-Sidenote: So I started playing Warframe again, and was immediately caught off guard by all the updates! Dex Excalibur skin over the Proto-skin? Eh, I'll decide when Umbra Excal finally arrives...
Chapter 16: Relic
The temperature dropped below tolerable for the little Tenno; he stepped away from the cold grasp seeping in through the window. His white breath was now fully tangible to his scrolling eyes that landed on the former Grineer matriarch. Following her lead, Ren pulled up his pants and made himself decent. Sela quickly staggered from the creaking inn's bed and carried her heaving body dressed humbly in her sand robes, to the small storage closet. She swung the doors open and delved hastily inside, fishing for something out of Ren's sight.
But the little Tenno needed answers, and leaned behind her. He does his best to focus on the Elder's voice and not her mature, full rump swinging with the wiggle of her hips.
"Ren! Stop your dawdling and get your Warframe equipped! Hurry!"
"What, we heading out already? I thought we could just warm up under the blankets? A little chill in the air never killed nobody."
Sela looks back, pulls her Grineer mask down and tosses a large, almost 3-foot long bundle of cloth at Ren. The hefty object has him stumbling back and feeling the sturdy metal to discover the firearm underneath.
"Huh? A Zarr? How'd you manage to smuggle this in? The city-watch would only let me bring my sword because I told them it was an ornamental heirloom!"
"I may no longer command the Grineer, but there are still hundreds out there whose loyalty for me has not wavered with my downfall."
Sela hauls another cloth bundle and reveals a gun more suiting to Ren's personality. She swipes the black and red Kuva hybrid weapon from his grubby mitts and drops a small sidearm in his disappointed palms. He holds up a strange, yet oddly familiar sidearm. When Ren asks her if this pistol has a name, she simply tells him that the original owner referred to it as the "Seer". Grineer in design, as all Sela's armaments appear to be, the Seer is clunky, though it has some Orokin aesthetic incorporated into its design.
Ren transfers his being back into his Excalibur as the mute puppet is given life once again. The Seer is locked and loaded, holstered on his thigh by means of a natural magnetic link in key points on the exoskeleton-armor. His white and sky-blue palette, gets no more than a short stare from the masked Grineer colossus. The two dawn their cloaks and keep their weapons out of sight beneath the fabric. Ren goes to unlock the room's door when Sela stops him at his wrist and places a silent finger on her red-eyed visor.
She motions to the window with her waving hand. Ren takes the lead, lifting the still cold glass and vaulting over to the alley. The Excalibur begins walking cautiously around the curious footprints of frozen sand and brick leading to the front of the tavern. He tries to investigate them further, but Sela clearing her throat halts him in his own tracks. Ren does a poor attempt at hiding his amusement at the Grineer female's vast womanly figure impeding her progress. Sela has one leg out and one leg in, the rest of her is left flustered inside the room.
"Imbecile! Quite staring and help me!"
"What, no please or thank you?" Ren mocks, holding her thick thigh and telling her to try ducking through as he pulls. "You know, I wasn't gonna ask, but what happened to your legs?"
"Ren, I am an eight-foot-tall Grineer female with a ghostly complexion and burning auburn hair. Do you think having a cybernetic serpent's lower half would make me any less conspicuous than I already am?"
"Eh, good point."
No matter what position Sela changes into, her notable feminine endowments prevent her from exiting. Ren gives up after several more tugs, becoming frustrated and blaming her big caboose for their troubles. The Excalibur rubs his palms together and wonders if he could perhaps give Sela a little motivational boost.
"Ren, why did you stop? Pull me free already! This is less than dignifying."
"Yeah just a sec, I got something that might work..."
His hand freezes upon hearing the numerous footsteps shifting the sand at the alley's end, near the mysterious imprints in the ground. The trapped Elder one demands to know what is happening outside as she too hears the approach of many boots from just beyond the room's door. Ren identifies about ten or so Grineer individuals standing and clearly narrowing their sights on the bizarre pair. There is a bombard, a ballista, a drahk master and his pets, and the rest are troopers and lancers. Before Ren can call out to them, on the other side of the tightly spaced backstreet, another group of Grineer emerge. This one is comprised of some scorch troops, two heavy gunners, more lancers and a single toxic nox soldier taking his place in the middle.
"Uh, Sela? Weren't we supposed meet your buddies at some discrete rendezvous point or something?"
"Yes, why do you ask?" Sela responds while quietly aligning the Zarr's barrel with the door ahead.
"Ok then, who are these guys?"
"What do they, look like?"
Ren lets go of Sela's leg and eases his hands into the air. "Kinda hostile, guns pointed at us and oh, they're Grineer by the way."
"Idiot! I meant how are they dressed?"
Ren describes them as having urban-grey military camo on their standard Ferrite and Plastid Grineer armor.
"Steel Meridian!" Sela roars through her clenched teeth and unleashes a sudden cone of pellets from the Zarr's alternate firing mode. The shot instigates the doomed lancers to come bursting through the door and to immediately get shredded by the blast of hot metal. Sela pops another round at the bullet riddled doorframe, forcing the other waiting SM Grineer soldiers to take cover. Back outside, the troops with the nox make way to let the bombard's squad take aim. Ren's arm involuntarily flies over his single-horned head to tightly grip the eerie energy blade forming and releases his Radial Blind in a matter of seconds.
A burning vapor emits from the faceplates and helmets of the Bombard and his men as they bump into one another in mild irritation. The little Tenno has mere moments to think before the effect wears off or the other Grineer team notices. He tells himself it should work out alright since Sela is busy obliterating the inn and every single foolish lancer that dares to approach the hole-filled door. She ceases firing, sensing the Warframe's hand on her right mound of soft and plump rump and shouts back at Ren.
"Hey runt, now is really not the time for this!"
Ren taps his mark again before winding up. "Sorry about this Sela, but desperate times call for desperate measures."
"What are you bumbling about back there? Hey! I asked you a questi- nnnngh!"
Sela's back tenses so powerfully from the abrupt flash of pain in her butt cheek that she rears her whole torso back and crashes through the window. Ren's sees his entire existence in the blink of an eye as the shadow of the colossus comes crashing down upon him, plus some several hundred pounds of woman. The biggest booty in the Origin system slams onto his gut and knocks everything out of the little Tenno. His cephalon Sudo returns at the sudden drop of Ren's shields all the way to zero and his health to a small 25 percent strength.
"Operator what is happening? My sensors indicate an absurd spike in impact damage on your Warframe! There is also a large force of Steel Meridian soldiers closing in on your position! What have you gotten yourself into this time?"
The Excalibur lowers his chin to find himself crushed under Sela, who gets off the laying Tenno without any hint of remorse. Ren groans and thanks the Void he survived one of the strongest attacks his Warframe has ever sustained.
"I th-thought... I was... a goner! Damn, Sela... y-your butt... your butt is-"
"Is bigger and more succulent than ever! Now stop acting like you did not just enjoy every second of that, and get up!"
"Ugh, r-right. Sudo, I ran into, um, an old friend of mine and Steel Meridian showed up trying to pick a fight. How's it looking from up there?"
The cephalon tells Ren that a heavy concentration of Grineer marines is in route to his location. "Operator, there is an underground network of sewers that should provide some refuge. You two can follow the tunnels to the nearest landing bay just 3.2 kilometers from here. I can extract you from there."
Sela tells Ren that the docking bay Sudo refers to is restricted and is heavily monitored by the city-watch. The little Tenno says that his cephalon will take care of the details and guides Sela to the waypoint marked on his mini-map. Ren slashes through recovering Grineer already returning fire as the disguised empress blows them into a red slurry. Her Zarr's primary fire launches a deadly explosive projectile, procing brutal amounts of blast damage on every foe hit. The bombard almost lands a hit on Ren with an Orgis rocket, but is shoved to the ground and sees the smoking end of the Zarr in his faceplate.
The Excalibur too protects his companion as they race through the bedlam of panicking, red-skinned Martians. He deflects incoming fire with his Skana, the sword's anguish rings in his mind and the camouflage is disrupted with every ricocheting bullet. He quells the blade's hunger, a mere conduit for the monstrosity that is kept at bay by Ren's mental resilience.
With the risk of so many innocent people around, Ren cannot use any of his area-of-effect abilities and relies solely on the Seer for support. The masks of some SM Grineer rupture at his well-placed pistol shots as Sela finds the manhole they were looking for. She flips the cap off and is relieved the circumference is wide enough for her hips to squeeze through. But the little Tenno seems to have other plans.
"Ren! Are you insane?" She hollers at the Tenno changing course and leaping into the open street. "Where are you going?"
The Excalibur sprints through the bullet storm of Steel Meridian gunfire, deflecting what he can with his blade. Kicking up a cloud of sand, Ren reemerges huddled on the ground. Sela sees the reason behind his bold and reckless behavior, and drops her shoulders with a lengthy sigh. The Excalibur stands among the hail of led with a small Martian child pressed firmly against his chest. His mad dash for cover is interrupted by a stream of accurate fire on his back, causing him to fall on his shoulder with the little boy in arms. A SM Grineer captain lowers the scope of his Argonak rifle to gage the precision of his marksmanship and orders his men to finish the weakened Tenno off.
Ren covers the frightened youngling using his damaged Warframe's pierced flesh, not even considering his own well-being. But a heavy thud in front of him calms his pounding heart. His robed Grineer companion slams an inflatable barrier and lays down suppressing fire from her Zarr. She buys enough time for the Warframe to carry the young child to his mother, who had been shouting her son's name from the partly ruined fruit stand. Ren tells the woman and her kid to get to safety and double jumps back to Sela. The SM troops see the two retreating and attempt to advance and overrun them. A whole squadron of lancers is chopped in half as a blue crescent of the Excalibur's Exalted Blade soars through them.
Sela fits her voluptuous hips and bust down the sewer hole, letting Ren use his Radial Javelin to spear their pursuers. The Tenno escapes in one swift leap back, the Steel Meridian soldiers flank the manhole on all sides but do not give chase.
"Stop, let'em run boys." The soldiers make way for their commanding, female Grineer leader, the one and only, Cressa Tal steps past them. "Don't worry, they're walking right into a trap. C'mon, let's go meet them on the other side."
In the sewers below, Sela puts her hand to her mask in disgust at the vile stench of Martian waste all around them. Her faceplate is merely decorative and does not in any way protect against these harmful gases. Unlike Ren's Excalibur which has no need for that stimuli and simply detects lingering odors with a bio-scan using skin contact. He jokingly admits that it definitely reeks from that way his Excalibur's sensors are going off, and gets a snide remark from his grouchy companion.
They travel on a sidewalk adjacent to the river of sludge as Sela's cracked, Kuva-themed lantern illuminates the path before them. An intersection has the duo stopping short and Ren checking his Hud's mini-map. The Enemy Sense mod installed in his frame picks up a single red dot.
"One guy? They really are underestimating us." Ren says.
"I would take this more seriously if I were you Ren. What direction are they coming from?"
The Tenno shrugs and inspects his Hud display closer. "That's weird... they're actually not moving at all. In fact, we're the ones coming to them. The guy's standing right in our way, you think they know where we're going?"
"Of course they know! This is a trap after all, or did you not pick up on that?"
"W-what? Why didn't you tell me?" Ren worriedly shivers.
"I thought you knew?"
They tread lightly as the arch-shaped ceiling above shrinks and the ceiling bumps the tall Sela's dome. The muck stream beside them starts to slow and almost appear solid at the surface. At first Ren is grossed out, but staring again he sees that the liquid is solidifying into ice? Shitty ice to be more precise.
A double, metal door that has been wrenched open at the handles, swings ominously at the end of the brick tunnel. Ren knows there is no other way around and tells Sela to be wary, the enemy is waiting for them. They pass through the entrance and are amazed at the spacious room, with pipes of all sizes jutting from every direction. There are a multitude of catwalks everywhere and descend for at least three levels as a few large holes in the elliptical walls continuously dump never-ending waterfalls of waste. The Excalibur and the Grineer female pause, a chill in the air nips at their curiosity, a crouching silhouette is perched on massive pipeline.
It looks at them as light rays crawling through grated metal lids on the ceiling shine on the figure's white body. The blue markings on the form, the robe-like outer layer and that stumpy, flat and wide head exhaling frozen breaths are unmistakable to Ren. A Frost Warframe. His voice is almost as cold as his stare, it has Ren slightly on edge.
"Did you know, that the freezing point of blood is around negative two degrees Celsius? But this'll be the first time I ever get to try freezing another Warframe."
"I guess you never went a few rounds in the Conclave huh?"
The Frost stands, looking down on both Ren and Sela. "I prefer real combat over a simulation. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Well I can't say your wrong on that, but-"
"We are done talking, now drop dead!" Sela roars, shoving the Excalibur aside and firing her Zarr.
Some pipes burst and fall, but when the smoke clears, a large ice-sphere encases the unaffected Frost Warframe. As a courtesy, the stranger reveals his name to be Cal and announces that now it is his turn to attack. He jumps forward while aiming his weapon of choice, a lever-action Sybaris rifle pops Sela's lantern as his shots zip past them. Annoyed, the Grineer giant walks confidently at his incoming fire and switches her Zarr to shotgun mode. Ren is struck a few times on his shoulder and leg, taking cover as his shields drop dangerously low. A wave of ice crystals surges through the catwalk at the pipe Ren's behind. The liquid inside freezes and cause the metal tube to expand until exploding and forces the Excalibur into the open.
Just when the Frost lines up a clean shot, he reels back from the sturdy walkway beneath him crumbling. Sela puts her weight into another heavy stomp from her augmented foot and sends the catwalk crashing down. The Frost is airborne, but not out of the fight and calls forth a chilling tempest, his Avalanche kicks into action. He lands close to Sela and the frozen winds engulfs the Grineer as she grows slow in her movements. Putting his Sybaris away, he pulls from his back the Cryotic hammer, the Sibear. The Grineer matron is too sluggish from the creeping ice on her body to avoid being bashed by the cold cudgel and is sent lumbering near the edge of the catwalk.
Cal goes in for another swing, but catches the Slash Dash from Ren in the corner of his vision. The snowy aura of his ability makes the Excalibur's would-be lightning quick lunge, into a predictable assault that he can easily anticipate. The Sibear connects to the agile Warframe's gut and crushes him onto the gridded ramp.
"Good riddance, traitor." The Frost quotes while raising his hammer and his Avalanche coming to an end.
"...Radial J-Javelin!" Ren shouts defiantly.
"I don't think so."
Cal shoots a beam of ice from his pointing finger and freezes the Excalibur's hand in an instant. He walks over and smashes the limb to pieces with a firm kick and has Ren shouting in agony from the neural stimuli attacking his brain, the pain stinging his physical body.
"F-fuck that hurts! Oh shit! Agh!" Ren rolls on the floor, grasping the brutalized Warframe flesh where his Excalibur's right arm used to be.
"You really thought I'd be stupid enough to fall for that? I saw through your plan the minute you let yourself get hit. You were gonna use your Radial Javelin thinking you'd get me from inside my Snow Globe. How naïve."
Ren tries to crawl back as Cal monologues while slightly juggling his Sibear up and down. He walks next to the panicked little Tenno and brings the huge, ice-spike hammer on his left leg, eliciting more cries of pain from Ren.
"On second thought, why don't you chill out while I take care of your pal first. Maybe when I come back, I might consider turning you in instead."
"You a-asshole, don't touch her!"
The Frost ignores Ren's threats and goes to finish the job that Steel Meridian hired him for. Ren looks down at the Sibear, the massive mallet has formed a crystal prison around his waist, immobilizing him in his weakened state. Looking up, he sees Sela succumb to a Snow Globe-Avalanche combo, and a finishing blast of a Freeze beam for good measure. The Elder one drops to her knees, resisting the allure of becoming an ice sculpture. Rather than shoot her at point blank, Cal flips his Sybaris around, grabs the rifle by the neck and beats Sela repeatedly with the stock. Her mask breaks and she falls motionless on the floor after five or so swings. He prepares to put a clean shot in her skull when the one-armed Excalibur's yelling shatters his concentration.
"Give it a rest already. You're done." Cal says apathetically.
Channeling his last drop of energy into his remaining arm, Ren breaks the ice and tosses the Sibear into the sewer pit beneath them. His legs recovering from the Frost's effects and his health at critical levels, he can do no more than limp. He almost reaches them, but a rifle butt knocks him back to the floor once more as a foot stamping his back holds him down.
"Good work Cal, but we need that bitch alive. Justice needs to be served." None other than Cressa herself speaks up. Her troops storm in and apprehend the unconscious former queen. Cal walks over to Cressa and tells her that his teammates are not going to like that.
"That's unfortunate, but Steel Meridian's been waiting years for this. I'm sure the Tenno council will understand. As for you guys, I think you already have your hands full with that one." She steps off Ren and squats to get a better look at the seriously injured Warframe. "I've heard of Kuva defectors and even Corpus proxies turning on their masters, but for a fellow Tenno to go against the Lotus. Oh boy, you guys really have your work cut out for you."
"No, we don't. This Lotus doesn't need to bother herself with something as insignificant as one weakling like this. I'll make sure of that."
Sela is cuffed and dragged away to the surface as Cressa thanks Cal and tells him best of luck with their prisoner. Cal asks what they plan to do with the dethroned queen, out of some intrigue.
"Nothing too special, that's for sure. I say a nice show trial on Earth should get everyone fired up for her execution. What about that one?"
"Him? Interrogation probably or whatever my squad leader decides really."
The Steel Meridian commander dismisses herself and her soldiers as two heavy gunners drag the fallen matriarch to her fate. Ren attempts to stand but his cephalon Sudo whirrs in and begs him to just comply for now.
"Operator, please." Sudo cries. "You are being given a chance to live, just go along with it for now."
"A-and do what? Let them torture me? Preform my o-own sham of a trial and sentence me to death on a live b-broadcast, so my kid can w-watch her father be put down like an animal! Fuck th-that, I'm g-gonna f-fight... I'm gonna... fight..."
"Operator? Operator!" Sudo buzzes loudly, but Ren does not respond.
Cal slings the still and silent Excalibur over his shoulder and hops up the pipes to the service ladder leading back to the surface. He climbs out of the entryway of the sewage plant, just a five-minute walk from Ren's destination further away. The Frost carries the treacherous Tenno to his allies conversing in an abandoned lot. The Ying and Yang colored Harrow nods as the elated orange and yellow Ember jumps to her feet and waves. The two settle down and turn grim as they notice the Warframe he is carrying.
"Cal?" The Ember calls. "Is that the- no it c-can't be? Can it?"
"Unbelievable, to think that the queen's accomplice Steel Meridian reported would be one of our own." Angrily remarks the Harrow.
"Believe it, this guy tried defending her and was gonna escort the monster outta here. They'd be long gone if I hadn't stopped them."
The Ember steps near as Cal plops the body on the floor, and the Harrow approaches. He says that disarming him should be their first priority and places a hand on the Excalibur's chest. The Harrow floods the transference bond with his own energy and severs the link. Seconds later, Ren materializes on his back, next to his beaten and torn Warframe. The three other Tenno crowd around him as Ren begins to stir, and groan from the pain.
The little Tenno is greeted by the Ember's curled fist, burning a steady ball of flame in his face as she grabs his suit with her other hand.
"You stupid prick! Why would you help a monster like that? Does everything the Lotus gave you mean nothing? Where is your honor you... you little runt!" The fiery female roars.
"Wh-why does... everyone chick always c-call me that..." Ren weakly whispers.
"Sam, cool it. You can roast the kid after Zed has a word with him, isn't that right boss man? Zed?"
The Harrow ignores both his teammates and takes Ren by the shoulders. He eyes the young Tenno from head to toe, making sure his optical sensors are not deceiving him. Ren looks at him closer and he too finds an odd familiarity in the Warframe's color scheme. Then, the little Tenno focuses in on the Harrow's name before calling it out. Something must have snapped in Zed, because he drives a mean punch into his old friend's face and sends him tumbling on the sandy lot. His teammates ask what happened, but Zed just stomps over to Ren trying to stand and kicks him back down.
"You son of a bitch! I told you if I ever saw you again-" He jams his monk Waframe's foot in the little Tenno's side. "-I'd kill you for what you did!"
Cal and Sam come running over, wanting to know the relationship between their commander and the runt of a Tenno coughing blood on the floor.
"We were once allies, awakening from our sleep around the same time and assigned to the same squadron. But then, this bastard left us. Left us to die!"
"Z-Zed, wait! Just let m-me explain- agh!"
"It really was all your fault that they all died, and that Myrrha was taken!"
Ren rolls over from another hit, as the Harrow grabs him by the collar and nails him again. Ren tries to explain that Myrrha is alive and well, but Zed is done talking. He unsheathes his sword, the Dragon Nikana, and swishes the blade through the air as if flinging off invisible blood from its edge. Cal is somewhat dissatisfied, hoping that he could have delivered the final blow since Ren did throw his Sibear into a whirlpool of feces. Sam could not care any less, just wanting to see this conniving Tenno given the justice he deserves for his betrayal.
His elegant blade rises to reflect a beam of light from the sun, ready to draw blood. But Zed's outburst has bought Sudo the time she needed to arrive.
"Zed! We got a Liset approaching and it's not one of ours!" Cal shouts.
The moment the Harrow's focus on Ren shifts to the incoming Tenno ship, Ren links back up with his Excalibur. Zed curses in shock, for a Tenno to return to his Warframe after an eviction overload is no simple feat. It requires a calm and refined mental fortitude and a strong resolve, neither of which would describe the Ren he knew. The Frost and Ember are ready to pounce with fire and ice, but their leader calls them off as the other Tenno's Liset zooms above. Ren's Excalibur has been able to recharge just enough energy to perform an upward dash, higher than a regular Warframe could with the average spiraling leap. Ren grabs onto the underside and secures himself in the cutout of his Warframe as the ship takes off.
"Running away again? Ren, you haven't changed at all." Zed states in a hostile tone.
"Should we pursue?" Sam the Ember user asks.
"No, that coward will be off world by then. Cal, you seem like you know something. Care to share it with the rest of us?"
The Frost breathes and looks at the Liset's exhaust trail in the blue sky.
"That guy, Ren was it? He said something about a kid. His kid to be exact."
"So he's tricked some poor soul into having his child huh? I don't think we'll have to worry about finding him. That little runt is gonna come to us!"
"Sudo, the Void be praised! You really are the best cephalon ever!" Ren expresses his gratitude before asking where she is taking him.
"I do not know any more Operator..."
"Whaddya mean, did something h-happen?"
The once living A.I. shouts suddenly, but it is not the usual reflexive glitch that Ren is used to. No, this is Sudo's true emotions. The boy grows silent as he is berated for his recklessness, almost being killed today on multiple occasions. Ren commands Sudo to stand down, but the cephalon persists.
"Do you understand what you have done Operator? Because I think that you do not!"
"Sudo, control yourself! That's an order!"
"NO! I W-WILL NOT BE S-S-SILENCED!" Sudo sputters, but maintains her coherent line of thought process. "Operator, you have just been designated rogue by the Tenno Council! A bounty has just been issued for your capture, dead or alive! Other Tenno will come for you and Corpus and Grineer bounty hunters will want your head!"
"Sudo, wait! Where are we going? We have to get back to the Orbiter."
The cephalon tells Ren to shut up and listen.
"Steel Meridian troops have already confiscated the Orbiter, everything you own is now in their possession. Along with the Grineer queen you were consorting with! Honestly, Operator, do you forget that I can still see everything from your Warframe's Hud?"
"Shit they have all my stuff? Wait you saw everything? Oh..." The boy asks, some discomfiture sweeping over him.
"Yes, yes, everything! You are a perverted and vile male of a Tenno and should be ashamed for treating even the queen of the Grineer in such a manner!"
Ren tries to point out that she turned the tables on him pretty quickly, but Sudo shuts him up once again. The Liset does indeed leave Mar's atmosphere and zooms through space towards the destination of Sudo's choosing. When Ren inquires for a third and final time, the cephalon tells him. Sudo explains that while the boy was busy fooling around and not actually searching for the target, she did some searching of her own. Using a cipher to hack into some local airport databases in the Martian city, Sudo put on her own disguise as a simple bug in the network and infiltrated the system unchecked. She found that an individual matching the target's description had come through a few days earlier and left just some hours before Ren arrived. And she knows just where that person went.
"What? Are you sure about this, Sudo?"
"Yes Operator, I am. The Plains of Eidolon, Cetus. That is where Tyl Regor is hiding."
Endnote: Ren's a traitor, his old ally has a personal vendetta against him and Sela's about to hit the chopping block. Don't go assuming anything just yet folks, there's still plenty more surprises to come! The next part to wrap up this segment is on the way. Now I understand that this one was short with no smut, probably disappointed most of you but hey, I just thought it would be a nice change of pace.
