Travis looked puzzled at John's hand. He, at first, did not acknowledge what was in his mind and perceived his hand raising as a threat. On this, Travis frowned.
John, realizing the situation, went in and grabbed one of Travis hands, who he had coyly retracted them.
"It's a handshake!" John remarked as he shook Travis' hand.
"You have a name? I'm sure you weren't kicked in your head without anyone shouting your name angrily."
Travis' frown faded as John let his hand go and the humming silence of the power core overtook the situation for a few seconds.
"Travis." Travis said with a heavy, thirsty voice.
"Nice to meet you, Travis. Say, do you want to get to Earth?"
Travis' surprised gaze met the ever glowing visor of John. He then frowned and twisted his lips, as if not believing what he had to propose.
"I can take you there. I know its coordinates, anyway. Just need some sort of ship that can actually move and I can take you there."
Travis looked up once more. This time more confident in John's words. To this John fondles a nearby locker, and gives Travis a small liquid bottle.
"Here, some water. Probably the last one for days."
As Travis swallowed the contents of the bottle, John plotted an escape from Neptune while the ever sizzling core engine flood the then quiet room.
Once Travis deliciously wet his tongue amidst the liquid contents of the bottle, John had an idea. An idea so crazy it'd take two to accomplish. He opened the small core room's doors to see that the very distant sun now shining on the frigid landscape of Neptune. Seemingly, hours have passed since the deadly Neptunian winds have crossed beyond the base.
With alacrity, John sped through the icy passage that clearly led to an XT cannon, located right above them, ever so vigilant of the skies above, not seeming to move. Travis had difficulty to keep up with John, who was sprinting ahead and reached a small crevice between the icy wall and the XT cannon. From there, they both could scan an entire area where Corpus ships laid to rest.
"By my calculations" John starts. "Those are a shitload of miles away. We'd take some time to get there."
John examines the area around, and surveys the reachable ground in the giant icy mountain that supported the XT cannon. He slowly set to step on some firm ground amidst the steep drop. Upon finding some, he set out to find more firm ground. A step turned into step, into another step until it turned into a roll and loss of control. When John found himself, he was rolling down the hill, bouncing off the drop only to come down and hit it once more, seemingly only gaining velocity until he smashed face first onto the frigid ground.
Travis instead took the elevator that was right next to them.
Once Travis' ride gleefully bleeped into a stop, John dusted himself off and remarked:
"Flawless landing. Let's take a jog shall we? There's a lot of ground to cover."
The two set off to the Corpus shipyard, curiously following the iron bridge set out to facilitate the way to the shipyard and not actually using it. Once the shipyard was in sight, they set out their looks towards a small resource carrier laid to rest for the day. John smiled upon this sight, and panted:
"That's the same one I crashed a few days ago!"
Travis looked worried for a second, but quickly forgot it once the ship's figure closed down on them. They now stood in awe looking at the ship's rear.
"These are larger than I thought." John said.
Scanning the access gates, John noticed a couple of Crewmen lounging between the ground controls. He promptly shoved Travis and himself to hide from the crewmen. John then gathers some icy shards and throws them behind the crewmen, in the hopes to distract them so they could made a dash for the ship. Instead, they paused the conversation and one of them remarked:
"What the fuck, John?"
"Oh, you saw me. Uh, mind if we stroll in?" John outright asks, while slowly approaching the crewmen.
"I'm on my break. Besides, this isn't even my ship." The Crewman states.
John then hints up to Travis to follow up and the crewmen resume their conversation. As they entered the vacant ship, John remarked:
"Sometimes, asking is the way."
They approached the ship controls, only to be met by a dormant blue. The ship was off and slumbering when the duo disturbed the doors.
"Alright." Roared John from the fizzling silence emitted by the control panels. "These buttons here should be the start up, these the ignition and these over here make a cool sound." John then presses one of the 'cool sound' buttons, engaging the main weaponry the shuttle bore. Not soon after, the ship ahead of that one creaked as the well landed plasma shots cut through the hull.
The nonchalant crewmen outside quickly evolved into an alarmed state.
"John! Come on! That was my ship you idiot!" The same crewman from before yelled out. John, realizing the mistake, jumped on some more buttons and kick started the ship into a busy rattle.
"Alright Travis, hang onto your wrinkles, we're moving this baby out." John said, as he grabbed some levers and smashed some more buttons. The ship rumbled into life as the thrusters pumped its weight up, commencing thusly the launch. Even though the stairs connecting the ship to the ground were firmly placed, the sudden liftoff ripped apart their foundations, sending the boarding crewmen flying.
John quickly re-oriented the ship to exit the orbit as he scanned Earth's coordinates. Travis, in the meantime, looked pretty worried as he scanned the outside, seeing countless crewmen swarming the area. Either to stop the two or just to see what was the problem, Travis was still a Grineer soldier after all.
John shouted a happy "aha!" once he punched in Earth's coordinates and the ship started thrusting itself towards it. The ground seemed to move at an increasingly faster pace and until the shipyard was out of sight, having mountains of ice speed past them. Or so the monitors showed.
Travis looked onto the monitors and the ever glowing coordinates map, he smiled briefly as he carefully unwrapped his hidden picture.
"We're hours away!" John shouted as he slid his chair across the control, letting out a swift and long "Woo!" on the way. Once John came to a stop, he slowly rose and told Travis, while leaving through the back of the control room:
"Well, after that ass-clenching experience, I'm going to take a piss, I'll be right back. If anything beeps red tell me."
Travis gleefully sighed and nodded in response, and sat down, yet gazing upon the picture of his dreamy green grove. He'd finally get to it! After years of empty loneliness amongst the dark metal cells he forced to call home, he was finally going… home.
When Travis started succumbing to his daydreams, a loud crash interrupted his train of thought, followed by a constant beeping and deadly amount of smoke pouring in from the ventilation system. Travis quickly saved the picture into his pocket and rushed out to call out to John. It was to his surprise when he saw the ship cut clean in half, by what seemed by a circular projectile. He felt the uneasy winds of the altitude kicking in as he held himself in place. He saw the other half of the ship falling behind and shouted to his best intents for John. Looking around the ever falling wreckage, he learned that he was also losing altitude as quickly as the other half was. He panicked and shouted for John harder while frantically darting his eyes on the wreckage in front of him.
It wasn't until a few seconds later he saw what seemed to be a figure, leaning forward, sitting down, holding something in a room that wasn't totally obliterated by whatever had hit them. It was John! And, uh… he was sitting on the john. With his front wall clean smashed from him, it was clear he was too focused on his newspaper to notice that half the ship was gone! Travis tried to shout him to get inside, but the violent winds whistling through the fuming debris muted Travis' attempts. It wasn't until the third try that Travis decided to rush inside and hold into something hard.
He rushed in, tumbling about, sitting in a chair and gripping it as hard as he could, closing his eyes as if somehow that'd make the impact any less intense. After a few minutes of rumbling, the ship finally reached the ground and smashed straight into it. After the violent clash of metal, Travis passed out.
Once he came back to his senses, he found himself locked behind a plasma shield. A cell made to contain him inside and when he examined his surroundings, he noticed he was sitting in a transport convoy, next to the crash site. A small transport rover, ready to transport him and a few debris off into the nearest prison and scrapyard, respectively. Crewmen were scattered everywhere trying to scrounge up some debris to hoard back to base.
Once aware of his consciousness, a lonely figure approached the convoy and tapped on the metal beside it. Travis shifted his attention to the blue figure. It was a Corpus Comba. Leaning against the plasma cell, the Comba simply asked:
"Finally awake, eh?"
Travis only eyed his face without any possible response.
"Very well, I'm unsure whether Grineer are actually fluent in any sort of language, but I'm Executive Ormah'Lore. I'm responsible for this particular Neptunian sector. The one you happened to crash into."
Travis slowly examined his surroundings, unable to find the other half of the ship. He returned his gaze onto the Comba.
"Where… is John?" Travis let out.
"Oh, you do talk. You mean the crewman fellow? He's John… uh…" Ormah'Lore replied.
"Rhodes." Travis finished.
"Yes, well, Rhodes was sent out to a purifying bath." Ormah'Lore quenched Travis' thirst, only for Travis to fire back another question.
"Purifying… bath?"
"Yes, he was on the lower deck's bathroom. The one right above the waste compartment. Once it crashed… well… I'm sure you know what happens when you drop a box with no top on and full of water on the ground."
Travis looked puzzled for a while before realizing what had happened. Instead of fighting or in some way showing resistance. He just laid down. Numbed partly because of the fall, numbed partly because of the death of his dream also partly because of the humiliation of John. So, instead of fighting, he just laid. And stared at the now starry sky.
After a short while, the rover roared into life and they started driving off, heading into a convoy of debris-carrying rovers. Travis tried to fight the urge to sleep for what seemed hours, though he kept on thinking of what could've become of his future. He did know he was heading for execution, since the corpus rarely find anything useful in Grineer troops. Or so he thought. John was gone too, wherever he went, there'd be no way in hell he'd know where Travis was and where he was headed. All these thoughts plagued his mind before he started to succumb to the sleepy feeling.
As his eyes dozed off, he noticed weird lighting shining across the metal rover behind his. He lifted his head up to check what it was. But before he could gather any sort of intelligence, the lights rammed into his rover and turned it around, crashing it through what seemed a small hill down in the ice.
Bounce after bounce, the plasma cell snapped off the chains that tied it to the rover, landing in front of the rover. Travis rose from the overturned cell to find John, now in a pretty green suit, as opposed to his regular blue suit. John then smacks the cell with a prod and disables the plasma shield, enabling Travis to get out. Travis gave him an ocular rundown of his newest suit and asked:
"What… is that?"
"After the bath I found out where you were and where the convoy was heading. So I needed to bolt as quickly as possible. I didn't have any clothes, so I stole it off of some dude's locker."
Back in Neptune Base's locker rooms
A lone figure stepped out of the showers, still wet and cooling from the hot water bath. Oddly enough, while his muscular body was only covered by a measly towel on his crotch, he was still wearing his corpus issued helmet. He paced back onto his locker door, only to find it broken into and his items gone. The figure snapped in anger and shut the locker door as hard as he could. The name tag on the door read "PRODMAN, JOHN"
Back at the Convoy crash site
"But anyway, come!" John said. "We have to get the hell out of here!"
As Travis walked out of the back of the crashed rover, he noticed the rest of the convoy's armed crewmen taking positions to fire at the Comba's demand. Ormah'Lore set his eyes on the lone Crewman wielding the prod guiding the Grineer butcher into a cargo rover.
"You!" Ormah'Lore shouted out loud. "John! Bring him back right now! It is an order!"
"Fuck you, Ormah!" John snapped in response. "Your rulebook sucks! What if we have to pee during Section 49?! And your living room isn't as quaint as you say!" Ormah'Lore gasped in an offended tone, before ordering the crewmen to open fire. Once the lasers started illuminating the dim ice, John sped the rover deeper into the vast icy desert. In the distance, Ormah'Lore projected his anger:
"I'll get you for this, John! Just you wait! I'll get you for this!"
John, either not hearing Ormah'Lore or simply ignoring him, he kept on driving at a dangerous speed throughout the icy desert. The adrenaline started dying down as the ride took a more silent tone. Travis, a bit disillusioned, broke the silence:
"What now… John?"
"I don't know." John replied, sounding a bit discouraged. "We're in deep Neptune, now. If we turn the rover off for even a second the damn thing freezes and we'll be next. Thankfully I stocked on gas before coming here." Upon this, the machine beeps out a warning that read "Warning: Fuel at critical levels."
"I did stock up, just not in a very large amount." John self-explained.
John, upon turning left through an icy canyon, met his headlights with something shiny. He roared in laughter as he identified the object as a ship and they could use it as a possible way to maintain body heat. They slowly approached the ice encased vessel and parked the rover next to it. The rumbling engine took over the ambience as they tried to discern an entrance to the ship. After detecting a possible breach in the hull, John turned the emergency heater in the rover.
"It'll do with for a few minutes with the gas we have, but we have to be quick."
They both excitedly hop out of the rover to rush towards the ship and the breach seen earlier. To their surprise, ice encased the breach and they had to dig it out. Upon further inspection, they've also located a smaller ship strung to the bigger one. John regarded it as a landing craft.
"Shit, this ship wasn't made to land. This may or may not make it difficult on us." John turns to Travis.
Travis frowns but he looks behind towards the rover.
"Hurry." Travis adds.
"Yes, yes, keep digging." John intently adds as he vehemently strikes the ice with his gun. John then hit a soft spot on the ice that opened the breach into the contents of the ship. He directed Travis to step inside while he rushed to the rover to get some handy tools. To both their unfortunate being, the rover's gas ran out and the heater shut off as John was trying to return to the ship.
The cold immediately bit John who was still a few steps away from the vessel. Travis had the benefit of being in a semi-enclosed structure, but soon also started to feel the penetrating cold. He looked out of the window for a few seconds to see John still struggling with the cold, but now he could finally see how really powerful John could be. His bloated shields protected his insides from a flash freeze and in turn emitted a basking blue glow. He moved slowly, even then, but still managed to crawl into the ship. He saw, inside, that the shields weren't making as much effort to protect him from the deadly cold, but it was still seeing that Travis was having a hard time not freezing to death. John took this as an incentive to pick up the tools he had and some nearby scrap metal that the ship was apparently carrying, most likely due to the lost dogfighting it may have done.
Once he jury-rigged the hole patch, he rushed towards the consoles in a last ditch effort. He knew that the ship may have been there for a very long time, making the fuel cells within the ship either unstable or outright useless. Giving them no guarantee that the ship would even turn on. He kneeled down on the front and started hitting buttons. Once a combination of the same was input, the ship jumped into life. The systems opened and the lights, the ones that weren't broken, flourished into life. John laid back down as a familiar, yet excruciatingly annoying voice popped out from an intercom:
"Warning: Temperature is at lethal levels. Balancing… please wait." This said, the air started feeling lighter, as the temperature steadily increased into non-lethal levels. Both John and Travis exhaled in happiness as they both never been so welcoming of lukewarm weather before.
As John now intently scanned through the various holographic screens of the ship, he took notice of the writing.
"This is… Tenno language!" John remarked.
"Tenno…?" Travis lifted his head with an inquisitive tone.
Upon this interaction, a lone figure starts to move from the back of the ship, under a collapsible trapdoor, the figure approached the two men. They were still unaware of the figure's presence. That was, until John glimpsed the underdeck.