon and work on the last preparations for the academy." he launched a folder across the table they were currently sitting around towards the two men. "In there are the classes you two need to take on personally: Vadham, you get the Prime class. We have high hopes for those guys, so make it happen. Hinata, you get Class A. In there you have all the most promising Warframe pilots, the best and most powerful outside of the Prime class."

Standing up, the man looked at the two pilots and declared: "Those kids are the best shot we have of keeping our people alive. Make them into the heroes we need."