The Plague Star, I could deal with. Had dealt withm, at least in-game.

The Ghouls were something knew, but I could still deal with them. Wonder why I hadn't seen anything in game with them, though. Probably had to do with the update they were introduced in not being released when I entered the Warframe universe. That also explained why the Lotus was missing...

The Plague Star rising while a Ghoul Purge was going on?

Yeah, that was going to give me head aches.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jegudiel and his bombers showed up just after I entered Cetus with Ika, at which point they proceeded to napalm the infested boil that blemished the plains. Before you ask, the pun was fully intended. After that, I called in gunships to try and blow the boil to kingdom come, but all that did was provoke it into releasing a bunch of venin mutalists to start shooting at my aircraft. While they barely scratched the paint on my machines, I did not want to give the infested any new menaces due to overestimating the resilience of my machines, so I pulled back my aircraft and decided to avoid setting up any countermeasures against the boil...except for one.

See, once Konzu began giving out Plague Star bounties to smash the boil, I made sure to join one of the first ones I that popped up and got to work hounding the boil. From there, I managed to acquire enough thrax toxin (mostly by setting the brewing vault to make an extra batch) and figure out how to synthesize it. Finally, with Konzu and Onkko's permission, I moved a toxin synthesizer into Cetus, so that the Tenno wouldn't have to go through the hassle of locating a mixer each time they wanted to synthesize more toxin. I would also have made the machines add in the Eidolon Phylaxis and Infested Catalysts, but Konzu and Onkko both asked me not to do so except for a few batches. Onkko said that it was because the Tenno might grow dependent on me if I just solved all their problems for them, while Konzu was worried the Grineer would just bait the Infested into attacking Cetus now to stop me. Nakak also asked me not to mix the additives into the toxin, but I think that was because she felt the Tenno needed to earn their rewards for fighting the Plague Star. Considering she had to ask Konzu for several additional Snipetrons and Ether Daggers after I showed up, I couldn't blame her. While every Tenno fought against the Plague Star because it was the right thing to do, the call of epic loot was also a big motivator.

While normally, I would easily have stomped all opposition under my steel might, the Infestation proved to be a tenacious foe. Sure, I hit it with a lot of thrax toxin, but it just refused to do. Not helping this was the Grineer presence on the plains. The massive upsurge in Ghoul numbers forced the Tenno to divide themselves up between killing the ghouls and poisoning the boil, which meant that, even with my assistance, the Plague Star was still under significantly less stress then it normally would have been. As if that wasn't bad enough, apparently, Vay Hek had managed to discover some kind of infested growth catalyst, which he had bolkor gunships spray over the boil as often as possible. I made a point of shooting down as many of those gunships as possible, but this just led to Hek modifying the mortar turrets on the plain to fire gas shells containing the catalyst. Granted, the chemical wasn't super potent, but it still did a lot to mitigate how much damage we inflicted on the plague star. I was eventually forced to break my rule of not using commander tech on this infested zit and began loading bombers with bombs carrying the thrax toxin to try and wear away the boil faster than Hek could heal it. It worked, but it still took quite a long time. In fact, despite my efforts, it still took just about as long as normal for the boil to die.

It might have even taken longer, except that, eventually, unexpected assistance showed up.

XXXXXXXXXX

Five days into the assault on the Plague Star, I was outside Cetus, assisting a Tenno duo in brewing some thrax toxin. For all the power of my chemical brewers, there were still limits on how much I could synthesize at any given time, plus making it on the plains meant wrecking Grineer operations there, which was always a good thing. My allies for this mission were utilizing a Harrow and an Equinox frame, which had lead to us somehow managing to get shields so tough they could stop oncoming cars made of progenitor alloys and releasing either healing waves that could probably turn a person from a living corpse to the peak of heath in one minute or a surge of death that the healing wave would not save you from. As for the Tenno controlling the frames, the Harrow one was under the command of a female Tenno know as Ametria, while the Equinox was guide by a young male Tenno named Seridas. Weird names, I know. Though I'd actually heard some Tenno with names like James, Tyler, Emily, Hailey, Nicholas, and Mackenzie, so apparently naming varied based on family and culture in the origin system. Food for thought.

Any way, we'd managed to brew the toxin with as many phylaxes and catalysts as possible, load it up onto a regulator drone, and were in the process of sending it toward the boil when things started to go wrong. See, the path charted out for us by Fide had led us right into a ghoul burial ground, and while a brief infested incursion had helped thin their numbers, the surviving ghouls still managed to give us a ton of trouble. Right now they were using the drone as a chew toy, and if Fide and Ordis' warnings were any indication, it wouldn't last much longer.

Sighing, I prepared to use Mindfray on one of the ghouls, which would hopefully send it into a panic, when, much to my surprise, all of the ghouls surrounding the drone were suddenly cut down by a white colored blur. Said blur soon proceeded to move between the ret of the ghouls, swiftly shredding them with precise cuts. A few minutes later, all that remained of the technically living Grineer zombies were a bunch of corpses, ones that were beginning to cool down.

As for the white blur, it had decided to slow down so that I could make out the details of its profile. Namely, that it appeared to be a white suit of armor, and was female.

That could refer to any number o beings in this universe, but I knew one person who was female and dressed in white well enough to know exactly who this was.

"Showoff."

Instantly, the white figure lost some of her regality.

"That hurt," was Melissa's reply.

"That doesn't mean it isn't true."

"Fair enough. So, let me guess, Infested Boil swelled up again, and Konzu needs help killing it, right?"

"Yeah, but you missed the giant army of undead grineer that decided to show up and make killing the boil harder."

"Oh. Well, I guess that makes for more fun."

"You have a weird definition of fun. Now can we get back to killing this boil?"

"Okay."

Sighing, I turned toward my Tenno companions and made an apologetic gesture before heading off after the drone.

XXXXXXXXX

The battle that followed with the Infested Swarm and the Hemocytes was mostly uneventful, though Melissa did make the sky rain fire at one point, which caused the Tenno duo to panic because they thought a Teralyst (or one of its bigger brothers) had somehow figured out how to function during the day. Melissa couldn't have cared less - to her, all that seemed to matter was that her subordinates and daughter were happy and that she was having fun. In fact, the Tenno running around in fear probably just amused her even more.

It was annoying as hell at times.

It was also rather amusing.

And as much as I'd like to have said otherwise, I liked seeing this side of her.

Because not too long after the Plague Star was dealt with, she never seemed to be this carefree anymore.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

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