John peered at the slowly advancing figure and his eyes widened underneath his visor. The carved silhouette behind the somewhat lit back room exposed an elaborately carved Nova, advancing to the ignorant threat of the pair in the control room. Unarmed, confused and recently off stasis, the Nova slowly advanced onto the dashboard and a voice started to discern itself from within the frame.

"Who…" but before the echo of the voice even returned to itself, John started screaming. The screaming quickly evolved into a hail of blue plasma, ripping the machine to shreds from the indiscriminate wave of blue, leading the stasis-frail machine into a collapse and destruction, seemingly spawning another creature of itself.

John quieted his volatile screams as his weapon clicked dry. The frame caught fire on its last moments onwards to its timely demise as John quietly passed by the debris. He looked onwards only to see the other figure spread across the ground, behind an ever glowing machine almost tucked around the corner to the left. John's curious eyes locked onto the prone figure, only to hear its feminine pleas fade into nothing:

"Why is it not working?! Lotus?! Or-ordis?!" she said, while rising slowly and sitting by the tilted ship's wall.

John approached the figure and stared right into its shape and size, before letting out:

"What the fuck?"

The figure jumped in surprise by the startling presence of John and his visor's vibrant blue glow. The creature raised its hand to meet John's face and launched a pretty orange beam, though smashed against John's thick shields and returned to the creature as a result. John, reacting to this after a solid eight seconds, befell upon the figure's kicks and shoves, as she tried and retried to cast her powers onto John:

"Damn it, it won't work!"

John eyed the creature inquisitively. Never has he seen one like it! So small, in a 'pocket size' and finally grabbed her arm, drove it up and dropped it on the air.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"What are you?" He retorted, leading the creature to eye him in oddity. After a few seconds of uncanny stare, a fumbling around was heard and steps made their way towards the creature and John. It was Travis, and he too looked in awe at the small creature.

"What… is it?" He asked, as he poked her spread legs on the ground, leading the creature to recoil her legs.

"Stop! What do you want?" She pleaded.

"Protection from the Corpus." Immediately replied John. "Goodness, you're so tiny. Like a newborn Kubrow." John then proceeds to pat her violet hair.

This response and course of action both surprised and disgusted the creature. After leading John's hand away from her head she turned to both of them:

"From the Corpus?"

"Yes. We managed to piss the wrong people off. So, wait, are you the creatures that drive those things?" Finished John on a non-sequitur, pointing towards the smoldering heap of trash that was once considered a Warframe.

The creature looked around the corner and found her Warframe torn to pieces.

"No!" She helplessly exclaimed. "Damn it, it took so long to get her."

After this, she rose up to meet the machine straight ahead of the cockpit's door. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, attempting to call yet another of those machines. After a few seconds of successfully quiet the scene down, she grunted at her failure to recall another machine.

"What's wrong?" John asked.

Unwilling to answer this for him, she just sprinted off to the furthest room tucked away in the back of the shuttle. John and Travis exchanged looks before deciding to venture downwards a bit more. Upon the circular door's swift opening, the pair peered inside. The somewhat small hall branching into the widening room housed a gargantuan chair in front of a deep hole managed to amaze the pair.

"Woah! Look at all these high techy stuff. Corpus executives will cream their pants!" John remarks, as he picks up some random debris.

The small humanoid then rapidly steps on the odd throne-type chair and attempts to fiddle with the appendages it sprung. Once it obviously failed, the humanoid sunk her face into her palms and devolved into producing senseless noises.

"So… you're the Tenno eh?" John asks while approaching the purple humanoid with pockets full of debris.

"What do you want?!"

"You've already asked that." John replied as he started looking towards the somewhat stable walls.

She fell silent and the group now basked in a collective awkward silence. For the longest time, Travis and the creature interchanged looks for quite a bit until John finished scanning his eyes among the Tenno's space architecture.

"Quite impressive stuff. How do you keep it powered?" John asked towards the small humanoid. She replied with a piercing stare but eventually let out:

"Solar power. We use a bunch of solar panels to absorb power."

"Figures. You can't land with this one, can you?"

"Yeah… I was stupid – it was a simple mission…"

Humanoid Flashback

It was a simple mission. Go in, exterminate a corpus base then leave with a potato. Lotus warned us about the anti-air weapons and advised us not to park our orbiters too close. But I wanted to get ahead. I wanted to land first and ahead of the rest. I was stupid. As the others started their landing craft far from Neptune, I sped through them. I tried to run for the landing craft as I sped past the planet but... all I remember was a violent strike. After that, Ordis lost control of the shuttle and it continued forward. We were unable to evade shots but it was turning out of control. I think the reason Corpus didn't decimate us involved the fact that they wanted this ship. Or so I think. After a bit of freefall, we impacted the ground and I don't exactly remember what happened after that. I just remember waking up from stasis as the ship struggled to come online. Then I met you lounging in my cockpit, and then causing my Warframe to be shot to pieces until my Transference stopped working. For some reason.

End of Humanoid Flashback

John sat quietly at the chair's feet with his legs crossed. With his hands supported by his elbows on his legs, he looked intently into the story.

"Woah." He huffed, spacing out for the longest few seconds. Unsure whether to add to the situation, he claimed the obvious:

"So." He then paused. "Suffice to say we're stuck here." John takes a look around, reinforcing his stranded point.

"So wait, you mentioned a ship cephalon. What happened to it?" John inquired after rising, dropping some more debris to the floor.

"Presumably, low power. It's in emergency mode, and it's drawing power from the emergency batteries. Which… really don't last very long at this rate, unless we have power them back with solar power." The humanoid said.

"Well then, we have just the thing we need. The sun! Outside. Of this canyon." John said. "Say. You wouldn't have a manual connection around here somewhere, do you?" John asked in a curious tone.

"Yes, I do. It's right below the trapdoor." The creature added.

Without further ado, John started moving out towards the main area of the ship, leaving Travis to lag behind and the creature to stand helpless on the chair.

Peering from the front of the cockpit, John managed to take notice of the unfueled rover outside, with the emergency heater still wide open. Should they manage to hook up the heater to the emergency batteries, and then rush the panel straight to the frail sun's beams, they should be able to melt all incapacitating ice. With this expository paragraph racing through John's mind, he paid no heed on his actions and ran head first, literally, on the hole they previously had patched.

With hurry and recklessness he sprinted off with his best intentions. The cold started to bite the innards of the shuttle as it, in an almost futile attempt, tried to maintain acceptable heat inside. John started slowing down as his shields started tanking the frost as well, but he managed to power through almost effortlessly while trying to reach the rover. Once he managed to get his hands on the side of the rover, he noticed that the lid covering the cable for refueling was frosted shut. His almost slow-motion punches did nothing to remove the frosty encasing of the lid. His vain attempts at breaching the ice only furthered his anger and frustration towards the situation which led him to add insults, screams, grunts and tears to his current action.

Almost falling to desperation, a rather cool looking figure stepped out of the ship with a heated cleaver in hand. It was Travis. Struggling to keep with the frost, he too lumbered towards the shuttle. In his slow pace, he raised his firmly held cleaver above their heads and struck down as fast as a snail riding a turtle, but was able to dislodge the congealed lid. With this momentary victory, John read a small inscription labelled across the cleaver's blade: "Deus Ex Machina".

Disregarding that senseless drivel, he 'rapidly' retrieved the cable and 'rushed' back to the ship. With cable in one hand, and the other filled with more debris, he stashed himself in the nearly deadly cold ship, and hooked up the cable on the small manual connector that laid beneath the trapdoor. With some luck, the cable snapped in and power started being deviated from the emergency batteries. To both their content, and the freaked out humanoid's fortunate fate, the heater started emitting its embracing aura, leading the area to become habitable. For a while anyway.

Not soon after, John sped out and crawled on top of the machine, heartlessly dislodging the solar panel there displayed. He charged carelessly outside the canyon's faltering shade towards the somewhat dim sun, traversing the Neptunian clouds. With the ripped innards of the shuttle poured over the way to the impromptu standing solar panel, power surely started to recharge the emergency batteries and regular power was restored the ship. Allowing that dreaded ship cephalon to come to life in its normal status.

The creature, undecided to be awestruck by the restoring of the power or the goodwill provided to her by a Corpus and Grineer agent kept her aghast mood. Her train of thought was interrupted once the ship cephalon's voice echoed through the ship:

"Power fully restored! Operator! How nice to see – WARNING! INTRUDERS ON THE SHIP! COMMENCING INTRUDER NEUTRALIZATION!"

The humanoid, still slow on its brain processing speed, urged the AI not to take any action:

"Wait, Ordis! Stop! Don't do anything!"

The ship's hidden machinegun turrets aimed at the operator in a confused manner, as to which Ordis asks:

"Operator, there are agents of the Grineer in the immediate vicinity! We need to get you to safety!"

John, with his timing, jumped off from the hilly he stood above the ship into the fractured patched hole.

"The thing's up and running!" He gleefully intervened, locking his arms on his thighs and proudly looking up.

Perhaps startled by the sudden appearance of a Corpus agent or by premeditation, Ordis opened fire on John. Through his unwavering stance, he consumed the entire hail of bullets and even through the Operator's orders, the entire turret's bullet feed was consumed on trying to take down John. Once the metal symphony protruded by the turret ran into a dry click, John then took the opportunity to exhale very audibly, allowing the smashed, large caliber rounds to unhook themselves from his bloated shields and clutter the ground.

"That's… one way to say thank you." He retorted.

"What… IS this?!" Ordis asked, surprised at John for surviving the ruthless bullet hell. This surprise seemed to spread on over to the Operator, who also stared somewhat surprised.

After this small interaction, the Operator turned to Ordis:

"I-uh- told you so. Please, stop doing that. They're… uh- not enemies!" Even after the benevolent good will demonstrated by John, the Operator still refused to call them friends.

"Yes." John simply stated.

Ordis focused on John and Travis, seemingly staying behind him. Still unsure, he was held back by his Operator.

"Now that we got the pleasantries out of the way, we need to repair the ship." John finished.

"Right." The Operator chimed in. "Ordis, damage report please."

Without haste, Ordis started listing out the damaged hull, systems and what was the most convenient way to repair them:

"Several hull breaches detected. Void travel deemed unsafe. Commence direct repair on visible holes in the hull. Engine subsystem critically damaged. Void or terrestrial travel deemed impossible. Please retrieve the fried systems and commence direct repair. Landing Craft transfer system damaged. Please unclog the halls. End of damage report."

"That's it? Spring cleaning?" John asked, greatly over-evaluating "spring cleaning" by his own dictionary.

"It's not that easy." The Operator interrupted John's scheme. "We need a sturdy material to handle rough flights and prevent leaks. The engines need to be at optimal condition to travel beyond light speed and the Landing Craft transfer system needs to be cleaned to be able to send us out."

"The shipyard nearby can help us out." John added. "You wouldn't have your ship blueprint laying around, would you? We can jury-rig our way there, tell the repair bay what to do and blast us off."

Ordis chimed a 'yes' towards the ship blueprint request.

"What about the insurmountable number of Corpus units stationed nearby?" The Operator asked.

Travis, for the first time, decided to intervene:

"I can… distract… them."

John pondered the situation before turning to Travis once more.

"If we managed to bring your way onto the back and trigger the alarm, we can distract the garrison towards your area. Then we might just be able to swoop in and flash repair the ship." John said. "Nice."

Travis huffed a 'yes' while the Operator resorted to nodding in confirmation.

After setting their way to the machine, retrieving debris and melting them to serve as outer hull, and managing to kickstart the subsystem into semi-functional position. Hours of fizzling welds, hammer thumps and makeshift electrician -ism managed to turn the dead husk of metal into a very rough functioning ship. The engines now worked at 20% of their original strength, the hull now sustained fast land travel and the landing craft was now accessible. The sun was now hiding beneath the horizon's hills, and they took it as a good infiltration omen.

Once the ship roared its engines, John took this as an opportunity to turn to the Operator:

"Alright. It should be somewhat set. I'll go retrieve the panel, while you get her hovering. Don't go too high or the XT cannons will rip us apart. Once we're there, stay distant but aware of the hangar's doors. Once possible I'll open the doors and let you through."

"Wait!" The Operator asked. "How about the radars?"

"They don't really aim their stuff this low. They aim their stuff up. If you keep low enough they'll just think it's a rock moving at very high speeds." John let out.

The Operator nodded and retreated to the Somatic Link stationed in the back of the ship. As John was leaving through Landing Craft hall, he turned to Travis, who was ready at the bottom:

"Help me snap this thing into place."

With great strength and strife, both of them managed to hold the ship up long enough for the hall to snap into the orbiter. Whether this was helped by Ordis or not, the pair sighed in relief when the weight was off of them. Once this was set, the ship rumbled to life. The small parts still encased in ice snapped off with the exceeding brute force and the engines flickered their weakened streams as the pair resorted to climbing the ship.

Once up there, John took the time to re-set the solar panel onto the ship, bolting it in place with one of his robbed tools.

"Travis." He requested. "Hold on tight, here, we need you to get well around the back and hopefully alert the base towards the wrong threat."

Travis gleefully nodded as he frowned in a determined look. John then bumped his feet on the hull, to which Ordis took it as an incentive to scan the surrounding area – ultimately finding the shipyard. It set its course there and thrusted to its destination, all the while toppling over the stolen rover with the cable. While the start was easy going and slow moving, it quickly evolved into a turbulent ride with the desert of ice speeding past them. The violent winds stopped once the ship came to a violent halt, propelling them both forwards.

"Alright. Flawless." John admitted, as he rose to dust himself off.

As with their plan, as John and Travis approached the hangar, the Operator moved the ship out to the back to follow John's plan.

John hid behind some terrain deformations while he waited for Travis to sound the alarm, who then rushed behind the metal infrastructure and was rightly spotted by a security camera. The crewman behind the camera jumped in alert, and set out the alarm for an intruder in the immediate area. Troopers rushed behind the lone cleaver wielder as he led them away towards a back entrance. John managed to rush towards the hangar, skipping past the security cameras' watchful eyes. He sneaked across the catwalk and found the repair bay's controls, unmanned, as he predicted. He smashed the keyboard with an input of commands, opening the bay's doors and clearing the blueprint to follow. On this note, his old boss barged in on him powering the bay:

"John? Is that you? John?! What are you doing here?!"

"Norbert! Hey. Long time no see, it's been what, three full days? Damn, I was happy not thinking about you." John replied.

"What are you doing-"

Norbert was then interrupted by the large Tenno shuttle hovering straight to the repair bay.

"Is that a…?" He gagged.

"Yes." John said, after straight socking a punch on Norbert, knocking him straight out. John managed to lock the bay's control doors before the Tenno ship docked straight into the bay, but it still managed to gain some Corpus attention – which led to the some base troopers to flood the area. Though ultimately reluctant to do so, Ordis finally uploaded the ship's blueprints to the repair bay and the automated arms started spotting and fixing the ship, ripping apart the patches and jury-rigged band aids and actually fused strong materials to fix the shuttle, metal was scrapped and torn asunder to be replaced with functional, more durable parts and materials.

As the bay continued on its course, John found himself surrounded by troopers who requested immediate access to the control room. The beating on the door became even louder when John decided to lean against the window that showcased the grouped Corpus soldiers trying to barge in.

"I love separate systems, folks!" John said, as he once more retreated to the control room's terminals. Upon his interaction with these, the security turrets all around the repair bay activated with due haste, and started firing over at the Corpus crowd.

Now under suppressive fire from the turrets, those who were unfortunate enough to sustain its direct fire died on the spot, while the rest of them retreated away from the repair bay, otherwise they'd be subjected to awful positioning combined with unstoppable fire. With some room to breathe, they let their guards a bit down as Travis made his way straight back, with his pursuers retreated, as the turrets once more took matters on their own hands.

John spied Travis entering the now vacant room and exhaled a happy shout:

"Get in, Travis!" He said, as the repair bay retrieved the landing craft for further repair.

Travis clumsily entered through the landing craft hall before the repair bay finished its repairs on the orbiter. It was starting on the landing craft when the turret system went offline. John, startled by the sudden deactivation, turned to the control room's panel before finding out that the troops were, once more, returning to the repair bay to apprehend everyone around. Seeing that they could most likely deactivate the orbiter, he ran out and shouted as best he could:

"Get out! While the doors are still open!"

Ordis, inside, relayed the message to the Operator while she stared at the screen.

"Why?" She inquired. Ordis did the favor to relay the message outside.

"Just do it! They're coming here. Just. Go! Seal the Landing Craft hall and drive out!" John shouted back, to which Ordis explained to the Operator.

The Operator reluctantly nodded and told Ordis to leave as soon as it was possible, leading the orbiter to trek slowly outside, trying to find a way to speed up out of the planet. Not long after, John tried to overload the system's power – possibly causing an internal power shutdown for a few seconds. No guarantee of it succeeding, he turned the command on with a slight delay and jumped out of the catwalk adjacent to the control room onto the landing craft. Managing to fit himself in the otherwise Warframe-only indentation, he assumed the controls of the landing craft as the entire Corpus base cleared out of power due to his tempering.

While only able to haphazardly fly the small ship, bumping into several other obstacles in the way, he aimed course towards the ever rising orbiter. Thanks to his tempering, the nearest XT cannon was disabled. Also thanks to his tempering, it was only temporary as the cannon managed to activate almost as the ships rocketed far from the atmosphere.

Narrowly evading the destructive beam, John shouted as he took his course a more bent route. The Operator took the orbiter away from John as the shot once more pierced the skies. Be it dumb luck, high piloting skills or a combination of both, they both managed to leave the Neptunian atmosphere, into the welcoming dark abyss of the big empty. With the adrenaline dying down, and the presumable Corpus fist wavering left and right from the Neptunian grounds, they sighed in relief as they managed to wander far from Corpus ground.

With the sun's bare beams shining upon the cockpit, Travis added towards the Operator.

"My name… is Travis. I didn't… say that… before."

From the intercom, at fantastic timing.

"The name's John Rhodes, by the by." He said, after a few seconds of silence on his side of the radio. "Oh, oh, right you can't see me. My hand is up waiting for a handshake."

The Operator seemed to finally chuckle and let out:

"That's fine. They call me Vi."