While I really wanted to learn more about the fabber and how it arrived in the facility, my attempts to examine it were met with a severe roadblock - apparently, the data file in its (surprisingly intact) memory black box had suffered massive degradation, and would need intensive repair before they could be examined. Don't ask me how the progenitors could do those kind of repairs, they just did. The problem with this, though, was that it would take a long time to repair the data - at least two weeks. For an AI, that might as well be months.

I tried to turn my attention toward creating my own warframes, but that too was met with virtually impassible hurdles - first off, it took me quite a bit of time to get helminth samples the Tenno had provided me with (in addition to all the blueprints) in order to get a working assembly system up for the frames. Second, there was no way to accelerate the warframe creation process - it would still take three days for the frame to be created, in spite of my advances in biotech (which were a rarity among commanders, surprisingly. How come nobody liked biology among those who had been stuffed into war machines by ROBs?). Oh, and worst of all, I couldn't actually control my frames - they just acted like puppets. And as if that wasn't enough, I COULD NOT CREATE UMBRA! My helminth flat out refused to assemble, with its response amounting to 'you cannot hope to control its fury with your powers'. How could it know that? I didn't doubt that controlling my frames would take quite a bit of work, but this was ridiculous.

I had my avatar punch one of the walls aboard the Extinction in frustration. That slightly hurt me, but was nothing compared to the rage I was feeling at being denied my prize. Seriously, what the hell?

"So, something's not going the way you want it too, isn't it?"

At this point, I had long since become used to Melissa's intrusions into my adventures, and all she received as acknowledgement from me was a worn out sigh.

"Nope."

"Well, I must say, you are rather humorous when your angry. A little cute too."

The first statement barely got any reaction out of me. The minute I registered her second sentence, though, I started blushing. Look, I had plenty of female friends before I became a commander, but I didn't actually have a girlfriend, and frankly, being around females that were my age and weren't related to me (or my subordinates) didn't exactly make me comfortable.

...Okay, actually, I blushing because a pretty girl had called me cute. I wasn't averse to working, doing school work, or hanging out with girls, but them giving me these kinds of compliments made me a little nervous. Even if I thought she was just saying that to rile me up.

"...Are you being serious?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But only in regards to the second statement I made. You are most certainly fun to watch when you are angry?"

"Hmph."

"So, what's got you riled up?"

"I just finished building an Excalibur warframe, but I can't control it. Worse, my own helminth subordinate flat out refused to let me build an Excalibur Umbra. Said 'I couldn't control its rage'. What does he know about my powers? Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some other commander had already built his own warframes and given them bullet hell powers."

"Well, if you can't get that to work, might I suggest trying to seek out other ways of improving your control on the Origin System."

"And what might those be?"

"Well, perhaps you could start by helping out Cetus some more? Maybe earn the Ostrons' trust, and that of the Quills while you are at it. I do know for a fact you are still interested in why they chose to help you, and what exactly the could offer you. Plus I doubt you aren't interested in getting a zaw or two."

Those were cool looking blades….

"True...fine, I'll go down and see what help Konzu needs. Maybe it might also ease up my stress."

"Well, good luck."

"Thanks...why are you still so nice to me?"

"Courtesy between enemies. Also, it makes it easier to catch you off guard when I want to."

Oh really...

"Well," I began, turning to face her, "I'd like to let you know that I have become...accustom to.."

"Hmm? What was that?" she asked, legitimately sounding confused.

As for me, I was wonderin why she was staring at me, while resting on a table she had apparently materialized. Oh, and I could see most of her back, her rump only being hidden by some sheets. Was she wearing a backless dress?

"...Why are you lying down?"

"Because I'm not really here - I'm just projecting my appearance from my home tower. As for why, exactly, I'm lying down, well, I was getting a message before I got here, and didn't see any reason to get up, so-wait, where are you going?!"

OHGODIAMNOTREADYFORTHISYET!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After that...embarrassing incident, I quickly arranged a transport down to Cetus. I briefly stopped with Hai-luk, in order to acquire the schematics for making a Yogwun trophy (I had the good fortune to catch a good sized on prior to my incursions against the Corpus), before heading over to Konzu, ready to help out the Ostrons. The bounty I ended up taking was an urgent one - apparently, an Ostron girl had gone missing, with the Grineer as the most likely suspects. Oh, and apparently Ghouls (basically Grineer zombies, another of Vay Hek's creations) were breaking ground on the Plains, so I'd also need to wipe out some ghouls. Konzu was apparently offering the Quartakk blueprint as part of my potential bounty should I complete this. Apparently the Unum directed the Quills to give the Ostrons all of the stuff Konzu offered as bounty payment. Apparently, this also included Quartakk and Stubba blueprints. Good to keep in mind for the future.

So, once I had accepted the bounty, Ordis quickly chimed in, much to my surprise. It looks like he had decided to help me with this mission. How, exactly, he managed this while still helping his operator was beyond me. Had the Tenno simply asked his cephalon to help me? Had the quills asked both of them to provide me assistance? I really needed to get those questions answered so that I could focus on other, more important ones.

The first part of the search and rescue was a simple drone recovery mission - Ordis was going to use it to hack the Grineer network and see if he could locate the girl. I expected Etran to drop in, but apparently, he was doing an errand for Palladino, leaving him unable to assist me. I was able to make the mission far easier, though, by simply using a few orbital fighters to take out the oncoming Grineer drop pods before they could make atmosphere. I made sure to capture one pod launcher and set of pods before the Grineer could use it or scuttle it - drop pods are awesome, and I wanted some that weren't only usable for Commanders. Once the pods had all been destroyed and the drone was safe, my next destination was Hok's Stiletto. Apparently, Ordis needed special access codes from the commander to fully access the data on the drone. Luckily, I'd obtained the capture system all the warframes used, so delivering the target wouldn't be a problem. Ingenious system, by the way - it brakes the target down into data and transmits it to different area for reassembly, without killing them. The synthesis scanner worked the same way, though that digitized the target in an irreversible manner - once they were data, they could not go back to normal.

About five minutes later, and the commander was in Ordis' custody, making examining the drone a triviality.

That's when stuff started going off the rails.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Alright, Ordis, what next?" I asked, eager to finally save the child. I really did not want to know what the Grineer planned to do with her.

"Um, well, actually, I need to hand over mission control to another individual."

Before I could question him on this, I was surprised to hear Fide's voice filling my comms.

"Commander, how are you doing?"

"Fide?! What are you doing on this channel?"

"You haven't given me any orders saying that I was no longer to serve as your mission control. Also, Ordis needs to help his operator again."

"...Okay, good enough reasoning for me. So, what now?"

"Well, I've good news and bad news on that. Good news is that I've located where the Ostron child is. Bad news is that there's massive ghoul burial site nearby, and you'll have to cross it to get her back to Cetus. We'll need to clear it out before we can rescue her. I'm marking the nearest camp with a Grokdrul processor. Fill it up, then I'll deploy the injector to kill the Ghouls."

Filling the injector up wasn't hard. Reaching the burial site wasn't hard either. In fact, as the injector fell out of the sky, I thought things might be easy.

Then the injector hit the ground, and an earthquake happened.

"What the hell was that?"

"Unknown, commander. It appears to be coming from the central area of the plains. Ignore it for now - we have to rescue the girl."

"Fine, but do some more scanning on where the tremors originated from - I don't think this is just a random tremor."

"Understood. Also, picking up a Bolkor gunship inboud, sending Jegudiel to intercept."

The gunship arrived when the injector was seventy five percent done delivering the grokdrul - just in time to get shot down by Jeg. Anticlimatic, but I didn't care - victory was more important than action.

"All gestating ghouls neutralized, sir. Pulling up the girl's location now."

Sure enough, the girl was only one hundred meters away from the burial site. I quickly snuck up on the Grineer, readying to take them out, and quietly. First, though, I disabled the explosive leash they placed around the girl's neck (Seriously, talk about paranoia. If it was a Tenno Operator, I could understand this, but an Ostron child?). Once that was done, I dealt with them so fast they didn't know what hit them. Of course, having psychic powers that allowed me to make them drop their guard helped with that. When the last lancer fell, I disarme the collar and freed the girl...who promptly started screaming. Just great.

Okay, how do I calm her down?

...Oh wait. That's so simple.

As the girl continued to scream, I focused my thoughts on her. Then, cautiously, I held out my hand, which had started to glow blue. A moment later, the girl's head started to glow the same blue as her arm, and as the glow persisted, her screaming began to subside, until, at last, she grew quiet.

I would need to thank my ethereal teacher for showing me how to use solace. Sometimes the most innocuous of powers had the biggest advantages.

"Alright, little girl," I told the Ostron, "I'm not going to hurt you. What is your name?"

"..Ika." (AN: It's pronounced EE-ka).

That matched up with the name I'd been given for the missing girl.

"Alright, Ika. I'm going to take you home. Don't worry. Everything will be okay."

"...Okay."

For a moment, it looked like things were going to turn out like a normal Warframe bounty, with me having to escort the girl to safety, though here I assumed it was to the gates of Cetus instead of some random evac point.

Then the ground started shaking again. I quickly pulled Ika into an embrace, mostly to keep her from screaming, but also because I doubted she would be okay without comfort.

"Fide, what's going on?"

"Detecting more tremors from the center of the plains. Be advised, Grineer forces are converging on the primary tremor location. Resistance should be light, as long as you time your movement to avoid intersecting with the waves of troops."

"Okay, keep me posted."

Then I turned my attention back to Ika.

"We have to go now, do you want me to carry you?"

"I can walk, but thank you."

I merely smiled at her, before gesturing for us to move.

Thanks to Fide's advice, we were able to avoid most of the Grineer forces. Surprisingly, I saw a lot of scorch and napalm soldiers among their ranks. Why would they be sending in some many forces with flame weapons...oh no.

"Commander, is something wrong?"

"Nothing major, but can you get Jegudiel to call in some bombers loaded with napalm? We're gonna need it."

"Understood, but why?"

"I'll tell you when it becomes relevant."

Fide decided to go dark after that, aside from telling me about the Grineer forces moving throughout the plains. Eventually, we came within sight of the gates. I smiled at this, relieved we were almost at the end. I followed that up by readying my weapons, anticipating (correctly) that our luck with avoiding the Grineer would run out. Already, I was waiting for a firbolg to notice.

So imagine my surprise when ghouls began to burst out of the ground in front of us.

Sighing, I grabbed Ika before she could scream and readied to fire on the ghouls...

And then the ground exploded out from under us. We promptly went flying right over the ghouls and landed about thirty feet way from them. Amazingly, Ika was not harmed by this, besides whiplash. Seriously, how was that possible.

As we regained our bearings, I noticed three things: one, we were now right by the sentient fossils just outside the gates to Cetus; two, the ghouls were now fighting...what looked like squids; and three...there was now a very large boil that, according to Fide's scans, were at the epicenter of where the tremors were. Oh, and a smaller boil had emerged right under where we had been standing.

Sighing, I quickly got Ika to the gate, which quickly closed behind us. Then, once we were let inside, I ran off where no one could notice or hear me and screamed.

It looked like the Plague Star had risen again.

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AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!