War-torn and desperate; there's a reason to keep on fighting [1]
Pertains to the transference project, the somatic link, and the collapse of the orokin empire
Content Warnings: Freelance mercenary work, somatic shock, self-mutiliation/autocannibalism, Body horror/mutilation, emotional damage
"Suuir," a voice chokes as he yanks himself forth, cringing as his fractured leg buckles against the inner half of the ramp. He inhales a harsh gasp of air through his dark frilling vents in his chest, gulping air as he pulls his numbed leg up the final steps, guiding himself against the inner arch of the doorway into safety, where the chill of Venus doesn't sting his open wounds, nor chill the shrapnel embedded through skin and casual wear. "Alert the contractor; mark has been executed," he swallows, falling back against the wall of the modified liset. Above him no cephalon speaks; but the energy hums beneath an alteration of commands, easing the craft through the storm as gently as it can manage.
Within its hull – as it whispers into a void mask, the loki sighs, pulling his golden claws around a guild beside the encased opening, to pull himself up.
He hisses as his leg buckles beneath him, his other hand clawing around the tight snare that caught around his thigh. A bare yank gives him to groan, eye-spots flickering open and churning into a scowl – he needs a cutter. Its on the other side of the arsenal. T'viska holds tight on the guide as the liset booms through the atmosphere at last, drifting into the depths of space and hums past the observing corpus ships.
With a growl the loki yanks himself upright, his crushed and snared leg lingering limp as he leans against the wall. "Suuir," he grunts, "I need a pain killer." And begins to stumble his way through to the small dispenser strapped into the foundry unit. Crates lie stacked beside it with bandages, with gauze as he looks around for where he last left the wire cutter – well aware of the tight pain in his thigh. "What's the ration storage looking like," he heaves as he paws behind him in the dispenser recess, fingers clicking against the glass of a small bottle of alcohol.
T'viska cracks the glass with his snarling teeth as the screen beside him rattles off the suspect reserves still left – materials he can use to restore his energy, accelerate his innate healing factor as his stomach resigns empty of energy. He chews the glass into a harmless congealing mass of matter that's safe for him to swallow; and sighs, his other hand picking out the shrapnel pushed out of his skin. However, his leg sits exhausted as he heaves himself half onto the foundry console.
The alcohol stings against his throat, his barbed maw tendrils ensnaring around the bottle to hold it against his chin as he tugs off his holster harness. It drapes around the foundry's arm, a battered lato marred lies resigned in its holster as he tugs his shirt off over his arching horns.
Black and wine purple scars decorate across his back and chest – only a brief few scatter against his shoulders as he sighs, throwing the bloodstained shirt into a bin. Absentminded, he munches on the remains of the small glass of alcohol – it's held in place by four barbed tendrils that feed it into his mouth as his hands clean themselves of his and his target's blood. A mere manager for a corpus delegate, but the territory was rough, no one else was willing to take it for the risks.
Or maybe for the meager sum payment it'd bring.
Wiping his hands clean, the loki checks his chassis for any newly formed scars, picking out any stubborn pieces of metal scrap that he discards into the same bin as his now useless shirt. A huff moves through his chest as he shuffles, steeling back a cringe as he daunts his movements – and propels himself across the room in search for the wire cutter. He can't fix his leg with the wire ensured around his thigh, barbs biting into his skin.
Golden fingers dance through the variously sized tools above the modification station, searching for the wide wire cutters as he holds himself stable with one hand and dancing up onto his toes of one foot. There's a growl that rumbles from him, slamming a drawer close to rattle, searching through another with an agitated grumble. "Destination reached," a chipper voice speaks – it's not the cephalons, but a basic system installed prior. Cephalon Suuir flickers onto the screen at T'viska's side, watching as the loki searches still.
"What is it, Suuir?" T'viska sighs, leaning against the mod station with a grunt – the cutter wasn't there.
It flickers through the remote observers that makes the cephalon's sight – displaying the tool's location further down, behind the arsenal console at the far end.
The warframe sighs; in defeat and relief. "Thanks," he grunts.
Before he fetches it, however, he moves himself back to the foundry station, collecting a package of gauze and a makeshift metal splint; within his leg he can feel the bones of his right knee are still broken. The booze and glass weren't enough to reverse that damage just yet.
T'viska settles behind the arsenal station with a groan, his head falling back with a sigh and a grimace. A kavat, whom had only watched him limp around, gather against his side as he picks out the cutter from behind the arsenal console. "How'd this get back here," he grumbles.
Beneath him the engines faint a surge – Cephalon Suuir's response.
If he had eyes, T'viska would've rolled them as he works the jaws of the cutter beneath the wire and against his skin, wedging it even as it presses against his wounded and bleeding skin. Exposed nerve endings bleed as he cracks it into position, where it soaks in his dark blood. As he wrenches it in place, pressing his head back against the wall, he hisses – the green-eyed Kavat licks his chin, rough tongue lapping away dried blood.
He's gentle as he shoves the kavat away, scratching their chin as he keeps his focus on his thigh – and exhales in anguish as he yanks the cutter's jaws closed. Not a clean cut, it's still in place. Unamused, he carves it back and forth in a sawing motion between the biting jaws, chewing through the metal snare wrapped around his leg. He's glad it only got his leg…
Once the fifth circuit is cut, T'viska yanks the metal away from his leg, tossing it in the direction of the foundry – one thing done, another to go; he sighs. His golden claws dance around his bleeding thigh as he picks the fabric of his legging out of the wound, yanking the material down to his knee and well up towards his hip and crotch. His golden claws dance around his bleeding thigh with strips of gauze, tucking it tight around itself as his dark purple-toned blood oozes into the fibers. Just enough to cover the wound, he reminds himself, it'll heal eventually. Just like the broken bones in his leg further down in need of a splint.
He'll give himself a minute to cover that up…
T'viska pulls the leaf-like-tailed kavat on top of him, scratching it's purring jaws as it licks his face, nipping against his chin. "Easy," he sighs, briefly chuckling, "Cren, have you been good?" he asks with a slight smile. Of course, he only gets more nips in return, slim paws wandering over him, stepping onto his back leg. T'viska hisses, pushing the large creature off as pain bites through his nerves. "Careful," he grunts, pulling himself up and shielding his injury from the kavat – but their attention seems to have been sated.
Crenshaw, the green-eyed kavat, drapes themselves around the other blue-tone-tailed kavat in the corner. T'viska watches as the slightly smaller Rhubarb nips Crenshaw's hock, long paws wrapping around the others leg before they get into a small tussle – their ears arching back, tails whipping back and forth. "Settle," T'viska barks. Crenshaw flops down while Rhubarb stares, barely growing, "Rhubarb," T'viska growls, "don't make me come over there," a light threat – he's not able to get up just yet.
He heaves himself to sit off to his left side, giving his busted leg room to breathe as he drops the gauze down between his legs. T'viska's decorative skirt sticks against his blood-soaked leggings as he tears through the leggings on his right leg – freeing his two-toned shin completely as he pulls it off to slop. Another pair ruined, he sighs.
His fingers dance against his skin as he accesses the internal trauma, poking and prodding with golden claws to find the extent before he places on the makeshift splint. More than just his knee, the damage lingers down into his shin as he wipes away blood drippings from the new covered snare wound. A sigh breathes through his chest vents as he steels himself for the pain, tightening the gauze around above his knee before moving it down, entombing his knee in the material before placing the metal utilized as a splint. He wraps it over and over; pulling it snug until his leg can barely move.
It should encourage it to heal quicker once he stops moving.
Pulling himself up, the loki hobbles himself with small hops, depositing the scrap material into the bin for utilizing later. He's not feeling particularly fond of reusing the material for energy – even though his stomach and energy reserve ache for matter. His shirt is worn down and tattered, his dark leggings ruined by blood and torn of thigh… both he wears to cover the dark scars across his body that echo his faint energy as he stretches. Sleep should do him good… pushing himself towards the rear of the idle orbiter.
Electricity sparks through his thoughts, drawing him to cry out as his claws fight to find something to hold onto, digging around hanging cords as heat bleeds through his spine. His transference bolt in the back of his neck aches as he fumbles to the floor, a hand grasping between his horns, the other squeezing at the back of his neck. T'viska's voice draws hoarse as he wears out his panicking lungs, systems eccentric as he fights to find his breath through the somatic surge.
He lies crumpled on the floor with a pain in his side, where he collided with the dispenser and prodding it into his gut, faltering as his wrapped leg smacks against the floor awkward and hard. It aches as he fights back the nervous panic, barely feeling the prickle of his own golden claws digging against his skin. The warframe hisses as he struggles to pull himself upright, mind still resounding fogged and unfocused – his visual receptors muddied by the electrical storm channeled through his spine. "S-Suuir," he slurs, gasping as pain surges from his busted leg. "What happened," he chokes, a hand holding against his chest as he lies back – exhaustion hammering through his chest.
Radio frequencies play out above T'viska as he lies reclined in an open bay area – thankful that he hasn't settled anything there yet but there's still an ache in his side. He might as well rest here for all his issues.
The radio chatter is muddied as it swiftly moves from channel to channel, either grineer, corpus, or unaffiliated. Some are monotonous, the movement of material between armed checkpoints along courier routes, the storming of materials, the undercurrent broadcasts from elusive frequencies used by grineer or corpus personnel. But, the cephalon hones onto a frequency considered close – a broadcast around the zone of earth.
"The moon!" a voice exclaims in garbles, "Lua! It's… it's back!" shouts a grineer at the outer reach of the orbiter's region; a broadcast that soon circulates to the exclusive channels, along with the banter to mobilize on it – a territory for the major factions to contest over in full. A thousand radio frequencies announce the same thing as Cephalon Suuir searches through them – and shortly the entire system will try to converge upon the unclaimed moon.
In the meantime, as the ecstatic announcements bicker above him, T'viska stays reclined, mind searching for a ghost that's been haunting him, a presence he's been long hunting through the lingering somatic connection reaffirmed. "Warren…?" he whispers. Hopeful, not optimistic. The warframe's injuries prevent him from venturing out yet, his leg still hammering out its ache. "Warren, can you hear me…?" he questions as his hand rubs against his crown – reasoning the teen is probably still sleeping, within a dream T'viska's been living.
Over a hundred so years… T'viska sighs. He's lost track.
"Suuir," T'viska exhales, "can you move orbit to Lua…? Just close enough to observe; I'll depart once my leg is better." Beneath him, feeling through his inhaling lungs, the loki can feel the engines bloom into life, coaxing its motions as it changes it course from drifting out of the range of Venus towards Earth – a few million kilometers from their current position.
"Warren," he breathes as he forces himself into a sit, choking as he grasps his blood-damped bandages. "I'm coming for you, kid," whispers as he fists against a tethered crate, yielding himself up to his feet, claws digging as he forces himself stable.
Inside his thoughts, he can feel the somatic link connected… and carry out in silence.
"I hope you're still alive…" T'viska sighs.
As Corpus and Grineer bombard one another on the outskirts of the fractured moon's influence, Suuir's orbiter whispers beneath their void mask. Sensors crawl through the jutting surface and the broken rifts, the busting of Orokin architecture lying pristine aside from the coating of voided dust. The surface's formality and spires skew in their displacement, hard fragments revealing the buried structures held beneath. Laboratories, prisons, research chambers; a cataclysm of Orokin facilities once buried beneath Lunar dust now exposed.
T'viska flips through the materializing map as it reaches around him at the navigation panel, its surface extending as Suuir orbits beneath the arching Orokin towers embedded in the surface. The cephalon tracks and maps the landscape into intimate details – the crumbling of golden surfaces leaving bare the calcified innards, the winding of its exposed arboriform nervous system that carries from tower to tower, the cracks barreling down into the darkest depths, further than the sun's illumination can reach.
The loki can feel the somatic link flickering as the liset cruises at altitude; his golden fingers flicker over the displayed surface as his mind searches for the elusive signal coaxed from the teen's somatic cradle… hoping its resurgence means Warren's alive and won't lead him to a corpse. Pain sparks across his spine a he browses over the cracks in the mapped lunar surface, hoping there's something that can be read as a hint through their connection… or it's only his anxious hope that'll make it into something.
Through the hologram, the cephalon's tetrahedron sails through, text following the muted cephalon. 'What are you looking for?' the text reads, 'you're anxious, what's the issue.'
"Warren," T'viska mumbles, "a kid I met during the old war. We lost track just after the war was done… he's got to be around here somewhere."
The cephalon's symbol bobbles over the landscape, deviating the loki's control as it soars beneath an Orokin archway between fractured towers. 'The one that's been haunting you?' crawls along the display as the computerized brain scours through the ground-penetrated readings – ones that are still incomplete as the liset hums into a standby orbit.
"Yeah," the loki sighs, bringing himself to sit with one leg beneath him, his right raised as he massages the knee. "Told him I'd protect him as much as I could…" he watches the landscape flicker around him as the cephalon works, "and then he's gone. I could do nothing – poor kid's been through so much." He scowls.
'So I've heard,' flickers across the display, sensors still prodding and drifting, and eventually draws itself back as the ship shutters into a hush. 'Wouldn't the systems in the back be best utilized for this?' dances across.
T'viska draws his claws over his crown, golden digits dancing along his jutting horn with a sigh. He stares down at his leg, still stinging with mending pains. "I suppose," he shifts, pulling the splinted limb out to the side, his small paws gripping against the ground. "If I can get back there," he briefly chuckles, his good leg crouched beneath him as he reclines against a raised surface – sat delicately on the ledge. "Do you know how it works?"
'No,' flickers across the bannering of the lunar landscape.
The warframe sighs, pulling himself to his feet as the lunar refraction dances over his bare skin; the only material worn being the gauze and splint around his right leg. "It's worth a shot," he finches, limping himself over to the ramp, "dispense one of those slurries, I'll grab it on the way there," he sighs.
The capsule of material is bitter against T'viska's throat, his formed mouth twisting into a disgusted snarl. But energy is energy, absorbing the questionable material into his systems as it surges new found energy into his nerves and blood. Golden claws coat against his thigh and knee as the once radiating pain is soothed, unwrapping the material carefully to reveal the healed mark of the snare, his restructured knee as his hands make a simple check.
Pressing his weight down upon it, only then is he certain it's healed completely.
In the rear room, where a somatic cradle sits empty, the loki leans against the transference pads, feeling the prodding of mental receptors inside his thoughts. It stings against his sensation of a tongue, sparking through his arms and makes his throat warm as the cephalon quests to make the somatic connection into the somatic link. T'viska's features twist as his thoughts surge in their connection; reliving the figments of a battered body, surging through his own gut as scratching digs against his cheek in a resurging memory, the rough handling, the tossing, the bigger remarks and resentment of hushed voices.
The glowing slits of his face clench as his mouth snarls, electric sparks surging through his neurotic cortex as he strains to hold himself stable. Sensations crawl through his nerves, crawling and catching in his brain to fight and dig, connecting the somatic cradle he leans against to the far distant signal of the other end within the loki's mind. Drawn forward, straining to fight for breath – it cancels out, leaving him gasping with a wheeze.
Lungs heavy, the loki leans against the empty cradle, glancing around to the liset's flickering lights. "Did that work for you, Suuir?" T'viska grunts, rubbing his crown as the current courses through his nerves. Pulsations hammer inside his head as he's drawn to hiss – a coiling wrapped around his heart. He looks away from the quiet cradle, nearly stumbling as he moves towards a display installed closer to the door.
Paws nearly stumble over the haphazard wires as he leans against the wall, golden claw tapping against the holographic screen. After a moment, when he rests his weight over it, Cephalon Suuir flickers a 'yes' across the screen. It cascades to flux the lunar map, following with a tracing trail through like a tracking beacon – it's the signal on the other end of the somatic link.
Relieved, T'viska smiles.
Once he can find his balance, he carries himself across the liset once more, pulling on a worn set of leggings to cover up his scarred legs and a shirt to cover the ones scratched across his body. At the navigation display, he traces out the faint route Suuir had curated – a path that crawls through the broken Orokin structures beneath the surface. The navigation is fuzzy as there's only so far the tech can read beneath the surface – obscured by Orokin tech.
As he chokes down another serving of the questionable slurry, T'viska can feel the material restore his dwindling energy reserves, energizing his exhausted systems as he checks his damaged lato. It's only in case there's any scavengers already on the moon's surface, he'll be ready for them.