The Lotus, the great deceiver… she fooled all of the Tenno for so long… I had only discovered her intentions by accident, but when I did it was clear she was already poised to strike. I can only imagine the devastation that strike would have caused had I not interfered… but I am glad I did. I lost a lot, but in the end I would do it all again to save my brethren, IF my true brother cannot be saved then I must save what I can…

Chapter 12: Hunting

Everything had been going according to plan; the Corpus were falling back, their production facilities occupied by the Grineer and put to… better use… Their cities burned in flames, their soldiers died in their millions. Jupiter was going to fall, and there was nothing The Company could do about it. The seemingly endless waves of Grineer ships piled into the atmosphere day and night and there was nothing to stop them. A battle was raging in orbit, but the Corpus' ships were mostly for trading and troop transport, they were no match for the Grineer who had fleets designed specifically for combat… and that much was clear, even as I stood on the spire I saw another Corpus cruiser plummet through the atmosphere belching smoke and debris as it began to burn from re-entry. It was a beautiful sight really, and yet, something felt wrong.

Things were nagging at the back of my mind… An image of a young child, crying because I had not promised to spare his father – how could I? A long list of coordinates that were going to be useless in a few weeks… a crazy brother who lurked in the shadows, striking only to kill… and most importantly; the broken sobbing wreck who lurked in the city below. All of them needed to be dealt with in some way.

The torture the Corpus had inflicted on Valkyr had caused her serious psychological damage. And that was the thing about Tenno; physically they were invincible, but mentally they could only be so strong… sure they had psychic defenses, but that didn't help much with physical and psychological torture. If they had tried to break her using psychic attacks or brainwashing, they would have protected her… but they chose physical torture instead… and everyone breaks eventually when exposed to physical torture…

Valkyr had had a traumatic awakening – her systems had registered the disassembled proxies as Tenno in origin – as brothers and sisters, all dead - then she had been rescued by Loki, only to see him gunned down… and then she had endured 4 days of incessant torture as hope after hope was turned to ash…

I had to find Valkyr… again. We had discovered that she had a fair bit of pent up anger… and that the best way for her to release it seemed to be to massacre anything corpus in origin… preferably things that screamed. She seemed to alternate between perfect calm, burning rage and sobbing emotional wreck in seconds. I had no emotion, so I could not understand this… I tried to help, but I could not deal with the root of the problem so she would remain as she was for the time being. Problem was she did not trust the others. She trusted me, perhaps because I had not killed her despite her asking me to (It wouldn't have been permanent, but it was still a big deal), or perhaps because she saw me as the trusted leader… but for whatever reason she did not trust the others. And since she was not the most communicative it was hard to solve that dilemma as well…

She had snuck off in her own ship – a mantis she got from the Lotus – and gone to slaughter Corpus for therapy… as you do… the problem was a fit of rage was typically followed by an absolute breakdown. Which means that she is currently somewhere on the city covered in blood and probably crying… and I am the only one she trusts enough to calm her down. I'm not sure I like that sort of responsibility…

I step off the spire and drop.

The fall is beautiful, I can feel the air rushing past through my warframe and the beautiful sunset is in progress – this is the fourth day of the invasion and it shows... I look up and see a Grineer ship ram into a corpus frigate reducing it to a shower of high velocity shrapnel even as the sky is filled with a missile barrage from another, larger, Corpus ship. The smoke trails paint the already beautiful horizon gray temporarily, before an air current disperses them leaving only the faintest of sunset-red rimmed wisps as evidence - and the explosions. They're quite decisive evidence.

I land in a crouch, narrowly missing a river of blood that is flowing down onto a lower platform. It seems the city is slightly off balance… probably from the bombardment. Regardless, it makes my job easier as the only realistic cause for that much blood was Valkyr… so I only have to follow the stream of blood that trickles viscously under doors, and hope she recognizes me before she tries to kill me. I had learnt to make my presence known when attempting to find her the first time. Being pounced on by a screaming ball of clawed fury does not rank high on my list of positive experiences… at all.

I proceed without any trouble, there isn't anything intact enough to put up a fight… although it looks like the recycling systems are down on this city as well. The Grineer have been shooting out the recycling systems in a bid to scavenge as many corpus energy weapons as possible for their own research – since there is now a war the urgent need to develop energy weapons of their own has become even more pressing. It doesn't matter who clears the city, someone will collect the unrecycled weapons later and get a big fat promotion… I haven't found any bodies yet, but sometimes there isn't enough left to find after Valkyr has lost her temper.

Finally, the Lotus tells me I'm close, so I begin calling out on all Tenno telepathic frequencies… no response… this is getting repetitive…

I go through the next door very slowly to avoid alarming her, if she is in there… I look around, and then begin to check every shadow or dark place I can find. For some reason people seek out gloomy places to be miserable in… also something I don't understand – not that I want to.

Sure enough, she's hiding in one of the smaller rooms. I could tell because the lighting fixtures have been ripped off the ceiling and clawed and stamped into little fragments… and there are bodies. Lots of them. And pieces of them, that bit looks suspiciously like a leg… that is not attached to anything, nor has it been cleanly cut. It looks like it has been ripped off… This seems like one of her worse episodes…

I enter the darkened room even slower than the other one, cautiously holding my hands out – emptily – in my vague attempt at a placating gesture. I'm not very good at calming people down normally, what with having been designed as a killing machine and all, but Valkyr is easy: you just hug her and don't let go. Either she'll remove your arm – like she did to Isaac, who is still recovering – or she will calm down… I REALLY hope she calms down...

Sure enough, in the corner of the room between two piles of mangled cadavers is Valkyr… curled up in a foetal position hugging her knees, and sobbing quietly… I'm not sure if she's noticed me, so I make my presence known by tapping on the wall. She looks up, but doesn't move. That seems like a good sign… I think…

I approach her slowly and gently wrap my arms around her trembling blood-soaked frame… offering about as much comfort as I can, and as is routine she slowly relaxes into my arms. We stay like that for a good fifteen minutes before she breaks the reverie.

"Sorry Alpha… I didn't mean to inconvenience you…" she sounds slightly sheepish; she regrets the outburst.

"Don't worry about it, I understand." It seems that pitying her tends to lead towards dismemberment, but fortunately I'm not very good at pity, so I just attempt to reassure her in my own way instead… which coincidentally is much less painful than pitying her, but that's just an added bonus.

"Can we go back now?" she queries as she raises her head to look at me. Which is odd because Tenno view the word from behind their heads, so she was able to see me perfectly well the whole time. Not relevant, I remind myself.

"Yea, we should really…" I'm careful to keep my telepathic voice soft, in a sort of not-quite comforting way.

"Let's go then" And just like that, she's back to calm… I decide not to ask what set her off this time, the last thing I want to do is upset her again.

We walk to the nearest landing pad in silence, mutually reassuring each other. I wonder briefly what is going through her head… probably tactical stuff now that she's calm. She is a brilliant tactician when she is collected, the problem is that that is barely half the time. I think we now desperately need to find some sort of tenno psychiatrist or psychologist – both for my cognitive fissure and for her…

We're back on the relay relaxing, as the others have just got back from a mission for the Grineer when the Lotus – in a very unprofessional manner – connects to our telepathic channels while still swearing… much to Antonio's amusement. Unfortunately, the smiles are wiped off our faces by her next announcement.

"Tenno. We have a crisis: Alad V is alive, and has released the infestation on Jupiter!"

We remain in stunned silence only for a few seconds before we all try to speak at once…

"How did he survive?!"

"Does that mean the Grineer will be driven back?!"

"What are the infestation's targets?!"

"Do we have a mission?!"

But we all stop when we hear Valkyr's question: "Did you say Alad V is alive?" It's not the question, it's not even the implications. The thing that makes us stop in our tracks is the cold hard rage that emanates from her mind across the telepathic channel… even the Lotus recoils.

Silence…

We all know what this means for her… probably another breakdown and murderous rampage… perhaps we should try and get her off the relay… can we even get her off the relay? I'm ready to send out the evacuation signal… but I doubt that will be enough.

I start towards her to try and calm her in the only way I know, but she holds up a hand indicating to me to stop.

"Alpha, don't"

I have no suitable response… I had expected her to sprint for her ship and set out to hunt Alad down the instant the information registered… Instead she is calm, sure a metaphorical storm is brewing, but this is the calm before the storm. The time when she will be thinking most clearly, and most unemotionally… unsurprisingly though, no civilization managed to get far with researching this state of mind, so I can only guess what effects it has on her mind because science doesn't know.

"Lotus, do you know where he is? We should eliminate the problem at its source." Loki seems to have made himself scarce I realise as she speaks… He isn't a combat type, if she snaps he'll be the first casualty. I think I can see the shimmer of Loki's invisibility on the top of the larger door frame... He does realise she can get up there too, doesn't he?

"I don't, but it shouldn't be too hard to find him. There is a fleet of infested Corpus ships approaching Jupiter. I think he intends to ram the Grineer command cruisers and infect them from there… he must be stopped." The Lotus interrupts my train of thought, I had forgotten she was still there.

"He must be stopped…" echoes Valkyr…

End of Chapter 12