Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Four. It did not seem like that much of an ask. To count to four. One, two, three– fuck. Leticia could count to four. In a few different languages at that. Beside her, Amir. That was two. On her other side, a woman who had quite literally fallen out of a mouth into their lives, backup from a place they could never have imagined. That made three. Four… well. There was supposed to be a four. There was supposed to be another fighting alongside them, putting hate where hate needed to be put. He was not there.

Lettie ducked back behind the stucco and stone of a once-beautiful… functional… piece of architecture that had been a home. Not a comfortable one, not really. Old Soviet-era block housing had a certain feel to it, one defined largely as ‘what if utilitarian sadness had a physical form’. Here, however, it was all that stood between her and the Scaldra forces doing their best to eradicate the resistance to their occupation.

No one truly knew how this entire shitshow had started though most pointed back to Doktor Entrati. It was a strange sequence of events, of opportunistic moves, and of land-grabs. The Techrot, a strange virus-like infection that affected electronics more so than biology, had erupted from the sewers under Höllvania. Originally called the Testudo Virus, given its propensity for hard, armour-like growths covering those infected, it had gained the name Techrot when an intrepid journalist realised what it was doing with the city’s electronics. Of course, having a city-state newly liberated from the oppressive boot of the Soviets only to disappear under the oppressive tentacle of the Techrot was enough to cause a stir, one that both the International Crisis Response and the Scaldra jumped on. One was a multinational group dedicated to protecting the downtrodden, the innocent, and the poor. The other was Scaldra.

Scaldra themselves were one step above a cult, worshipping Sol and Lua with bullet and blood. Using Efervon - a noxious gas supposedly for eradicating the Techrot - they had originally been hailed as saviours by the people of Höllvania. Originally. It did not take long for the civilian population to realise that this was an ‘under new management’ situation, not a liberation.

And thus, the ICR had found themselves in a pressure cooker. Squeezed on three sides by Scaldra, by an increasingly desperate population, and by the Techrot, all hell had broken loose. This was not simply a matter of opinion, it was a statement of fact. This was the sort of situation that sorted itself out, where the calculables were metres, bullets, and human lives.

Ducked behind what rubble she could find as cover, Lettie took a deep breath. In the street, a Scaldra kill squad. Most of these units had forgettable names but some in particular took their names from history, reminding those they faced where they had come from. The unit that these members of the Hex faced down were one of these: the Nav UA. While the Nav were a smaller unit, they were a hunter-killer task force dedicated to rooting out and ‘handling’ special interest groups that stood in opposition to Scaldra’s overarching goal.

Of course, none of that really mattered in the moment. A quad-barreled 2.2 centimetre flak cannon blowing pieces of stucco, brickwork, and support timber from around Lettie’s hiding place? That mattered. That mattered a lot, and it mattered right fucking now. Cannonfire shredded the wall behind which she hid until the Scaldra forces below were damn sure that Lettie had been either pinned or obliterated. Commands ordered across comms that, mercifully, their techwizard had managed to hack into. She knew they were coming.

The first Scaldra soldier stepped around the corner and received a faceful of lead for his efforts. Pinned as she was, Lettie was not able to draw her full-sized battle rifle; instead, the six-shooter revolver at her hip did the job. A peering helmet poked around the corner, she put the bullet dead between the soldier’s eyes. Painted the wall behind a jaunty shade of scarlet in the process; maybe she could be an interior designer when all this hell had sorted itself out.

Jig up, the next Scaldra soldier tried lobbing smoke into the room to flush Lettie out. He need not have bothered as crackling electricity clapped through the entryway and screams soon filled Lettie’s ears. “Good timing Amir!” She shouted over the din; Amir near flashed into being next to her, offering both a smile and a hand.

“I gotchu, let’s get moving before they get their shit to-,” inviting the wrath of god upon their heads was never a good idea as, within seconds, the armoured personnel carrier outside spooled up. Yet more flak shells ripped into the wall, trying to pin the two Hex in position.

“Go!” Lettie shouted, scrambling to her feet while staying as low as possible. She scrambled along wooden planks, dragging her rifle with, while the stucco gave way. Daylight poured through, guided by lead. “Move!”

As if the command were needed. Amir grabbed Lettie’s shoulder, pushing waves of electricity through her body. The act caused her muscles to spasm at first until the Techrot coursing in her veins accepted the energy and converted it into something far more useful. Speed. The pair burst from cover, ducking under fallen timber to scramble into the next building. Their actions drew fire, bullets pinging off crumbling walls, but opened enough room for their third to do her thing.

Unlike two two ProtoFrames, this one was a Warframe. Her name was Saryn, and she had opinions. Striding out from where she had taken cover, Saryn clenched her hand while summoning noxious spores from the Void. A toss of her arm scattered the spores across the battlefield, sinking them into Scaldra and stone alike. Within seconds, those spores had taken root, growing bulbous, pustulent, volatile. Shotgun swung to her shoulder, trigger squeezed. A Scaldra’s helmet cracked, letting the Rot-filled air into their rebreather. Within seconds, Saryn’s spores sunk deep, into the Scaldra’s lungs. Immediately, they were coughing, gagging, spitting up blood. She did not wait for them to expire, but she did hurry the process. Another crack, this one causing the spores within and without to rupture. Almost a century ago, in trenches dug across Gaul, Gallic soldiers had faced a similar weapon. Unfortunately for these soldiers, they did not have time to piss on a rag to cover their faces. No, they simply died.

Having a third, unknown hostile stride into the battlefield exuding confidence did little for Scaldra’s morale. The Nav UA soldier swung their guns about face, trying to pin Saryn down, back into the building she had just exited. To no avail; the Warframe sprinted towards their TI-92 APC. Graceful steps launched her skyward, drawing fire. Only when Scaldra realised they were shooting at a fluttering, falling mass of spores left in Saryn’s wake did panic truly set in.

Lettie swung around a corner, drawing her battle rifle. To both her and the Nav soldier’s surpise, they locked eyes for a brief moment. Perhaps it was time to win some hearts and minds, to show compassion in this world, to hopefully mend bridges long-since broken. Two in the heart, one in the mind would do the trick - Lettie triple-tapped the soldier, blowing a fist-sized hole through their sternum before the third shot ripped through kevlar. “Madrazo, target down!” She called over the din of the battle.

Without much consideration for his own safety, Amir zipped into the scene. Fast fingers fumbled the spent battery from his rifle’s magazine, trying to reload as tactically as he had seen the rest of the Hex manage. Of course, they were using conventional weaponry; his was significantly less so. A portable tesla coil was not something that many had seen, let alone used. Ducking low to slide under some debris, Amir slide-tackled a Scaldra trooper trying to get over the makeshift barricade. Legs gave out, Amir cried in surprise; he was faster, though. Up on a knee and without hesitation, Amir slammed his hand down upon the Scaldra’s Efervon tank, pumping hundreds of amps into the reactive gas.

“Shit!” Amir shouted - the gas superheated, expanded, and ignited. A fireball blast the youngest member of the Hex clear of his target, though really, he got away lucky. Some called it a spontaneous rapid deconstruction event. Amir called it a fucking cool explosion. Rolling as fast as he could, Amir stayed down. A noxious plume of fire and gas filled the room, knocking several other Nav fighters off their feet - easy pickings for chains of electricity from Amir’s fingers and his assault rifle.

Knocked flat on her back, Lettie coughed briefly while scrambling to her feet. “Fuckin’ – Amélie, where is that pendejo?!”

“I don’t fucking know?” Saryn snapped back. Standing upon the TI-92, she had double-barreled the Scaldra manning the turret then filled the vehicle’s passenger compartment with spores. She dropped into the turret, racked the slide on the massive 2.2 flak cannon, then began raining hell on those who had intended to use it against her newfound friends. “What makes you think I’ve got any control of the connard?”

“Sol damn it!” Lettie shouted over the din of battle. Not quite back on her feet, she had been forced to drop back down to fire down her own legs to pop the Scaldra battering down another barricaded door. “How many of these putas do I gotta kill before they get the fucking hint!? Arthur! Where is he?!”

A crackle echoed across their comms. Arthur, the brain of the Hex, spoke up. “Unknown. He disappeared from all scopes just before you made contact. Trying to track him down but I’ve got my hands full right now.”

“With what!?” Amir demanded, chest heaving. Another few shocks of electricity erupted from his fingers but his battery was draining faster than his rifle’s.

“Aoi and Eleanor’s mission went tits up, they’re pinned down about three blocks north of you. Trying to get Quincy on-scene but he’s a ways out and-”

“Got it, we’re relocating,” Lettie growled. “Form up!”

So much for an easy run. From scavenging Old Konderuk for salvage to fighting tooth and nail for their very lives. The Scaldra outside, who had once commanded the battlefield with their heavy weapons, had started streaming into the building to escape the Saryn perched outside. They ran face-first into the anvil part of Saryn’s strategy, mowed down while trying to pile into the building through windows and doors. By the time the smoke had cleared, all three of the ‘frames present, Proto and War alike, had accrued considerable body counts.

In a flash, Amir was at Lettie’s side, helping her to her feet. “Okay we’re good area’s clear you good?”

“I’m good, Amir,” Lettie growled. “When I get my hands on that puta…”

Striding through bodies, Saryn kicked a final Scaldra’s bleeding, broken body to one side. “À la fin de la ligne, putain, il est mien.” Reformed, regrouped. “Where next?”

“I’ve got you, ooooone sec-,” a feminine voice answered through their comms. Within moments, a waypoint marker appeared within all of the ‘frames line of sight. It moved when they moved and, were they to squint, it disappeared. Lettie clutched her head when the information was uploaded directly into her brain.

“Fuck I hate that,” she growled under her breath. “What’s there, Cait?”

Cait, the Drifter. The one who had fallen out of a mouth hidden deep within the Mall, bringing with her not one, but two Warframes. Questions abounded; Cait had few answers. Few satisfactory ones, at least. But her presence had somehow helped stabilise the world that the Hex knew and loved… in some ways. It added far too many additional questions for anyone’s tastes.

Cait’s reply came with Arthur’s voice in the background as he tried to command Aoi, Eleanor, and Quincy through the shitshow they had stumbled into. “That’s where everyone else is pinned. Scaldra safehouse. They were on a retrieval mission, searching for a hard drive with troop movements, deployments, and supply routes. If you can get there-”

“We’re on it,” Lettie cut comms. “Let’s move.” Two nods. Saryn reloaded her shotgun, Amir popped the battery from his rifle to slot another one in its place.

Picking their way out of brutalised buildings and butchered architecture, the trio began the march through the twisting streets that had become Höllvania. As an old European city, Höllvania was not so much built as it grew naturally. Streets snaked and meandered, mindlessly following paths that had seen centuries of use well before the invention of anything so modern as a bicycle. The introduction of the Techrot had only made things harder to navigate. Even with Scaldra ostensibly purging the ‘rot wherever they went, they left more destruction than repair in their wake.

“This place is-” Saryn began, but both Amir and Lettie tried to finish her sentence before she could get it out.

“Fuckin’ terrible?” Lettie offered.

“Gross and claustrophobic?” Amir spoke up.

A pause, Saryn considering her words carefully. “... I was going to say beautiful in a strange way. It feels so old.” Right. She was from the future. How far in the future was anyone’s guess but far enough that she had no clue what to make of the stone-and-wood structures around her. Cobblestone streets, narrow, winding roads, and haunting atmosphere. No, not everyone’s choice for a holiday vacation but as somewhere to work? Could be worse.

Amir and Lettie exchanged a look, wondering what the hell kind of universe Amélie could have come from that Höllvania looked appealing. Must have been a disaster.

Their path forward, lacking in hostile forces, led to wandering minds. Lettie counted down the ways she wanted to strangle their fourth; Amir fretted about Aoi and Eleanor’s situation. Quincy, eh… that was a whole other can of worms he was unwilling to open.

Three blocks. It did not sound like a long distance but with tension hanging in the air, it felt like a lifetime. Only when the trio rounded a final corner towards the safehouse did things really take off. Everything behind them felt as though they had been drawing a massive slingshot back - the second they saw the safehouse, burning, the tension released.

“Shit! Arthur, we’ve got eyes, engaging!” Lettie shouted. Three bodies broke into a dead sprint, rushing forward to the marker blinking in their eyes. When it disappeared, a snarl snaked out from Lettie’s lips; she hated being infected with this ‘rot. She utterly loathed someone tweaking and playing with it, even if it was helpful.

Up the street, several Scaldra squads had surrounded a building. Currently engaged with fighting whatever was within, they did not notice that which approached without. Only when bullets began whizzing past and someone realised they were taking fire from behind did the squad ahead turn about-face. Commands issued, the battle expanded. Amir and Lettie slid behind a concrete traffic barrier, guarded on one flank but the burning hulk of a once-proud Yugo 45. Saryn, meanwhile, did no such thing. Lettie watched in a mix of awe and horror as Saryn sprinted towards the group, full tilt. Her skin seemed to slough, leaving a fluttering cloud of spores in her wake, before she twisted to run straight up a wall. Momentum carried her most of the way before, in a series of acrobatic kicks and twists, she forced herself three stories up onto a balcony.

Well, at least the centre of attention was drawing fire. Scaldra forces concentrated fire on Saryn’s hiding spot, leaving them easy pickings for the pair of ProtoFrames hiding nearby. Gunfire echoed down the street, bullets ricocheting and cracking when Scaldra got a bit too close to finding their marks. Lettie had died a dozen deaths by now; she was not keen on adding to that tally.

Spores and electricity, lead and energy; these were the weapons of war the freedom fighters chose. Lucky shots from Saryn, now thoroughly incensed at being focus-fired, caught Scaldra Efervon tanks causing explosions of gas to flood the street. Unfortunately for the Warframes, Scaldra wore hazard gear. Unfortunately for Scaldra, hazard gear was not bulletproof. Resistant, perhaps, but not proof.

When a cry of pain rang out from above, Lettie grit her teeth. “You good!?”

“Ils ont coupé ma jambe! Got my fuckin’ leg!” Saryn hissed. “I’m good! Just gotta-”

No time. There was no time. Lettie broke from cover, sprinting across the street to try to mimic Saryn’s acrobatics. While her attempt involved many more flubs, stumbles, and nearly a fall, Lettie’s Infested body helped push her up the walls to the balcony within which Saryn had bunkered down.

Hero moment. Amir’s hands flew wide, a crackling wall of energy sparking between his fingers. Without hesitation, the youngest ProtoFrame jumped the concrete barricade to sprint straight at Scaldra, drawing fire as arcs of electricity leapt from his fingers into the forces before them.

Comms open, he near stuttered to a stop when he heard Scaldra’s panic. “Behind! They’re behi-” cut short by a sickening wet gurgle; Amir spotted the Scaldra in question well before his brain analyzed what was happening. A massive spear of metal, gleaming in the low light, had punched through one of the soldiers. It precipitated a spray of gore when the owner of said metal shard wrenched back, cleaving the soldier in two.

Waves of icy air began swirling around the battlefield, several Scaldra finding themselves frozen in place as their gear began locking up. Hoarfrost coalesced across friend and foe alike, fortifying some, freezing others. Amir himself felt the ice coating his Warframe in a thick, protective layer; sure, he was a bit slower but boy did he feel sturdy.

“Friendlies!” Amir cheered. “We’ve got friendlies!”

Their missing member swung his wicked scythe through the crowds of Scaldra, cleaving or shattering whatever was before him. The scythe sang, slicing, dicing, making julienne fries; Amir fired at whatever he missed.

Out of the carnage, the burning safehouse, emerged Frost. In one hand, he clutched a heavy plastic briefcase; in the other, he carried his signature weapon.

The battle ebbed. Aoi and Eleanor appeared, supporting one another. Both bled; Aoi clutched her stomach while Eleanor’s left cheek bore a vicious gash through which Amir could see her teeth. It made his stomach lurch, even if he knew she would heal it off in a day at most. Still gross. Without hesitation, he sprinted to the pair of them.

“Aoi, El! You guys good? Everythin-”

‘We’re good, Amir; just hurt,’ Eleanor’s Infestation touched at his mind, offering a soothing moment bathed in her deep, warm voice. ‘We had help.’

“I see that,” Amir’s lips pursed. A squawk of surprise burst through his lips when Frost threw the briefcase at him. In the scramble to catch it, Amir dropped his rifle. The plastic and metal weapon clattered to the ground, though took no notable damage.

Lettie, helping Saryn, managed to fumble their way down a fire escape to the ground below. “Oh, so now you show up pendejo!? ¿Dónde diablos estabas cuando te necesitábamos?”

There was no response. No verbal reply. Frost had stepped over to a gasping half of a Scaldra; everything below their hips had been blown away. A heavy foot lifted, then pressed down upon the soldier’s chest. Newly emptied hands plucked his enormous heavy machine gun from his back, swinging it down to level the barrel between the Scaldra’s eyes. Burbled begging met their ears. For pity. For a modicum of human decency. For anything, really.

Frost’s foot pressed down. Sternum snapped. The gun in his hands cracked once, loud enough to deafen those close with its bassy burst. Struggling and begging ceased at once. The Hex understood - there was no saving the soldier. They were dead. No medical treatment would save their life. At best, they would have gotten ‘rot in their blood and that was a death sentence anyway. Frost’s actions, brutal as they were, had been a mercy afforded to few.

Still, the icy behemoth did not turn. His rifle swung up. One hand ejected the rifle’s magazine, another pulled its replacement. Rifle loaded, slide racked. Blood coated ice coated his armour and dripped from his scythe. Handgun pulled from his waist, slide pulled, magazine checked. Without a word, with nary a farewell nor tip of the hat, Frost marched away from the carnage in his wake, back into the hell that was Höllvania.

Four ProtoFrames and a Warframe watched him go. Amélie shifted to rest on Amir’s shoulder, still limping. There was a bloody spot where she had been shot but much like the Hex, she would heal fast. Far too fast.

“You gotta admit,” Amir breathed. “For as much of a dick as he is, that was kinda bad-ass. Like, teamwork? Zero outta ten, failed the course, big red F and a ‘see me’ in the top corner. Badassery? Top marks, dean’s list.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Saryn seethed on his shoulder. “I’m gonna kill that connard in his fucking sleep I swear to it.”

Lettie stymied the bleeding from both Aoi and Eleanor, using gauze and some tape to patch Eleanor’s face. They both murmured their appreciation. As the group limped off, back to the Mall, Lettie rang home. “Broadsword, we got the package and rescued the others. You and me? We’re gonna talk about the new cabrón.”

Chapter Text

Heavy weapons fire peppered the bombed-out building in beautiful downtown Höllvania that three had called their sanctuary. Or, rather, had ducked into in the hopes of not having limbs shredded in a spray of white-hot lead. Lettie and Amir both tried in vain to lay down covering fire as their third, a Saryn from beyond the veil of time and space, sprinted across the street. She dropped low and slid into cover even as the Scaldra TI-92 armoured personnel carrier rolled to a stop nearby. In the back, a Scaldra Jaeger, carrying their heavy Efervon tanks, scrambled into position and ratcheted the slide on the mounted machine gun. Seconds later, yet more hot lead spewed in the three's direction, punching holes through concrete and rebar.

“Game over man, game over!” Amir panicked, ducking around a blasted piece of masonry to line up a shot. His hand flew forth, lightning chaining off his fingers to sear the Scaldra Jaeger rushing into the brutalised architecture in an attempt to close the distance and put some hurt on the rebels assaulting the stability of their fair city.

Their city. Their land. As though the Scaldra were better than jumped-up mercenary thugs employed by a cult with a psychopath at its helm. The once vibrant - well, living - mostly functional on a good day city-state of Höllvania had been hit by two plagues in quick succession. The first was the Testudo Syndrome, a strange virus that appeared from nowhere and infected man and machine alike. For humans, death was a walking agony; growths and protrusions, lumps and bumps, plate-like armour and decaying sanity combined with a proclivity for sprouting extra limbs and melting into biomechanical soup only to reform as something far less endearing. For machines, the opposite. CRT monitors held up with a network of cables and wires, a twisting monstrosity with keyboards for feet and jaunty, playful ringtones as communication. Within weeks, the Testudo Syndrome had been renamed to something far more appropriate: the Techrot.

Then came Scaldra, a pseudo-religious organisation that locked the city down in the name of Sol and Luna and whatever other trappings they could drape over it. The reality was far simpler; the Scaldra saw an opening where the Techrot rose and decided to fill the power vacuum with bullets.

“Get your damn head down, Amir!” Lettie screamed at the younger fighter, the ProtoFrame still coming to grips with his powers. Sure enough, the next moment saw a hail of gunfire saturate the space Amir had been occupying not two seconds prior. Only his extremely high speed and manoeuvrability kept him alive.

The Hex. The rebels fighting back against the oppressive regime threatening to burn Höllvania to the ground. Six idiots in a trench coat pretending they could make a difference against tens of thousands. But they still stood, amped up on some sort of parasitic symbiote that gave them near-magical powers. There was certainly some science to explain it. None of them cared to track it down or figure it out. Not when survival was on the line.

“Where the fuck is that pendejo!?” Lettie’s gaze snapped to the Saryn at her side, the woman slotting shells back into the shotgun she carried.

“Why are you asking me!?” Saryn retorted, head pivoting to affix Lettie with the glowing lights of her Warframe’s helm. “I don’t order him around!”

“Por amor al Sol,” Lettie growled as she turned ‘round just in time to level her rifle at a Scaldra helm stepping into view around their cover. A single pull of the trigger and the soldier’s helmet cracked, a plume of red erupting out the back of it. “Arthur! Where is that fuckin’-”

“I don’t know, Lettie,” Arthur’s voice crackled over her comms. “He’s vanished from all our scopes.”

“Oh wonderful!”

Lettie and Saryn both stepped back into the fray; Saryn throwing a wave of caustic spores forward that latched onto any Scaldra unlucky enough to be in range. Her shotgun then levelled at the poor fool’s face and she pulled the trigger; the buckshot caused the spores to erupt outwards, propagating across any Scaldra they landed upon and starting to melt through their armour. Follow-up shots from Lettie helped put survivors down.

Amir bolted ‘round the corner once more, rapidly slapping a new battery into his tesla coil rifle. “Incoming!” He called, dropping to a knee and sliding past both Lettie and Saryn. Rifle shouldered, trigger pulled; an arc of electricity burst forth and chained to several Scaldra attempting to flank the trio. The acrid smell of burning flesh met Amir’s nose and he fought hard to suppress a dry heave.

Tracking Amir’s slide, Saryn soon spun and put several more shells into the few remaining Scaldra forces. Outside, the TI-92’s gunner paused long enough to reload. Lettie whipped around the corner, drew bead, and won over the soldier’s heart and mind with a triple tap; two in the heart, one in the mind.

“Where’s the objective, Arthur? I can’t see shit down here!”

“Scaldra Safehouse is about a block north-east of your location,” Arthur’s rapid typing could be heard through their comms. “Sending you data now… I think. Cait, how do you-”

“Got it,” a feminine voice cut in. Seconds later, Lettie had the location uploaded directly to her mind.

“Puta madre I hate that so, so much,” she groaned, rubbing at her eye as though that would make the strange marker disappear. Not only was she unused to having Techrot in her body, she was doubly unused to - and unwilling to accept - someone playing with it.

“Sorry Lettie, best I can do. Incoming Scaldra death squad!” Cait’s voice rose an octave.

“Amélie, Amir! Fall in!” Lettie ordered, dashing across the street as yet another hail of gunfire ripped cobble up from behind her. Dropping low, she slid behind a concrete traffic barrier and peeked round the side. Several bullets whizzing past her head informed her that her decision making could use some improvement.

Amélie, following behind, let her shotgun fall to her hip while drawing a twisting, fluid-looking sidearm. Hoops of quicksilver bled from the weapon’s body and hooked in on themselves. She fired a quick burst down range and Lettie’s eyes went wide; the shots impacted around the Scaldra forces and sent them flying every which way, landing in crumpled heaps.

“Sol damn Future, that’s scary!” Amir chirped, bolting across the now-cleared street.

“Tell me about it,” Amélie peered at the gun. While her face was not visible, her discomfort was. “Cait gave this thing to me, said it’s totally safe in the right hands.”

Cait’s voice rang across comms once more. “It’s totally safe. What isn’t safe is being out in the open. Move your butts to the waypoint!”

Three glances, three nods. Infestation-enhanced bodies sprinted down another side street, Amir opting to blindly charge straight through a chain-link fence. His arms came up just in time to protect his face but he hit it with such force that he punched straight through.

“Thanks, I guess,” Lettie called after him while ducking through the hole he’d made. Amélie followed suit, hot on the speedy ProtoFrame’s heels.

They rounded another bend in the cramped, Eastern European city’s streets to find themselves facing down yet more Scaldra forces. These ones, however, seemed to be preoccupied with something. All were facing the safehouse and their Glorious Leader’s voice could be heard screaming at them over their own comms systems.

“Hey guys?” Cait’s voice crackled across the radio. “Something’s got Viktor’s panties in a twist.”

“Hear that,” Lettie commented dryly. Her rifle shouldered without mercy and she began firing shots at the roadblock ahead. One by one the Scaldra dropped dead, numbers growing thinner by the moment as Amélie threw her spores down upon them and Amir added his electrical prowess to the mix.

“Behind!” They heard one Scaldra cry out. “They’re beh-” his voice cut short with a wet gurgle, a spear of metal suddenly bursting through the Scaldra’s chest cavity. The distraction of split attention was enough for whatever was within the Scaldra Safehouse to come out to play. Waves of hoarfrost soon coated the soldiers and their barricades, chill even reaching the Hex as they approached. More than a few Scaldra ended up frozen solid while those that could still struggle, Amir, Lettie, and Amélie systematically escorted to shallow graves.

Before long, the fighting had stopped and quiet fell once more. Not a bird chirped, not an engine revved. The second future Warframe stepped forth, carrying what appeared to be a large, plastic briefcase. His armour was coated in a heavy layer of ice and he unceremoniously stepped on a groaning Scaldra’s chest and leveled his enormous rifle at their head. A single shot; a crack, a pop, and silence. Blood dripped from the wicked scythe upon the icy Warframe’s back while he swung his rifle up to rest against his shoulder.

“Now you show up!?” Lettie spat, venom in her voice. Frost lift his head to level his many-eyed glare her way. Instead of a response, he simply threw the chunky, hard plastic briefcase in her direction; Lettie almost fumbled the package but managed to hold on, her rifle clutched awkwardly in one hand. Without a word, Frost turned on his heel and marched deeper into the city. A loud ping of his rifle ejecting its spent magazine reached the group’s ears.

“Okay. Teamwork? Zero outta ten, see me. Underlined, in red pen. Badassery? You gotta admit that was kinda sick,” Amir tried to make the best of a bad situation.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Lettie seethed. “I’m actually going to kill him.”

“I’ve tried,” Amélie growled under her breath. “Not worth the effort.”

Lettie sighed heavily. “Hex returning to base, Broadsword. We’ve got the package. You and me? We’re going to talk about the new cabrón.”

Chapter Text

Toss and turn, kick and scream. Aoi’s stomach, sewn back together, begged for attention. It hurt, it ached, it throbbed. There was no way in hell she would be sleeping tonight, doubly so with the knowledge of what had happened. The day’s events played out in her mind. Four of them off on a mission to distract Scaldra. Two of them to infiltrate the facility to track down the package. What the package was, she knew not - only that both Scaldra and Entrati wanted it, so that meant that the Hex needed it. By rights. The mission had been going so, so well. Until she and Eleanor had been seen. Even with Quincy on overwatch. Even with the four others pulling countless Scaldra troops. Even with Arthur and Cait keeping an eye on every single little wrinkle in the operation, things had gone south. Just as she and Eleanor had been jumped, however, the White Death swept in.

Frost. They called him Frost, for that was his name. His Warframe’s name. Amélie was Saryn, named after the toxin that took so many lives. Frost’s name was Frost. There was no more to him, nothing human within the armour he wore. Amélie told them that, once upon a time, there had been a man within. Today? She did not know. She had not seen him for a lifetime. Or two. If there was still a person within the armour, Amélie reasoned, he would be an unrecognisable, machine-like monstrosity. Just as the Hex had become, but worse.

The viperous woman held not but contempt for Frost, something that bugged Aoi to the core. She and Amélie did not see eye to eye, not really. Amélie was a bully. A loud-mouthed, obstinate, aggressive bully. They had butted heads more than once, over things as big as operational success to as small as Amir’s neuroses. Aoi loved the little electric torpedo like a brother; Amélie treated him as an inconvenience, most of the time. Not openly hostile, but certainly looked down her nose at him. Why Cait had danced through time and space with Amélie and Frost in tow was anyone’s guess.

On the plus side, they were winning. Mostly? It felt like they were winning. Aoi was now aware of the time loop, she was now aware of the world turning inside out every year, resetting itself back to nil. She remembered, painfully, their last-gasp attempt to unlock the 1999 time loop. The Infestation as it overpowered her in concert with the radiation pouring off the reactor. The feeling of her cells dying, of the squirming, squalid mass within her guts taking over. She had lost that fight; they all had. But the energy released from the reactor was just enough to give Cait the juice she needed to reset the time loop. One last time. Once more into the breach.

Aoi stared at the ceiling of her chosen abode. A CD shop, littered with memorabilia and detritus from a time long-passed. It was her home away from home. Her couch. Her blanket. Her little corner. It felt cold, today. Empty. Maybe it was the sleeplessness that ate at her mind. Maybe it was the pain in her gut, where a Scaldra’s hooked blade drove deep in hopes of disemboweling her. Aoi won that fight, as she won most. The Infestation - Techrot? - was a powerful tool with a high price.

Nope. Fuck this. If she could not sleep, she would wander. At least putting some miles on would help tire her out, especially while in pain. Maybe she would go grab her bike and go for a rip. It had been a while since she had gone joyriding through the city’s desolate streets. Mostly because she tended to get shot at when it happened, but, you know. Details. Right now, however, Aoi wanted a coffee. She did not care how bad it hurt her perforated tummy, she wanted a Sol-damned coffee and she wanted it ten minutes ago. A groan, a kick, a cuss. She stumbled from her pile of blankets into the frigid evening air. Late fall, 1999. In a dumpster eastern European country, in a bombed-out mall crawling with Techrot and rats. To think that On-Lyne were touring through here. In this state.

What a joke.

Big-ass hoodie, check. Aoi squirmed her way through the jacket-sized article of clothing, smoothing it over her front. The big, bright On-Lyne logo made her giddy. Normally this would have cost a fortune. Here, it only cost her soul. A fair trade, given it would never wear out or fade. Time loops were funny like that. Next, some big, comfy flannel pants. She was comfy. Trademarked, patent pending. Next, combat boots. Not her go-to and certainly neither cute nor cozy, but cute and cozy did not do well against glass from skylights shattered or Techrot roots poking out of the ground. She may have been a half-Infested monstrosity with magnetic powers but breaking a nail by tripping over something just as alive as you was still painful.

Out into the cold night air. She paused in what was once a food court, peering up through the skylight at the swirling, snowy night above. A few flakes filtered down; they needed to patch that hole. Badly. Tomorrow’s problem. Or the day after. Or the day after that. They had a lot of problems and not many days. Well, no. They had infinite problems and infinite days - which was literally the root cause of the issue.

A yawn split her maw and she politely covered her lips. Not for the sake of anyone watching, for there was literally no one, but because it was habit. With a bit of a shudder, Aoi adjusted her hoodie around herself. Yep, nope, that skylight needed to be fixed because holy shit did she not do cold. Alright, coffee, then bike, then question marks.

Aoi shuffled through the mall, past potted plants Eleanor stubbornly refused to abandon, towards Arthur’s office. He was, hopefully, asleep. Hopefully. Sol knew at least someone needed to get some rest on this forsaken evening. Not quite creeping but certainly not playing a polka as she meandered, Aoi froze at the crossroads leading from the main mall into the parkade below. Eyes narrowed, ears perked. There was noise coming through those sliding glass doors. One had been mostly knocked out by Techrot growing through the walls, up from the sewers, while the other’s frosted glass kept its secrets well. Aoi saw light. She heard sound. Aoi did not like either of these things. No one should have been awake, let alone out there.

Mind took off like a shot. Had their safehouse been discovered? Did they need to move? The longer she stayed, frozen, staring at the doors, the more her mind could discern. No, that did not sound like Scaldra. She heard neither radio chatter nor the shuffling of heavy boots. What she heard was metal-on-metal and… music? Was that music? Step by step she crept forth. Careful that her big, chunky boots stayed as quiet as she could make them. Until, finally, the door slid back. In as many times as minutes, Aoi froze. Eyes wide, mouth hanging open. Agog. Agape.

A man sat before her, with one of the Atomicycles pulled apart in front of him. The seat was off, the engine - reactor - lay mostly disassembled to one side. Whatever he was doing, it was a few hours’ worth of work. But frankly, fuck that - Aoi was staring at the person, not the bike. Only one person here was as wide as the person before her, and this was certainly not Quincy. His Warframe had been rolled down and hung at his waist to reveal his broad shoulders, battered and scarred, littered with hundreds of healed injuries. Short, dark black-brown hair streaked with silver. Skin deep and rich; Latin. An ancient, battered tattoo of a once-proud snow leopard in a breathtaking watercolour style. His waist did not pinch. He had no bodybuilder’s physique. The brick shithouse before her had earned his stripes through hard, manual labour, and bullets. In the ‘garage’s low light, Aoi marvelled not only at his physical form, which admittedly was not really her type, but at the spiderwebbing layers of glowing colour beneath his hide. Bright, angry blues criss-crossed his form like cracks in a glacier, pulsing from pure, brilliant white to a rich blue-black that nearly melted into his body.

Before Aoi’s very eyes, he lifted a wrench, and drummed a beat into the bike’s exhaust manifold. It took her exactly point three of a second to process the rest of what was happening. He was listening to music while working on one of the bikes. How did she know this? Because she had been in this exact same spot before, herself. When introspective, when far away. Something to keep the hands busy while the brain put in extra hours. It was lucky that thinking too much was a flat-rate affair.

The song ended, Aoi straightened. She was afraid for one very real moment that she was about to be found out - but then the next song started. No. Not the next. The same. Oh. Oh Sol above did she know this mood well. She had lived it, breathed it. Fuck, spent half her formative years in it. One song, on repeat, until it drove everyone around her insane. But it was her song. A cry for help, an expression of joy, an overwhelming, unspeakable need to simply do. To simply fucking be. To tell the world off just to exist in that moment. A defiant cry to a world uncaring, like standing atop a roof with shitty coffee at three in the morning, or cruising across a bridge as the sun rose across the bay. Those beautiful, unspeakable moments crystallised in a single sound.

Mother Lua above, did she understand.

The song crescendoed. It rose, it climbed, until it found its peak. Suddenly, what had been a groovy, bassy beat added a layer she had not expected - saxophone. Above the synths, above the vocals, a sax played. The mixing was done in such a way that stole her breath, where the artist’s breaths could be heard clearly and the valves on the sax echoed through the music. It was raw. It was primal. It was so beautifully pure that she knew, in that very moment, that she had stumbled into a new favourite song.

Aoi did not approach. She did not creep closer to interrupt his moment. Her mind flew back to all those days when she, too, had wallowed in this strangeness, this musically-addled headspace where few dared to tread. At least, she had never met anyone who understood the power of the moment. No one who could truly comprehend those days. Instead, Aoi tore herself away from the scene and scurried off to Arthur’s office. He would forgive her. Just once.

More than once, Aoi had made coffee for the Hex as a way to mend bridges and try to keep everyone cohesive. It was amazing how breaking bread, sharing a meal, or even a drink, could bring people together. One of her life hacks - no one could really be mad on a full stomach. Arthur’s office contained the few ingredients she needed to throw her plan in motion. She herself was a french vanilla girl; sure it was sweet but so was she and sometimes a toothache was worth the price of admission. Her order was easy. Simple. What she intended to make for the frosty giant parked in her space was not.

Lettie was a particular person. She liked things her way and not much else would do. It led to headaches and friction, it frustrated the ding-dong shit out of Amir and Arthur (and Aoi herself but she would never truly admit (aloud) why Lettie pissed her off), but it also made Lettie easier to work with. Follow Lettie’s rules and there would be no problem. She was no different with her coffee.

Dark roast espresso. Espresso, with an S, not an X, like Amir liked to say. Drove Lettie absolutely batty. Maybe that’s why he did it… huh. Brown sugar. Took a whack or two to knock enough loose for the drink but given where - when - they were, understandable. At least there was nothing scuttling around in the sugar. This time. Eugh. A stir stick, which were starting to run out. Another thing to add to the ‘to-do’ list. Aoi whipped the espresso with the sugar until its consistency thickened then, still stirring, allowed the rest of the mug to fill. Her mug was one that she had found out on a mission. ‘Baszódjon meg aki hozzám szól mielőtt megiszom az első kávémat’ had been written down the side in the national language of this Sol-forsaken country. The mug was decorated with flowers and bees and she found it rather cute. The one she chose for Frost? Simple, black, undecorated. Slightly larger than hers.

Coffees made, Aoi slipped from the office. As she approached, she gathered herself up as best as she could. On one hand, this was her wheelhouse. Reaching out to those who needed a hand, to those who others avoided, to try to build bridges. On the other hand, she had seen what Frost was capable of. And he still had his gun on his waist while she had two coffees and a winning smile.

This time, she did not creep. She did not sneak. Aoi strode towards the sliding glass doors with purpose and intent. They slid back, revealing Frost still grooving away in his own little world. Her lips parted into a smile but she swallowed it as fast as she could. Cute? Was this cute? Did she find a man, battered, scarred, angry at existence, possibly mute, cute? Maybe. A bit. If pressed. His body swayed back and forth with the beat, head nodding away in time. More than once, he stopped to drum against the bike’s seat or manifold.

Okay. Yep. Cute. Executive decision made.

Aoi cleared her throat while stepping forward, startling Frost so badly that he reached for his gun while swivelling on the rolling stool. He froze, staring at her. She froze, staring at him. Slowly, tentatively, Aoi lifted the two mugs. Both steamed in the chilly night air flowing in from under the parkade’s steel garage door on the far end of the lot.

“Brought you something,” she offered sweetly. A nod towards the jury-rigged sound system, somehow interfacing with a glassy, smooth piece of tech that she could not have imagined. It looked so futuristic it hurt her head. It would have been completely see through if not for the specially polarised glass on the back, blocking vision.

Frost said nothing though stared her down. His irises were a brilliant, piercing white that luminesced in the low light. His beard, thick, rugged, unkempt, and untamed, streaked with the same silver as his hair. A hawkish nose, bent at the tip, had clearly been broken more than once; the bridge was a bit out of whack as well. But beneath all the grit and grime, the grease stains painted across his features from wiping his brow, nose, and cheeks, beneath the big beard, Aoi could see something else. An animal, beaten, battered, bruised. Not the monster Amélie purported he was, no. Something very, very human.

“Here,” she stepped up, using her foot to drag one of the other rolling stools over to take a seat. “Made this. For you.”

Tentative hands reached forth, leaving his hand cannon at his waist. Instead, he accepted the coffee. A peace offering. After staring at the drink for long enough that Aoi considered quipping that it was not, in fact, poisoned, Frost took a sip. His gaze never really left her face. Piercing. Searching. Why, it asked her. Why go to this trouble?

“I uh. Didn’t mean to interrupt,” she mumbled, taking a sip of her own coffee - and promptly burning her tongue. A huff, a puff; his hand reached out, a chilling wave rolling off his form. Even his hands were battered and bruised, with grit and grime beneath his nails. Definitely not a pretty boy, Frost preferred his life hands-on. Aoi tried sipping again. This time, the temperature was perfect. “... thanks.”

He did not reply aloud. His head bowed slightly and that was enough. His hair had once been, by the looks of it, a fauxhawk. Or something similar enough. Spiked up in the middle or the front, now just a bit too long to stand on its own. After taking another sip and running his hand through his hair, he did something that Aoi never would have expected.

“Un cafecito,” Frost mumbled. His voice was low, chilling, and gravelly. The sound of a glacier shifting into a meltwater valley, a shingle beach learning to speak. Now that - that did something for her.

“Yeah,” Aoi smiled earnestly. “Lettie likes two kinds of coffee. Black as her soul, or this. Sweet and strong. I’ll never assume someone likes black coffee so. I hope you enjoy?”

“Mmh. Buen,” he nodded. “Isso é bom.”

A minute of silence ticked away, enough for Aoi to end up infected by Frost’s earworm. “I love this song,” she mused quietly. “It feels so… floaty. It feels comfy. Who’s it by?”

Once more, Frost looked up. There was wariness in those tired eyes. The wariness of an animal that had been kicked more than once. “Experiments in Beautiful Thinking,” he replied. His accent was nigh-on impenetrable, somewhere between Latin and Germanic and so thick that Aoi had to focus to understand him. Still, his voice made that relatively easy to do.

“I love it,” Aoi repeated, emphasising her thoughts. Another sip. “I know this feeling pretty well. Promise I won’t tell anyone.” The wave of relief in Frost’s body was visible; his shoulders relaxed, his posture slumped, his eyes lost some of their edge. Yep, bingo. Aoi had hit the nail on the head. “For what it’s worth? I know this mood exactly. Hundred percent. Been here, done that. Pulled my bike apart on a whim because my brain wouldn’t shut up.”

Frost laughed. Low, deep, rumbling. Earnest. “Worst mood for life. Best mood for work.”

“It really is,” Aoi sighed, spinning back and forth on her stool. “... I know that this mood is kinda all over the place. I can go, if you want, and we can pretend this never happened. Or, if you want company, I can hang out for a bit? Help with whatever you’re doing?”

Another sip from his coffee. Frost seemed to be mulling it over but Aoi knew that now was a good moment to force him to act just a bit faster than he wanted to. Since he had not been a bastard yet, that meant that she was inches away from getting through to him.

“What’s it gonna be, Frost?”

“Dominic,” he replied after a moment.

“Hmm?” Internally, Aoi cheered.

“Yo soy Dominic. La perra es Amélie. You’re Aoi. Y, soy Dominic. Dom. If you like that more.” Unpolished. Unpracticed. Rough. Sol above she loved that accent.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dom,” Aoi grinned a bright, playful grin. Hook, line, and sinker. “Want some help?”

Dom sipped at his coffee, eyeing Aoi over the rim. She clasped her mug in both hands, silvery biosteel claws tip-tapping on the ceramic. So visibly was she excited that even his frozen, flinty heart could not turn her away. With a heavy sigh, Dom shoved his stool a half-metre to the side, offering her room to scoot forth.

Never had an invitation set Aoi’s heart fluttering so quickly. Good music, company, and something to take her mind off the miserable mood that hung over Höllvania like the fucking plague. Sometimes searching for answers in the bright daylight was a useless affair. Sometimes, answers were shy. They were quiet. They did not wish to be known. Sometimes, as Aoi had long since learned, the best place to look was in the sundown.

Chapter Text

Another day, another battle. Another slog through Techrot and Scaldra forces, slaying one and ducking the other in the desperate hopes of finding some way to break from the loop, some way to escape in incoming destruction. The nuke would go off. They knew it. They had seen it. One by one, the Hex had died glorious deaths to try to stop the inevitable. And yet, the inevitable came. As surely as the sun rose, the inevitable would creep inexorably closer. Step by step. They knew, in their souls, they had one foot in the grave.

It was thoughts like these that kept Aoi up at night, staring at her ceiling. The difficulty of keeping everyone up and together when she herself struggled to stay above water was unspeakable. Unbreathing in the times she was dragged under, fighting for her very life. But she knew, in the same untaken breath, that there was no escape either. Were they to fail, the timeline would be reset. Only now, today, she was aware of it. Those blissful days ago, when the bomb simply dropped at the stroke of midnight... well, she'd died how many deaths now?

With sleep a great many hours off and no end to her torment in sight, the young Hex gave up. Deep breath, hand dragged down her face, she forced herself up from her bed and stumbled over to her nightstand. A pair of flannel pants, some slippers, tank top and hoodie. Enough to stave off the bite of the Höllvanian winter but not much more. Not that she minded the cold too much, anymore. Not with the Techrot wriggling in her veins and the armoured plates she'd grown up her jaw, down her neck, and over the back of her head. They looked like plastic, or some sort of futuristic metal. They felt much the same, but they were attached. Permanently. Parts of her body that were not but machine, now. But they protected from the cold and tonight would not have been the first night she'd passed out in the parkade. Sol only knew how many times she had truly fallen asleep there. Maybe that was the weight on her shoulders; the infinite infinities pressing down on her, the heft of her failures.

A hand to cover a yawn, staying semi-polite despite no one around, and she meandered 'round the bombed-out mall to find her way to the 'garage'. More than once she stopped to admire the greenery still struggling to grow in planters long-forgotten. Eleanor insisted they stay alive; a splash of life to brighten a day.

Tired footsteps carried her across grimy tile as she passed through the disused and long-since abandoned food court. High above, glass panes had been knocked out of the skylight and left a windy chill to whip through the empty space. She could imagine, only a year prior, what it must have looked like. The people milling about, laughing, cheering. Here and there, faded On-Lyne posters still dotted the walls, the boy band's stares seeming to follow her. How creepy they looked, in this context.

Past one of the large staircases, slowly approaching Arthur's office. He was, hopefully, in bed. Yet as she approached the walkway to the parkade, something caused her to stutter. A sound passed softly through the sliding glass doors and a figure lay beyond the frosted glass. Immediately she reached for a gun she did not have. The figure seemed hunched over and unawares so, playing to the Devil's hand, she summoned her magnetic abilities and prepared to strike.

Careful steps until the doors slid silently open, hands lifted to strike and- she froze in place. The sound she had heard was not a burglar or their hideout being discovered, it was instead a silent, frozen behemoth from the far future.

He had his back to her, shirtless despite the cold. Perhaps Frost's name was not simply a cute nickname for his icy prowess. His Warframe, a piece of kit she had seen peeled back exactly once, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he wore a pair of overalls, tied 'round his waist. His work station? One of the Atomicycles, half-disassembled before him. Parts lay strewn about, some new, some old, some damaged beyond repair. A vast, painterly watercolour tattoo stretched across his broad back and wide abdomen; a snow leopard from ancient Terra, cut, slashed, and bisected by dozens of scars from a life hard won. Aoi's jaw near fell out her face as she stared, dumbfounded, at the scene before her.

The soldier was sharp, dangerously so. Yet he had not heard her approach in this, the crotch of the morning, for one simple reason. A reason she knew all too well, having spent more than a few nights doing the exact same thing.

A melody poured forth from a jury-rigged sound system, beat slow yet strangely uplifting. With no better words to describe it, Aoi could only say that the music sounded like how it felt to be high, floating on a cloud of couldn't care less. And as Frost worked, as he pulled pieces from the Tommy, he moved. Slowly, undulating, head bobbing along with the beat. Every now and then he'd stop mid-thought and drum a beat against the bike's seat, avoiding metallic parts to keep the noise down.

How badly she wanted to step forth and break the reverie. For weeks now, she had fought alongside the soldier, seen him in action. He, too, had died a death here, before the Drifters had unfucked the timeline enough to give them some room to work. Of the two 'Frames from his timeline, he was by far and a way the most difficult to understand. He never spoke, save for one nigh-silent argument with Lettie in a language that Aoi did not understand. The medical professional had ended with a stunned look on her face unlike any Aoi had seen before; whatever Frost had said had cut, and it had cut deep.

Only once had she seen him with his helm off, salt-and-pepper beard and short mohawk giving him the look of a special operator from Desert Storm with too much on not enough plate. And yet here...

His motions continued as he worked. A pause to pull a few bolts, struggling against corroded steel and loctite until finally the metal gave. It was incredibly hard to see what, exactly, he was working on with bulk in the way but truth be told... the view here wasn't too bad, either.

The song slowly crescendoed, rose, hesitated, and fell. Aoi's trance snapped and she almost bolted but stopped when the next song st- no... not the next. The same. A single tune.

On repeat, perhaps, exemplifying a mood, holding attention, keeping his head exactly where he needed it to be as he worked through whatever it was that had him down in the garage at this ungodly hour. Another mood she knew all too well. Another bite out of the layers upon layers of ice 'round the core she had sought for so long.

Amélie had said, perhaps in passing, perhaps to gloat, that she and Frost had a relationship, once. Many years ago, in another lifetime. The French-speaking Saryn was as obnoxious and toxic as they came and with how she'd slithered into Quincy's grasp, Aoi knew damn well to avoid whatever the serpent queen had planned. Lording past relationships over someone as a way to goad them made Aoi's blood boil. It was only the better part of valour that stopped her picking a fight. Not that she'd considered Frost a romantic interest per se, but puzzles intrigued her.

Yet as she watched him work, she realised that she'd been going about things all wrong. It wasn't about finding who he was and dragging it into the daylight, it wasn't about searching for the cracks and prying them open to peer inside, no. It was something else. It was finding the shadows and learning to dance through them. It was about seeking to understand the night. After biting her lip and deciding to throw herself into whatever it was before her, Aoi stepped back and silently scurried off.

Hurried steps carried her not to her bunk or to wherever the others had stretched out, but to Arthur's hideaway in the security office. Was she allowed here? No, not really. His Majesty kept his plans under wraps until the last moment, after all. But there was something in that room that she needed. A coffee machine.

The first, she made for herself. More sugar and milk than coffee, the colour a rich cream that tickled her nose. The second... she wracked her mind back to what Lettie had told her. There was only one way a 'true' hispanic would take their coffee, after all. At least, according to the bitch. Aoi thought back to the music in the shop as she toe-tapped along to the beat.

Dark-roast espresso, check. Some brown sugar, check. Not fresh but given where they were, it would have to do. Whipped with the first few drops, check. As she mixed with one of the few remaining stir sticks, she marvelled at how the coffee's consistency changed; thickened. With the drink complete, Aoi took a deep breath and flung herself at whatever came next.

The same soft steps until she reached the garage. A small smile she fought so-hard to swallow, and then up to the still daydreaming soldier. She waited a heartbeat. Then two. He was well and truly gone in his reverie and so, Aoi took initiative. Instead of simply announcing herself in a way to startle him, Aoi dropped herself onto a creeper like he'd been perched upon and scooted into his peripheral. Sure enough, he jumped. Celestial eyes flashed in her direction and she saw him do as she'd done, reaching for a gun; his was there, however.

"Easy," she smiled. "Brought you something." No words truly expressed the look in his eyes, but Aoi could still place them - blind panic. "It's okay. Secret's safe with me. I came to do the exact same thing."

Tense shoulders relaxed slightly and when she offered the drink over, he took it with tremendous trepidation. Bulky arms littered with scars caught her attention for only the briefest of moments until her gaze returned to his face.

Frost stared at his drink for countable moments, as though processing what he saw.

"Un cafecito," he murmured, eyebrow arched.

"Just for you. Consider it an olive branch. 'cause I don't think that you were keen on... all this being known."

Frost's face crisped and his brow lowered. When he didn't speak, Aoi rolled her shoulders in a shrug.

"I can go, if you want. But I know this feeling and I know that sometimes, company can be helpful."

Frost stared at her, then the drink, then back up at her. Instead of taking initiative to leave, Aoi sipped her coffee and raised an eyebrow.

"What'll it be, Frost?"

After a long moment of silence, he replied. His voice deep, almost rugged as the glaciers he commanded. "Dominic."

"Hm?"

"Yo soy Dominic. You're Aoi. La perra is Amélie. I'm Dom." English, for the first time. Rough English, unpolished English, unpracticed English. A heavy accent swinging wildly between German and Spanish. Aoi could not help but smile.

"Nice to meet you, Dom. Want some help?"

Frost took a sip from the coffee and his expression said everything; he was just as surprised that she'd made something so specific for him as he was by her appearance. Maybe there was even a smile under that scowl.

"Why not? You're here. Make yourself useful."

Sometimes, all it took was to stop looking in the daylight and wait for sundown.

Chapter Text

Arthur looked over his after-action reports, sighing heavily. Amir, Lettie, Amélie, and… Frost. Even Amélie wouldn't give the Warframe's name up, stating that it was not one she knew. He was simply Frost.

The mission had been... an on-paper success. The objective? Completed. Civilian casualties? None. But the unit's cohesion left something to be desired. Amélie had little time for Amir's high-strung antics and Frost had immediately abandoned the group to do things His Way. Neither of which engendered him to the group as a whole. Had it been efficient? Sure... there was no arguing that. But having the wrecking ball of icy individualism so utterly crush the team's morale had done exactly as it said on the tin.

From that moment on, Arthur swore that Frost was a solo operator. At worst he would send him along with Amélie as a second, or Quincy for sniper support, but no more.

Yet as he stood to leave his dingy office, a pair of glowing purple eyes stopped him.

"Yes, El?"

Her voice, spoken aloud for the first time in a great many months, caught him off guard. "We need to talk."

-----

"Heeeey Amir?" Aoi poked her head into the arcade, grin on her face.

"Hey Aoi, whatcha need?" The Volt ProtoFrame zipped from arcade to arcade, high-scoring two games at the same time in a blur of manic skill.

"I was wondering if you've got a sound system kicking around? Doesn't need to be working, just like. Fixable."

"Oh uh sure gimme a sec-" Amir's form blurred past her and to a pile of discarded electronics. Half a second later he'd gone through, and another half after he pulled a battered old set of speakers and a subwoofer from the pillar of crap. "This work?"

Aoi snatched it from his hands with a bright grin. "It's perfect. Thanks!" She spun on a heel and near darted off but Amir caught her with a question.

"Caaaaaaan I ask what it's for?"

"Nope!" She chirped in response.

"Awc'mon!" Amir whined, playing his curiosity up. "I wanna know!"

-----

Arthur stared dead-pan at Eleanor before him. His sister. His big sister, the one who was a voice of guiding light through a storm of bullshit on more than one night. The one who could, through no fault of her own, read minds and thoughts. The one who knew the distaste many of the Hex had for Frost.

"You're asking me to send Aoi and Frost out. Together. With no support."

"I am," she replied, cool as could be.

"Absolutely not. He's a threat to everyone in his vicinity at best and we work around threats, not shuffle them into the strategic deck with our greatest assets."

Eleanor stepped closer and perched herself upon Arthur's work desk, leaning forward enough to look him in the eye. "I understand fully what I'm asking, Arthur, and I promise you that it will be an enlightening experience for many."

"Risking Aoi's life for an experience isn't something I'm willing to do. I'm not putting her in bed with a monster."

"And if she chooses to be?" Eleanor's eyebrow arched, only the faintest hint of a smile playing across painted lips.

Arthur's eyes narrowed to mere slits. "What do you know?"

"Nothing I am willing to share until it's an 'I told you so'."

Exasperated, Arthur dragged a gloved hand down his face. "Fine. FINE. One mission. When it goes tits up, I blame you."

"And when it doesn't, I will dance upon your grievances as any good sibling should."

-----

"Amélie, Lettie, Amir. You three are going to hit the main Scaldra fortress in the Poludnika District. I want it raided for anything and everything useful." Arthur nodded to the trio of Warframes nearby, noting Amélie's annoyed look.

"So you expect us to assault a stronghold with... what? Hopes and prayers as support? Crossed fingers?" She snapped, viperine yellow-green eyes flaring with fury.

"No. That's where squad two comes in. Aoi. Frost. You're up. Make some noise and draw attention."

Silence fell around the table as everyone processed what had been ordered.

"Dismissed." Arthur nodded to the group. "Suit up, roll out in five."

The 'frames wandered off, murmurs and mutters heard between. Arthur could have sworn he saw Aoi's eyes light up. She had a bounce in her step. Even Frost, the second most stoic structure he'd seen - save for a piece of brutalist architecture downtown - seemed lighter, somehow. When all but Quincy and Eleanor had wandered off, the barrage was instant.

"Oi fam, what the FUCK are you thinkin'?" Quincy slammed his hands on the table. "That fuck's gonna cost Aoi her guts!"

"No, Quincy. He won't." Arthur barely believed the words himself.

"And ya can prove that?" Silence reigned supreme. "'s wot I thought. I'm goin' wif. Least I can do is make sure one of 'em makes it back."

"Quin-" Arthur began but Eleanor stepped in once more.

"Actually, that's a wonderful idea. Quincy, can you patch in so we can watch back here? Neither of us have seen Frost in action."

Quincy considered for a moment. "S'ppose I can, yea."

—--

"How's it fit?" Aoi asked, watching Frost belt the new vest into place. Helmet off, he looked almost human. Almost.

"Tight 'round the shoulders," he shifted. "It's the pack." Aoi stepped around and adjusted some of the belts to account for the cryopack he carried.

"Better?"

"Bit."

"Looks good on you," she teased as she whipped around to face him once more. "The super tacky plastic really brings your 'fit together."

How he scowled. Or, tried to. The smile fighting across his features hardly allowed him to get his game face on. "Ready?"

"Ready as you are," Aoi chirped. Today was going to be exciting. She hadn't expected to get a chance to test their dumb idea so quickly.

"This is stupid," Frost's smile refused to die even as he crammed his helmet on.

"Oh it's so stupid and I can't wait to see it work." Before Frost could slam his helm back over his face, Aoi stepped up. "Hey. You should take that off more. Maybe talk a bit? You've got a nice voice."

—--

Two Warframes, four ProtoFrames. Five bikes, one moron on foot able to keep up, one mission. Already Aoi was bobbing her head along to some unheard beat and already Amélie was in a sour mood though she struggled to place why. But as the days dragged on, she found herself with an ever-growing distaste for Aoi.

Heel down, bikes roared to life. Clutch dropped, throttle twisted and the Tommys launched towards the horizon. The six stuck together for a while, blowing through abandoned streets and bombed-out architecture. Here and there, the smouldering wreck of a car hulked out of the winter fog but it never slowed them down.

At the central plaza, the teams split. Team one, the strike team, tore towards the Scaldra stronghold. Team two pulled up short in the plaza and shut their bikes down.

Aoi dismounted and stretched, cracking her back before glancing over at her newly-minted partner in crime. "Ready to make some noise?" His voice came through her earpiece, quality tinny and a bit rough around the edges.

"Si, cabrón. Let's make some fuckin' noise."

Burston assault rifle in her hands, Aoi checked the magazine. Bullets, yep. They were there. Staff on her back, sidearm magnetically hooked to her holster. Frost checked his loadout in turn, though his gun was considerably larger. The Trumna, he had called it. Only once had she seen it in play and the thing scared her. A fully automatic street sweeper.

Far above, their shadow perched himself in a bombed-out apartment block, Neutralizer resting in his hands. "Gettin’ the feed?" Quincy questioned Arthur and Eleanor back in base.

"Loud and clear," Arthur replied. "What are they going to do...?"

Down below, Aoi bounced on the balls of her feet. Pre-fight jitters always got to her. "Ready?"

"Always."

"Shall we dance?" Aoi glanced sidelong at the icy behemoth. She could almost see the smile playing across his lips, restrained, contained, and forced down.

"Been a while since I Chacarera."

Aoi stepped over.

Frost raised a hand to engage the vest he and Aoi had thrown together. To say it was a dumb idea was such an extraordinary understatement that the true breadth of their hubris defied classification. As Dominic fiddled with the shoddy electronics to get the thing working, Aoi stepped behind and pulled a tall, rubber-coated antenna from Dom's side and screwed it into the radio. Seconds later, all hell broke loose.

For Aoi and Dom, the effect was muted. They had built the system to only play with, not against, their systems. For Quincy in his perch nearby, his headset was suddenly filled with music.

"What the bloody-?" Arthur's voice came through the set on Quincy's channel. "Is that THEM!?"

"Aye bruv," Quincy narrowed his eyes at the pair far below. "They got some kinda pack built. Not glassed it before."

"And it... plays music."

"Seems like."

"Why?"

The answer came not from Quincy, nor the pair of idiots far below, but from a sudden outburst of Scaldra chatter across every available airwave. It seemed that the pack had some punch and some impressive range. Within moments, calls were going out to track the signal and shut it up as the horrible, electronic noise was burning circuits and ear drums across the entirety of the Scaldra communication network.

Before Quincy's eyes, the Grand Plan began to unfold.

Aoi had started off toe-tapping along to the funky, electronic beat. Even Dom, despite his best efforts, was swaying back and forth and nodding his head. The music grew in tempo and power, a lantern to the Scaldra flies buzzing 'round the corpse of Höllvania.

When the first shots rang out, both Aoi and Dom reacted in a heartbeat. Guns up, heads on a swivel, they returned fire. Dom charged ahead towards the barricade and the rapidly-unloading armoured personnel carrier, dropping to a knee while summoning a vast barrier of ice before him at about shoulder height. His arm drove into the ice and he heft it up, a makeshift ballistic shield to shoot over.

Scaldra shots rang out across the square, ricocheting off the icy barricade, while Aoi bounced along behind, rifle shouldered and spewing lead downrange. The first few shots caught Scaldra armour; the next burst ripped through flesh and bone, cleaving skull and brain matter in a spray of gore. And still, she danced. Back and forth behind her bodyguard, tapping his shoulder with a hand to cause him to pivot and twist the barrier, keeping the pair of them safe even as heavier weaponry was brought to the fore.

"Shut it down!" the Scaldra chatter leaked through the airwaves here and there. Every time it did, Dom would turn the power up a notch. On his back, the reactor hooked into his Warframe's suit hummed along with the rolling, bouncy beat.

As the ice wall slowly gave way, Aoi pivoted. Her rifle fell to her side, hung on the strap, and she raised her hands before her. A bubble of magnetic energy soon enveloped Dom and he dropped the shield entirely, shouldering his own gargantuan heavy machine gun. The hail of incoming Scaldra fire caught in the bubble and began orbiting him as he sprinted towards the Scaldra; a wrecking ball of red-hot lead, white-hot fury, and icy cool calm. Once he was in range, wading into the Scaldra's lines, Aoi released the magnetic energy and sent bullets flying in every direction. A cascade of explosions ripped from Dom's frame and utterly shredded the Scaldra lines.

"Incoming, north!" Aoi shouted over the din, still bouncing along to the music. Dom whirled about-face once more and charged along behind her. This time, he summoned a massive block of ice, spiked on the far side, in front of Aoi. She sprinted up and, charging herself with as much kinetic energy as she could, she spun to drive her foot into the block. It launched across the plaza as though fired from a rail gun and slammed into the incoming forces, exploding in a diamond storm of icy splinters.

"Oh that's COOL!" she laughed; a fist-bump from her other half confirmed.

"Of course it’s cool," Dom grinned. "It’s ice."

"Oh Sol," Aoi rolled her eyes though the grin would not disappear.

The crack of a bullet whizzing past her head wrenched her back to the moment. Another wall of ice formed around the pair and again, they advanced upon the Scaldra forces trying to box them in. The Plaza of Victory, once a calm, snow-covered area of remembrance, was soon to be painted red and sickly, putrid green with Scaldra gore.

The mobile machine gun nest pivoted around the plaza, spraying bullets in every direction. There was no way the Scaldra could sustain such losses and they both knew it; they only had to hold out for a while longer and the assault would break. Or, the battery pack would drain and they'd be forced to fight like adults.

Still, for those beautiful minutes, the fog of war lifted entirely into something else. A song, a dance, a game. As the beat grew to another crescendo, Dom glanced over to Aoi. It was time.

Without hesitation, Aoi swung her hands up and created a massive magnetic pulse across the plaza, enough to cause magazines to jam and electronics to short. The next swing, from her heels to the sky, grabbed Dom and flung him skyward.

Up he flew, careening into the air, a quarter-ton of icy fury, heavy weaponry, and stoic energy. At the peak of his flight he paused and twisted around so his feet were beneath him while summon all of the water in the atmosphere for a grand finale.

The bass dropped and so too did he, slamming the ground while riding an ice sheet large enough to topple several nearby buildings atop the Scaldra that had avoided the initial impact.

Dom swung back around to face Aoi, foot up on a chunk of ice, and he threw his arms wide. Were they in a fantasy, confetti, flames, and fanfare would have erupted out from behind him. There were no more shots, there were no more reinforcements. They had won.

-----

"What. The. Fuck." Arthur stared at the CRT monitors before him, unable to process what he had seen.

Chapter Text

Brake lights on, throttles blipped, downshift. A trio of Atomicycles ripped into the underground parkade under the Höllvania Central Mall, coming to rest near the entrance to the building proper. One by one, the trio kicked their stands down while Amir ran a short lap to cool off from his sprint. At least the jitters had worked their way out of his system.

Saryn was the last to pull in, parking her bike unnecessarily close to the mechanic working nearby. Her eyes narrowed to slits beneath her helm as she stared holes into the back of Aoi's head, unsure of why exactly the loathing she felt was growing so much stronger every day. Teeth grit as she wrenched her helm off, discarding one skin for another.

Amir, Quincy, and Eleanor all gave Aoi a small nod and greeting as they passed, politely asking how long it would be until she was free, how the day had gone. Pleasantries that helped keep a group together. Amélie offered none. Instead, she waited until the trio of Hex had wandered their way inside before she stepped 'round Aoi's frame and into her line of sight.

Aoi's eyes cast up at the lithe Warframe before her and they hardened a heartbeat later. Seemed the feeling was mutual. "Amélie," Aoi's tone was cool and calm. Frigid, even.

"Aoi, love." Amélie played the chill in the air off as only she could. A few steps carried her to one of the woman's workbenches and upon it she leaned, staring down at the magnetic Hex through her viciously viperine hues.

"Don't," Aoi began, though caught herself quickly thereafter. "How can I help you?"

"I don't think you could. Just wanted to have a word, I suppose. To clear the air...?" Amélie searched for words, rolling her gaze this way and that. A second later, her eyes tracked back to the sound system that Aoi was listening to. Jammed into a mount that did not suit it, wired in a way that was borderline dangerous, was something that caused Amélie's blood to boil.

A comm system. A comm system she recognised well and knew like the back of her hand. It was not hers, though the make was nigh-identical. A small, sleek tablet fit for a pocket, loaded with more computing power than the entire city of Höllvania even with the Techrot squirming about in every spare circuit. Aoi followed Amélie's stare to the speakers and cocked an eyebrow curiously.

"What's that?" Amélie demanded.

"... my music?"

"No you twat, I mean- Frost gave you his comm?"

"Yeah? I like his music and he's out on a run right now so he lent it to me. Now can I help you with something or are you going to get out of my shop?"

Amélie's stare snapped back and it took every ounce of her strength not to sneer. "You shouldn't get in bed with monsters," she spat, venomous.

Aoi's gaze stayed rock steady and laser-focused on Amélie. "I've only seen one monster around here and it's definitely not the guy who's kept me alive on a couple missions."

"You're expendable to him," the woman's tone dropped a few tones, a hushed, vicious whisper through tall grass. Poised to strike. "I've seen him use us as bait in a trap. I've seen him butcher surrendered enemies. I've seen him slaughter and revel in it, coming back so bloodsoaked that he reeked for weeks. You have no idea what you're dealing with, putain. You're dancing with the devil."

Aoi hesitated for countable moments, though her gaze never wavered. Instead, she leaned back from the Atomicycle and planted her palms against the creeper upon which she sat. Her tone was measured, level; colder than the monster they spoke of. "And if I choose to dance with the devil? Who are you to tell me who I should or shouldn't speak to?"

Indescribable was the feeling deep in Amélie's chest. Fury. Rage. Hatred. None boiled to the surface save in her eyes, which flared repeatedly. How quickly, how easily, she could choke this magnetic ProtoFrame out. A breath of sarin, a touch of plague. It would've been the Techrot. Such an easy out. "Then you'd be a fool," she replied coolly.

"Call me a fool, then." Aoi shrugged. "You should go."

"Wh-"

"I said. You should go. I'm busy and I have things to do and you're all red in the face. Mission take a lot outta you?" Aoi had returned to the bike before her, wrench to socket, socket to bolt.

"I'm not finish-" Saryn began but Aoi cut her off.

"I am. And if you're going to come in here to shit-talk Dom to my face, you'd better have more than empty threats to back it up."

Saryn's face froze, eyes widened. "C'était quoi, ça?"

"Me?" Aoi looked up once more, crackles of magnetic energy starting to flicker around the edge of her vision.

Silence hung heavy in the air as Saryn stared death at Aoi. How easily, how carelessly, she had thrown the bait onto the hook. It was a game. It had to be a game. A game Saryn refused to lose, a game she refused to give ground on. There was simply no way that this child had broken through the icy exterior that she had spent years to crack, let alone get through.

Saryn opened her mouth to speak but another voice cut her off, powerful, pounding straight into her mind. ‘Amélie,’ Eleanor's voice echoed through her skull. ‘Perhaps you should go inside.’ The toxic 'frame whipped 'round to face the approaching Hex, lips parting to speak but the imperious stare and blazing purple eyes she faced caused her to balk. Stiffly, Saryn turned to give Aoi the fakest of smiles and marched inside the mall, a waft of toxin in her wake. Both Eleanor and Aoi watched her go, though Aoi's gaze soon turned to Eleanor.

"Was she thinking that loud?" Aoi questioned, head tilting to one side.

‘She was,’ Eleanor's voice appeared in her mind. ‘I'll be speaking to Arthur about that. Are you okay?’

"I'm fine. Squicked, but fine." Aoi reached for a rag and wiped her hands dry. "What's her damage?"

‘Mm…’ Eleanor considered, at long length, what she should reveal from the altercation. After a moment she spoke, tone dropped and gentle. ‘She views Frost as property. And you're stealing from her.’

"... okay but she's fucking Quincy," Aoi pointed out rather bluntly.

‘Yes,’ Eleanor replied simply. ‘And she views Frost as hers as well. Not that she wants him... she simply wants no one else to have him.’

Aoi chewed on her lip in thought. "That's... actually really gross."

‘A little bit,’ came the agreement. After a heartbeat, Eleanor added. ‘Don't let her dissuade you. What the two of you performed a few days ago, that was a sight to behold. You're a good team. And finding someone who works with Frost, not against him, is going to be key in the upcoming weeks.’

"Yeah I gu- waityouSAWTHAT?" Aoi's voice jumped an octave or three. Her face darkened significantly though there was a smile fighting to burst across her visage.

Eleanor turned back to face Aoi, her own smile wide, earnest, and heartfelt. 'I did. Arthur and Quincy were worried, so... you had a shadow. No one is worried anymore.’ A pause. ‘Though if you play that noise any louder, you might just drive the Techrot back into whatever hell it crawled out of.’

Aoi laughed brightly. "HAH! I'll keep that in mind. Maybe we'll turn it into a weapon. Bet we could do that... maybe hook a bunch of amps and speakers up to some kinda mobile platform. Bet we could steal one of those tanks..."

‘Oh Sol you're considering it,’ Eleanor slapped a palm to her face.

"Considering it? I'm planning it!" Aoi rocked side to side, bobbing her head to the beat still playing from her gifted sound system. "And El? Thanks for breaking that up. I didn't really wanna fight her. Even with all my tools to beat a bitch stupid."

Chapter Text

Conventional wisdom would always state that if someone said things one fundamentally didn't agree with, didn't believe, or didn't trust, that one must either cast them from their mind and banish them into the deepest recesses of thought, or go to whatever lengths one deemed necessary to prove or disprove the claim so long as the truth was found. After all, just because someone said something hardly meant that it was true, nor that one should dwell. But the simplicity of this response rarely, if ever, accounted for the endeavour of quashing the seeds of doubt as they sprouted. One could, of course, refuse to water the seeds; but they were still there.

Aoi mulled over Saryn's words as she picked and combed through yet another apartment block, careful to watch her step around crumbling architecture. Behind her, Frost swept rooms and checked corners to make sure that she hadn't missed anything. Teamwork.

On this chilly morning in the first throes of spring, the pair had been assigned to check a sector that had been recently hit by a Scaldra attack looking to root out 'dissidents'. Such a sterile word for what Viktor and his thugs were truly after. The people of Höllvania were finally biting back, tired of being treated as the steel between a particularly angry hammer and an unbreaking anvil, to be beaten into whatever shape best suited Viktor's delusions of grandeur.

Through another shattered doorway then into a bleak, concrete hallway. Aoi's eyes cast this way and that, searching for anything that would have made this trip worthwhile. Fuel for generators was always in need. Medical supplies abandoned by Scaldra. The ability to kill off another Techrot nest before it got out of hand. Anything.

But her mind wasn't in the game, either. She kept thinking back to what Saryn had said about Frost. When their search put the pair into the central courtyard, Aoi paused long enough to step to one of the rusted railings and lean upon it. Höllvania hadn't been in great shape before the plague, let alone after. In these quiet moments, she could not help but imagine what life must have been like.

When Frost stepped up to peer over the gap in kind, Aoi turned to observe his helmeted visage. The singular horn centered and sprouting from his face gave him a distinctly insectoid appearance, helped by the sextet of blinking, eye-like sensors before his eyes.

"Hey, Dom?" She spoke softly, unsure if broaching the subject would be a good idea or not.

Frost leaned back against one of the pillars supporting the floor above and let his rifle fall to his side. Patience was his ace and he had it in spades.

"I-... I had an encounter with Amélie a day or two back. Was wondering if I could ask you about some of the shit she said?"

The Warframe before her paused and soon, made to pull his helm free. As Dom's face left its protective shell, he spoke in a tired tone. "Sí, ask."

"First I wanna say that I don't believe her," Aoi backpedalled almost immediately. "But I... I need to know why she said what she did. Why she is who she is. Like, it's. Nasty? She's nasty."

Dominic barked a short laugh, head falling back against the concrete behind him for a brief moment until he could hold it high once more. "La perra lives up to her name, sí."

A deep breath in to steady herself and she launched into it. "There was three things. Really four but it was Eleanor who told me the fourth and that's the one that... I mean they all bug me." Aoi kicked a foot against the wrought iron she leaned upon, toe making contact before bouncing back. Her modified trainers did little to dampen the blow but she also didn't mind the sting.

"That bad?" Dom, deadpan, guessed.

"Not great," Aoi admitted. "She said that you used them as bait, before. In a combat situation."

Here, Frost's shoulders hitched and a faint smile graced his lips. "Ay, she's still mad?"

"So... you did?"

"Sí, but no. Not how she tells it. Our command and control, she does things one way. Her way. And she doesn't see all. No one can. But her orders, they are órdenes de dios."

"... meaning?"

"-- ah, cierto. Meaning no one argues. No one is allowed to disobey. They are forced to. They can't disobey. They were..." He paused, groping about for words. "They were programmed to listen. I wasn't."

Aoi nodded slowly, pensively, as she processed. "So they physically can't disobey your boss?" Hard to believe but so too was the fact that she could throw cars around with magnetic powers generated from somewhere between realities.

"Sí, they can't. It hurts them."

"They can't disobey orders because it causes them physical pain?" Aoi sounded incredulous.

"Sí," Dom agreed. "I'm not like them. I'm older. 'Defective'. I have free will. So I can disobey. I can act as I need to."

Aoi chewed her cheek in thought, pulling her gaze from Dom's face to watch the snow falling through the open courtyard. "That doesn't explain..."

"They were cornered. There was only one way out and it was against orders to take it. So, they couldn't. The way they needed to go, they weren't allowed. The other was back through an army. I used the choke to funnel as much of the enemy through as I could and then blew it to hell. With the ship going critical, our C&C had to let them go out the safe way. Because it was the only way left. So she did… and blamed me for using the group as bait instead of admit she made a mistake."

Aoi processed, trying to put the pieces in place. "So they were bait, but not because you wanted them to be. You just used them as bait to do as much damage... why wouldn't your C&C let them escape the safe way?"

"Was against the mission. It would have been retreating. We had bad intel and no matter how good we are, we can't fight an army with five. The entire ship was on high alert and the target was on it, yes, but pff." Dom dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. "They were dead. I would have lived because I knew that hell was coming and I won't die for a dumb cause."

Aoi nodded slowly, her face crisping. "Sounds like you're surrounded by assholes."

"Some days, sí. But sometimes you need to make hard decisions. Our C&C is supposed to make those to protect people." Dom pushed off from the concrete pillar. His helm hung from his belt, replaced by his Trumna rifle in his hands. "Vamos. Walk and talk."

A moment later, Aoi shoved off her metallic perch to follow along behind. The quiet in the courtyard made her uncomfortable though she could hardly explain why. "She also said that you killed prisoners in cold blood."

Here, Dom barked a laugh. His icy exterior seemed to barricade itself in yet more layers. "Some don't deserve trials. Kill one, you're a murderer. Kill ten, you're a mass-murderer. Kill a hundred, you're a soldier. Kill ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million... where do you say that a life no longer needs to be allowed to continue?" Frost's queerly philosophical question left Aoi floundering.

"I-... but if you make that choice, you're no better, right? Like, a trial, a judge, a jury, all of that? That matters. It has to matter."

"I like to dream too. Of not fighting these wars. But how many Scaldra have you killed? People with lives. Families. Goals and dreams." Frost's gaze flicked back, crystalline white hues boring into hers. "Would they give you a trial?"

"... no, but they're the bad guys," Aoi tried to find her footing, to counter what Frost had said.

"To you. To them, they are the heroes. And you're the monster."

Aoi fell silent, kicking at a piece of loose rubble. It was hard to argue when she knew he was speaking sense, at least in that regard.

"I kill no civilians. I kill no one out of uniform. I am a monster hunting monsters. Maybe it shouldn't be my choice who lives and dies. Maybe it should be a court, or a higher being. Sol, Luna. Your gods. Ah Puch, Cizin. My gods. But until Luna or Cizin step up to stop me, I am that voice. I know what is wrong and right. I know that a warlord who sells his people to debt slavery and harvests their organs for money doesn't deserve a trial. He deserves a bullet."

Aoi cringed slightly at the depictions and desecrations of Sol and Luna, but she could not help but agree with Frost's thought process. Harsh as it was. "I hope I never have to make that choice," she murmured.

"You do. Every day. When you pull the trigger." Frost pointed out. He rounded a corner in the courtyard and peered up, through the hole in the battered apartment block. "You also make the choice to save lives - every time you shoot."

Aoi chewed her lip again as she considered his words carefully. "The last thing she said is that you revelled in bloodshed."

Here, Dom glanced back and shrugged. "I don't."

"Said you came back to base completely soaked in blood, once. Stank for weeks."

Countable seconds passed before Dom's face broke into a grin and he chuckled. "Oh. That. Sí, that happened. I blew up a cloning lab. Long story. Got drowned in guts and gore and whatever cagar they've got in those tubes. Took months to clean up. Came back looking like Amélie after a night on the town. Such a mess."

Aoi allowed herself a smile at the very sudden tonal shift. Not a horror story in the sense she was concerned about, just a horror story in the conventional laugh-at-your-friends sense. "That's so much better than I thought," Aoi chuckled, hop-skipping to come astride the silvery blue-white 'frame. “Still gross though. And I want the full story someday.”

Only one question left to field. "So... why does she hate you so badly? Why does she want to... be in control of you?"

Dom's expression snapped shut and his body language closed off entirely. At the next door, when it didn't budge, he simply put his shoulder to it and burst through.

"Because all are her toys. She doesn't care about anyone but herself. She is-"

"Empty," Aoi breathed. "Like Entrati. Consumes whatever she touches, tosses it away when she's done?"

"Efectivamente. But she doesn't know it. I don't think. She can love deep. She can love true. But she is a monster, too. She needs more. Always more. More and more and more. And when there is no more, she gets bored? Moves on. But if she can't have..."

"... no one can." Aoi's tone dropped further, bitter and resentful. "And she 'had' you, once."

Frost nodded his head, slowly. "I was lonely." Simple.

"She spent a lot of time and energy on you, didn't she?" Aoi guessed, though the conversation was rapidly turning sour in her mouth.

"A lot, maybe. To her. To me, not much. She wanted all, all the time. Fast. When I wouldn't give her what she demanded, she got nasty. When I finally kicked her out, she was happier. But hateful. Hurtful. Was good I never gave her any rope - she would have hanged me."

"And now she hates me because we are getting along."

"Sí. She can't intimidate you. You don't fear her. She can't bully you, or beat you down. So she hates. And she wants to destroy."

Aoi considered her next words for a long time, even as her eyes scanned over the ruins of the building they were in. "Do you think there's good in her?"

"I do. But it takes the right person to bring it out. She has that person back where we're from. They mellow each other out. But here?" Frost finished with a scoff.

Another slow nod, Aoi considering her words and her stance carefully. Arguing that even monsters deserved a trial in one breath and then condemning Saryn in the next felt unfair, but it was considerably easier when one of them was a nebulous feeling while the other was a bitch right in her face, looking to hurt her actively and deeply. Aoi vowed to never give Saryn an inch as she knew deep in her heart that Saryn would use anything and everything at her disposal to do as much damage as she could.

"I'll avoid her," she finally said aloud.

"Smart," Frost replied. Another few paces before he froze, holding a hand up, fist balled. Aoi froze in place as well, straining to pick out what Frost had seen - or heard. Under the gentle, whistling wind, another sound had emerged. A soft, quiet whimpering.

The time between realising what they had heard and tracking it down was mere seconds; Frost battered another locked door with all his might, causing the rotting woodwork to explode in a shower of splinters. Sure enough, a startled shriek met their ears.

Aoi darted past Frost's frame and cast her eyes about. Nearby, a wall had been blown in and collapsed atop what appeared to be a woman. Next to her, a young boy, wide-eyed and terrified, curled into a little ball. The blanket he had wrapped around himself and his mother was ratty but it was the only thing fighting the winter chill off. Tears trailed down his face as he stared at the two heavily armoured and armed soldiers suddenly breaking down what remained of his security.

"Grab him," Dom ordered as he quickly stepped to the woman under the rubble. Even without his helm on, he could tell that the buried woman was in very, very rough shape. "Con viva. Barely. Call it in. We'll get them out."

Aoi nodded shortly and grabbed her radio, calling back to Lettie. "Lettie, we've got two civilians. Young boy and his mother. Looks like a wall collapsed onto her, Dom's going to get her ready for transport."

After a crackle of static, Lettie replied. "Copy Aoi, my hands are full right now; you've gotta bring them back yourself."

"Understood," Aoi glanced at Dominic and nodded. "Can you move her?" The young boy stared from Aoi to Dom and back again, still hiding in the remains of his blanket.

"Sí. Carefully." Already he had started pulling brickwork and mortar off the woman's frame. As soon as she was uncovered enough to be lifted, Dom did so; one arm cradled the emaciated, battered body while the other drew his sidearm. "Lead."

"C'mon little guy," Aoi knelt at the young boy. "We're going to get you somewhere safe, okay? Are you okay? Hurting?" He shook his head no so Aoi offered her arms to him. Hesitant and knowing nothing but the past year of hell, the boy was afraid, at first; when Aoi nodded over to Dom scooping his mother off the ground, he acquiesced and scooted into Aoi's arms.

"It's going to be a bit of a walk, okay?" Aoi cooed, lifting her package with the utmost care. "But you're safe. You're safe now. I'll take care of you." Her gaze never left Dom's face.

Chapter Text

Every soldier, every fighter, every human being stuck in an impossible situation far larger than themselves woke with nightmares. It was a simple fact of life. Sometimes the nightmares came quickly. Sometimes they bided their time, waiting for the right moment to strike. Waiting for the moment when one's defenses were lowest.

Aoi had struggled with nightmares ever since her first combat deployment. By now, they did not jolt her awake. She swam up from sleep in long, lazy loops, fighting down the shadows and demons as she went. In the morning, she would smile, pretend everything was okay, and carry on with her life. Such was the cycle. Unfortunately, not all of the Hex had things so easy. Not all had years of combat experience under their belt. And as Aoi sat up in her bed, calming her heart and forcing herself to take deep breaths, she heard a scream echo through the mall.

Amir. That poor kid... he was, after all, a kid by most estimations. Mid twenties, though age hardly mattered at this point in time. What Aoi knew for certain was that Amir was not a soldier. He had no training, no prior combat experience, no true baptism by fire.

Oh how she envied him.

Yet, given her sleepless state and Amir's shriek, Aoi dragged herself from her bed and shuffled over to check on him. Careful steps carried her through the mall, past the food court, and over to the room he had claimed as his own. The arcade, surprising no one who knew him. As she turned the corner to enter, Aoi pulled up sharp. Eyes narrowed to slits as she spied who else was in the room with Amir's quaking form.

"Easy, easy p'tit con. C'est okay, tout va bien. Je suis là, avec toi." Amélie's voice set Aoi's teeth on edge but she said nothing for long moments. The woman's typically venomous tone had shifted entirely, changed into something that Aoi could not quite place. Out of her Warframe, the woman was a rather fit individual. Heavy tattooing covered her from her neck down as far as Aoi could see, at least half of Amélie’s body coated in vines, thorns, and roses. Here and there, spiderwebs hung between the thorns and more than one black widow crawled across her hide.

Amir had pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around as he rocked back and forth upon his cot. His sharp chin rest between his knees.

"I- I- I- wasn't fast enough!" He stammered, hyperventilating. "I couldn- everyone d- I-"

"Shhh, c'est bien, it's okay. Focus on me. Focus on my voice," Amélie spoke softly, trailing a hand through Amir's mop of dark black-brown locks. "It's okay Amir, breathe. Deep breaths, focus on here, focus on now. Tout va bien, petit. T'es entre de bonnes mains. In through the nose, out through the mouth."

Aoi leaned against the doorframe as she watched and listened, ready to step in at a moment's notice.

"Why? Why am I here? Why did I trust that dumbass Doktor? Why did-" Amir's mind cut its moorings and spun free again, only for Amélie to reach forth and snatch it once more.

"It doesn't matter," she spoke, soft and low. "It doesn't matter now. The past has passed. You can't undo what has been done. Breathe, Amir. It's okay. You're safe here. You're with people who care. You can make a difference here."

"I can't! I'm-" Amir babbled, though a firm finger across his lips silenced him.

"Tais-toi," Amélie chided. "You can. You have. I've seen it."

Amir fell silent though it was largely due to the finger silencing him. His gaze turned to Amélie, tears fighting the corners of his eyes.

"Amir, listen to me. All of us get this way. We're small people fighting the impossible in more ways than I could have ever imagined. If Cait is right and we're facing some... existential, dimensional horror beyond space and time, I can't even imagine how horrible things can and have been. But you're here. Today. Right now. With Arthur and Quincy and Lettie and all the rest of them." Amélie spoke slowly and softly, enunciating every word in an attempt to give the panicking speedster something to grapple onto. "And they want you here. They trust you with their lives. You don't have the training, no. But that's not always a bad thing. It makes you more flexible. More adaptable. There are always pros and cons to everything you do. You don't need to be a superhero to be a hero."

Amir nodded, jerky and quick.

"How about we trade stories. Okay? Whatever you want to tell me and I'll tell you something back."

Amir nodded again, sniffled, and began stammering. "I'm uh. Making. A game. Like a video game y'know for computers and arcades and-"

"Breathe," Amélie commanded. Gentle, but firm.

"Right, right. A game. I've been talking with Cait and Aoi and I guess kinda Eleanor? Trying to like. Have an idea and a story that I wanna put into it. It's been fun! But a pain. Like I'm good at coding but I don't have my rubber duck anymore so sometimes I get stuck and I have to talk at a poster on the wall or something dumb-"

"Not dumb if it helps," Amélie corrected. "You need to stop cutting yourself and your successes down. Problem solving is a success, p’tit con. It means you can work through that which ails you."

"I-..." Amir fell silent for a moment and then nodded. He slowly leaned to one side and rest his weight upon the dark-haired woman at his side. "Okay. Okay. I spent all of like, three days figuring out doors. Just doors. Making the character move from one side to the other. Felt like such an idiot when I got it but also like. Hell yeah I did that, I'm a rockstar! Y'know?"

Amélie chuckled softly, nails still gently scratching at Amir's scalp. His heart rate had started to plateau and descend. "Ouais, I know that feeling. Not from programming, I'm too dumb for that. But other things! Do you know much about mushrooms?"

Amir shook his head no.

"I love mushrooms. Such strange little creatures. They're more like animals than they are plants, you know. And they are so dangerous but so important. Toxins you could barely imagine... but they are the basis of all life on a planet. In my time, many planet-seeding experiments were carried out and they almost all failed."

Amir had perked up considerably; hearing about the future always set his mind blazing. "Why did they fail?"

"Because they forgot the basic building block of life. Fungi. Fungi can break down volcanic rock, turning it into soil. They can break down organic compounds and turn them into nutrients. They're symbiotes with almost all plantlife, letting them absorb nutrients from the ground and grow big and strong. But people revile them, because they don't understand. They are strange, they are queer, they are grotesque. Death is never a pretty thing, but I find there is so much beauty in it." Amélie continued scratching at Amir's scalp, small smile toying across her lips. "In everything ugly, there is beauty. In everything beautiful, there is ugliness. You can't have one without the other," she continued softly. "The nightmares are ugly, but they show you care. They show that you still have your humanity left." A gentle kiss was pressed into Amir's temple, hoping to ground him further.

"I- I- think I get it," Amir mused as he rocked in Amélie's arms. "It's. It means I still want to help."

"Ouais, and it means you still think you have a life to live and it means something to you. That's... important. It's so very important. Because when you give up and close off, you become a machine. When you let the shadows win, you cease to be and a monster takes your place."

"Have you met any monsters?" Amir blurted the question without thinking. No sooner had the words left his lips that he bit his tongue. "Shitsorrydidn'tmean-"

"No, no. You're fine. Yes, I've met many monsters. Worked alongside some." Amélie's gaze turned up, towards the ceiling. "But in our work, you have to become the monster or it will eat you alive. Someday you'll wake up and realise you don't care that you killed a hundred Scaldra yesterday. And that's a bad day. That's the day a part of you has died and will never come back. Hold onto the hurt, Amir. Don't drown in it, but remember who you really are, under everything."

"I'll uh. I'll do my best," Amir rocked back and forth once more, head turning to stare at the back wall. "Thanks for. Talkin' to me. Most of the Hex see me as like. An accident. They don't want me around. I'm just a problem."

Before Amélie could respond, Aoi finally stepped out of the shadow and made herself known. "We don't, Amir. None of us do. You're just..." She bit her tongue as Saryn's gaze flashed over to her, any warmth and care in those vicious yellow-green eyes disappearing in a split second. "You shouldn't be here. You're a civilian who just got screwed and we're scared for you." Aoi sat herself on the floor before Amir and Saryn.

Amir sniffled again, concerned about the turn of events. Saryn, meanwhile, peeled from Amir's side and made to leave. She stopped when Aoi spoke.

"You. Stay." She pointed at Saryn. "We're having this talk whether you want to or not."

Amir looked from Aoi to Saryn rapidly, trying to piece together what was going on.

"Ta geule, connard. Je veux plus t'entendre."

"Didn't understand that but it sounded rude. I wasn't asking. Sit your ass down."

"Shhhoooould I go?" Amir's voice had a nervous tone to it, so much that he was willing to abandon his bed to escape.

"No, it's good." Aoi glanced from Saryn to Amir and back again. "She's right. About everything. About fighting the demons back, about trying to keep who you are when the world tries to sandblast it off. We're worried about you, Amir. We care... and I'm sorry that we've not made that clearer." Silence from the pair on the bed, albeit for very different reasons. Aoi continued. "We're all monsters now. And that's okay so long as we remember who we are. So long as we keep fighting to keep ourselves... us. And save as many lives along the way as we can. Nightmares are gonna happen. We can't stop them. But we can at least tell ourselves what they mean. Doesn't suck less! But it's perspective and we need it to keep our heads up."

"Mm," Saryn kept her gaze laser-fixated upon Aoi. Any harsher and the magnetic ProtoFrame may have caught fire. "She's right."

"And when we have differences, we need to find ways to work through them. We need to work together, not against each other. So Amir, I'm sorry if I've been hard on you, or if I've pushed you too hard. I just want to make sure that you come back after every mission. I want you to be here to be loud and playful and keep everyone smiling. Because we need you. We need someone who can keep everyone on their toes in a good way. Without you here, we have Arthur, Quincy, Lettie, and Eleanor all moping. With you here, they're still moping but they're all hiding smiles when you do something goofy."

Amir nodded again, finally reaching a hand to wipe the tear that had been trailing down his face.

"Ouais. Every group needs someone like you, Amir," Saryn agreed.

"And you," Aoi turned to laser-fixate upon Saryn, matching her stare pound-for-pound. "You don't have to peel the mask back all the time. You don't have to pretend to be my best friend, or even pretend to like me. But I am going to ask you, politely, as an adult, to at least tolerate me while we're doing our thing so we can have everyone make it back in one piece."

Saryn barked a short laugh and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. "Ah ouais? And what gives you the authority to make such a demand of me?"

"For one, I technically outrank you here. But I know you don't care about that. For two, I'm gonna bet that whatever’s going on in that head of yours is keeping you up at night and I really don't think you want me living rent-free in your noggin." The second point seemed to cause Saryn to stumble and her eyes narrowed considerably. "And three. 'cause Ember wouldn't want you to be a bitch."

Amélie's lips parted but no sound passed. Instead, she seemed... rather cowed by such a simple statement. Countable moments later, she huffed and stood. "Bed calls. Night."

Amir caught Amélie's hand and gave it a squeeze before she departed. "Thanks, Amy. I uh. Appreciate. It. A lot. A lot a lot."

"De rien, p’tit con. Get some sleep." Amélie squeezed his hand in return, a soft smile gently tugging the corners of her plush lips. Without another word, she swept off.

"Man she hates you," Amir commented thoughtlessly towards Aoi, who merely sighed and pushed herself off the floor.

"Yeah a little bit. But I've got this weird gut feeling it's not just me she hates."

"No?"

"Nah. Bullies tend to hate themselves a whole lot, too. Most every one I've met and stood up to did."

Amir's eyes tracked the direction Amélie had gone. "How could someone like her hate herself?"

"I dunno, Amir. The world's a really weird place."

Chapter Text

Aoi ducked under yet another mess of twisted cabling and stumbled briefly when her foot hit something slimy and organic. They were deep in the Techrot now, under Höllvania's central business district. What had once been a prosperous and vibrant part of the city had been reduced to nothing but slime, sludge, and murderous electronics. More than once she had to swing her rifle up to fire a few rounds into a shambling Galliflex or Skuzzi but despite what they had been told, things were uncomfortably quiet.

"Scaldra chatter claims that there's more Techrot here than anywhere else in the city," Arthur's voice came over comms as he guided the Hex through their mission. It was a simple mission; contain, destroy, resuce. Contain the Techrot, destroy any they found, rescue and civilians not-yet infected.

Yet as Aoi slid down a newly-bored tunnel, she found herself confused at what they'd been told. There was Techrot here, to be sure, but not enough to warrant such a massive Scaldra force. Something was wrong.

"Arthur, I'm not getting many Techrot pings down here," she radioed back to base while stepping out into an abandoned subway station.

"Here neither," Eleanor's voice echoed back through both mind and radio.

"Surface's got a whole lotta Scaldra an’ fuck all else," Quincy added his voice to the mix. "Will advise."

"Keep the sweep, maybe they've gone to ground. And keep your heads up." Arthur commanded, causing Aoi to sigh softly.

One hand reached up to brush her mess of bangs aside though she paused when she noticed Frost at her side, peering around curiously. "What's up?"

He pointed and she followed, noting the damaged roof and a sickly, dripping green liquid. "Scaldra was here," he murmured.

"Yeah, but why?" Aoi questioned, noting an absence of Techrot corpses. In fact, the entire subway station looked about as roughed up as the rest of the city. No more, no less. "There wasn't a fight here... was there?"

"Don't think so," Frost agreed.

The pair continued onward, sweeping through the station. Peeking onto abandoned and shattered subway cars, checking forgotten ticket boxes. Not a single monitor stood up, not a single CPU growled. Around a corner, the pair began clamouring up a battered staircase. It took some effort to crawl over vast Techrot tendrils squirming through the brickwork and masonry but they made decent enough progress.

"Scaldra forces on the move," Quincy radioed across the waves. "Looks like they’re up to somethin’."

"Keep an eye out and your head down, Quincy," Arthur commanded.

In the tunnels, Aoi glanced back at Frost as he seemed to pause yet again. His intuition must have been going off too. The whole situation felt...

"I don't like the quiet," Frost muttered, low enough that Aoi barely picked it up. "Something is wrong."

"Agreed," Aoi nodded vehemently while turning another corner to crawl up a set of stairs. Before her, a single Techrot creature lurched about aimlessly, leaking organic fluids from its decaying biomass riddled with holes. It collapsed into a pile of circuitry and released a pitiable series of chirps and whirls, eerily similar to a dial-up modem dying. Aoi drew bead and put a three-round burst into the creature, causing Frost to jump slightly. "One whole Techrot Skuzzi down, Arthur. I think someone got some bad intel."

"I'm starting to get that feeling, yes." Arthur replied with a bit of a sigh.

Frost hurried up the last few steps, pointedly planting his foot through one of the CRT monitors on the Skuzzi's body, then sweeping the landing before them. It was... a subway station. Nothing fancy, nothing extravagant. Brutalist architecture painted by far too many young artists, covered in Techrot tendrils and sporting more than a few bullet holes blasted into the masonry. Once, it would have been a perfectly serviceable stop on the metro; nothing fancy, nothing ostentatious, but functional. Now, it felt like a boneyard of years passed. The pair slowly advanced.

Down a short, broad hallway, through some ancient, abandoned turnstiles. Aoi kept her Burston at hand while Frost kept the enormous coffin he called the Trumna at ready, shouldered and ready to go. How he managed to swing the behemoth around so easily would befuddle many forever more.

Slow steps soon pushed the pair into the mezzanine where they both pulled up short. Aoi's eyes widened as she stared down the short flight of stairs and bile rose in the back of her throat.

The mezzanine was sunken into the centre of the train station with three distinct floors. Two were simple sitting areas with a few planters while the final, at the bottom, had a few tables and chairs scattered about what would have, at one point, been a good place to sit and eat.

Of course, during those times, it would not have been filled with bodies. Easily three dozen bodies tossed haphazardly into the bottom of the stony pit. Not a heartbeat between them. Bloodied, battered, bodies, covered in Efervon gas and left to rot.

"Sol... Scaldra isn't purging the area of Techrot, they're purging civvies!"

Seconds later, Quincy's voice crackled over the radio. "Base! I've got eyes on Scaldra roundin' people up outta some apartments!"

"They're going to execute them, Arthur!" Aoi called across comms as quickly as she could. "Scaldra's purging PEOPLE!"

"Aoi, Quincy, Eleanor, get your teams into position! NOW. You're going to crash that party no matter what, am I clear?" Arthur's voice had gathered an urgency not often heard in his dour speeches.

Aoi glanced sidelong at Frost who had already swung his rifle around to his back. "Now," he echoed, and the pair took off running. They knew vaguely where Quincy was posted and it wouldn't take much to track him down.

"Quincy, status! We need your location!"

"Uploadin' now, move your asses or I'm gonna start shootin'!" Aoi's comms and Infestation updated within moments and she pulled hard-left as she sprint down an alley, Frost barreling behind. "Oh Sol- they're linin' the civvies up! Arthur I'm takin’ the shot!"

"Negative Quincy, wait for a minute, we've got support en-r-"

"Fuck it, Arthur. They don't HAVE a minute!"

"Quincy!"

No reply but the sound of a gunshot.

Aoi grit her teeth, scrambling up a dumpster to throw herself over a wood-slat fence. Scaldra purging hostile civilians to bring more of their pets in. It made sense. Viktor's New World Order had little room for dissidents but there was no way that the outside world would just... sit by. Was there?

Behind her, Frost did not bother with the theatrics of climbing. His method was far more abrupt as he slammed wholesale into the fence and exploded out the far side. While visibly slower than Aoi, he kept up with her pace by virtue of being utterly unstoppable.

Several more gunshots cracked down the alley and return fire followed suit. Quincy had started the party and was not about to stop until he, or Scaldra, were very dead.

"C'mooooon, c'monc'monc'monc'mon..." Aoi's heaving breaths did little to calm her nerves as her heart hammered in her chest. They had to be within a block. They had to be.

An open lane gave her room to pull away from Frost, sprinting along as fast as she could. Before her, she could see the roadblock. More importantly, she could see Scaldra's troops mustering and pointing the other direction. Without hesitation, Aoi swung a hand up and focused her energy upon a nearby dumpster. The effort it took to lift was slight and fueled by adrenaline and fury, she flung it like a ballistic missile. The dumpster exploded against one of Scaldra's armoured personnel carriers, flinging trash in every direction while pasting a guard stationed at the front of the roadblock.

With the first stone cast, it took mere seconds for Scaldra forces to organise and start putting lead on target. Aoi's zigging and zagging did little to dissuade accuracy through volume and she grit her teeth as a bullet tore through her left trapezius. The shot slowed her just long enough for Frost to catch up.

"Behind me, pendeja!" Frost snarled into her earpiece, causing several on comms to take a breath. Perhaps the second time they had heard him speak and the first time in English. No time was spared for thought - Frost stepped in front of Aoi and summoned his wall of ballistic ice, slammed his forearm into it, and heft it up. The Trumna swung off his back to rest atop, allowing him to fire back as Scaldra scrambled to put enough fire on the new targets to force them back. Of course, that was easier said than done.

Despite bleeding, Aoi had fury in her veins and Infestation in her body. She was one step below indestructible at this point and she was damn sure she was going to use every inch of her life to rain hell upon those before her. As the shots from Frost's heavy machine gun rang in her ears, Aoi dropped her rifle to her side and focused her energy upon the Scaldra APC blocking their way. Were there troops inside? Hopefully. Frankly, she didn't care. Slowly, the vehicle lift into the air. Moments later, it began to crumple, smashing inwards as though submerged at the bottom of the ocean. Cries for help from within cut short with grisly crunches and the APC was dropped where it had been parked previously, albeit just as heavy and half the size. A stunned Scaldra who had watched the entire situation unfold had the vehicle dropped on their head and crunched beneath it. Only the pop of their chemical backpack met Aoi's ears and it drew a vicious, mocking grin to her face.

Two more Scaldra remained before them, dressed in their bright yellow-orange hazard suits, gas masks, and carrying tanks upon tanks of Efervon gas. Chemical weapons used, ostensibly, against the Techrot. In reality, the situation was never so clear. Frost's pivoting gun platform swung back and forth as he fired yet more rounds downrange, aiming to drain the Trumna dry and reload before the pair burst onto the scene of the crime.

Heavy rounds tracked up the Scaldra's ballistic shield, blowing pieces loose, until one round caused the shield to shatter entirely and pierced the sternum of the Scaldra behind. Aoi saw the spray of gore and immediately threw a hand up to collapse the metal in the vicinity onto the target, causing the bullet to rip right back out of the unlucky soul and into a swirling maelstrom of lead, steel, and other magnetic compounds now whipping about the pair. "Move!" She commanded, though the command was superfluous - Frost was not going to stop barreling forward for King nor God.

The final Scaldra peeked from cover long enough to fire a shot off - there was no follow-up as Frost had drawn bead on the soldier's location and promptly won over his mind, if not his heart, with a bullet between the eyes.

Moments later they burst into the central plaza, just in time to tune back into Quincy's updates ringing in their ears. "Scaldra's got the civvies locked down, poppin' 'em one-by-one! We gotta move!" A shot rang out from Quincy's hiding place, his advanced stealth armour and Infested abilities keeping him relatively safe. Out of sight, out of mind. The Scaldra in the plaza had their heads down and seemed to have trouble tracking where the shots were coming from - Aoi and Frost's entrance, however, gave them something to shoot at.

Aoi assessed the situation as quickly as she could. At least a half-dozen APCs. Easily a hundred Scaldra and a kill squad by the looks of it. Several Efervon balloons floated nearby, always vigilant, prepared to call in air support. And they were three. Possibly more, if Eleanor's squad managed to make it.

"Fam! Scaldra's readyin' chems for the civvies!" Quincy shouted and fired another round off, popping one Scaldra's skull into fine mist and painting his nearby companion's chem tanks a jaunty crimson.

"We're trying!" Aoi shouted back as two of the APCs swung their heavy ordinance on Frost and his shield. The quad-barreled anti-air cannons shredded the icy wall.

Each hit caused ice to shatter and explode in sprays of white mist, only to recoalesce into yet more ice as Frost tried to keep up with the incoming fire. Quincy drew bead upon one of the gunners and squeezed the trigger, exploding the gunner's head like an overripe melon, silencing the gun battery.

Before the second gunner could be dispatched in much the same way, Frost dragged his arm from the ice wall and hooked it around Aoi, throwing his considerable bulk at tossing her, himself, and his weaponry out from behind the ice and behind a nearby stonework wall. With the ice spray and mist in the air, Scaldra didn't notice the manoeuvre until many moments later, when Quincy popped the second gunner and both Aoi and Frost reappeared on the far side of a small building with yet another ice wall before them.

Frost kept low, giving Aoi ample room to fire. While neither was capable of withstanding the combined fire of the Scaldra forces for long, they both knew that they had to act. Quincy was a deadshot, yes, but one at a time wasn't fast enough to save lives.

"Granada!" Frost called as he set the shield down and reached his hand forward on the Trumna. A second later he fired a slow-moving, arcing projectile. Mid air, it cracked and split, exploding with cluster munitions and peppering the Scaldra forces before him with shrapnel. While ineffective against armour - save the explosion - lightly armoured Scaldra units had their bodies shredded by the juiced-up fragmentation projectile. Screams of the wounded soon intermingled with the gunfight erupting all around the plaza.

"We're here!" Eleanor's voice echoed and across the way, Aoi caught sight of Eleanor, Saryn, Amir, and Lettie wading into the battle. Amir threw lighting around the field, zipping here, there, and everywhere in an attempt to distract even as he set about frying Scaldra electronics. Eleanor commanded a veritable army of Techrot, with a dozen or so lurching, hulking forms around her.

Saryn and Lettie stepped forth into the chaos with shotgun and rifle drawn, laying down suppressive fire on anything that moved and happened to be clad in orange. Suddenly finding their focus split, Scaldra scrambled to put fire on the new squad approaching even as Aoi and Frost had a moment to catch their breath. Not much of one, mind, as another Scaldra APC decided that their life subscription had long-since expired.

Frost barely had time to summon another wall of ice as the quad-barrelled flak gun tore up the ground and into his frame. No matter how impenetrable the armour, no matter how engineered the soldier beneath, a flak cannon was still a flak cannon and the 20mm shells shredded his Warframe and his shield. Several sprays of crimson erupted from his stark white armour and down he tumbled, landing with a heavy thud.

Aoi shouted reflexively, pulling her arms up to summon a magnetic field around the pair of them. The flakvierling continued pumping lead in their direction and she strained with all her might to pull it into a condensed sphere, keeping the momentum as best as she could. Seconds later she screamed in fury and let fly, returning all of the collected lead to sender; the APC exploded, hammered into scrap by its own shells.

Without hesitation, Aoi ripped the Trumna from Frost's body and heft it to her shoulder. In the same motion she swung an arm up, surrounding another of the APCs with a powerful magnetic field. Several Scaldra ended up lifted into the swirling storm orbiting the machine, slamming into each other, the ground, a lamp post, or the stone statue of Viktor, the Tyrant of Höllvania nearby. It was into this field that she let fly the rest of Frost's magazine, pumping the field full of as much lead as she could before collapsing it down in a powerful magnetic anomaly. The explosion sent shrapnel, scrap, and corpses sailing through the air, raining down upon their comrades and the other Hex squad. Grim satisfaction.

Eleanor's mind-controlled Techrot dove mindlessly into the battle, swinging and smashing on anything and everything they could reach. As they were cut down, the psychic feedback continued to hammer into Eleanor's mind; as the last fell, she unleashed a banshee scream across the plaza, causing many to double over and clutch at their heads.

"MY CHILDREN!" She screeched, eyes flaring chartreuse with unspeakable fury. The words caused Lettie to balk, knowing damn well that Eleanor was on the verge of losing herself to the Infestation.

"Stay with me, chica! We can't lose you!"

Eleanor threw forth waves of psychic bolts, hammering the Scaldra on both physical and mental fronts. The assault was so strong that more than one of the Scaldra drew their sidearms and simply offed themselves; a bullet to the brain silenced the voices as effectively as any other method.

"Fuckin' Luna," Quincy breathed from his perch as he lined up another shot on a Scaldra commander, seemingly trying to give orders through the fog of war. "Ao-" His voice hung in his throat when a hail of gunfire caught Aoi unawares and she, too, dropped to the ground, chest heaving. Brilliant red blooms soon stained her armour and she fell still.

"Things are getting hairy down here, Arthur!" Lettie called over comms.

"I can see that, Lettie!" Arthur shouted back. The words were enough to push Saryn to act. She sprinted forward, kicking off a wall. Hands planted atop an APC and she swung herself around to get herself into position. A second later, a sickly green wave rolled across the Scaldra lines. Within moments, the screams of the damned began rising from those within her blast zone. Mercifully, she kept herself constrained just enough to avoid friendlies but the result of her vile assault was immediately obvious to anyone with working eyes.

Several Scaldra, especially those with damaged gear or lacking helmets, began clawing at their faces. Coughing, hacking, gagging as their lungs bled and their eyes melted. Her acrid attack was nothing short of a biological terrorist's wet dream.

More than one Scaldra tumbled to their knees, heaving their guts out in the most literal sense. They collapsed one by one as she stood atop her commandeered vehicle and pulled forth her preferred weapon; a vicious shotgun. Her hands threw forth a noxious cloud of spores which she then fired through. The superheated buckshot set the spores alight, creating a catastrophic explosion that sundered the armour of any Scaldra in its wake; sundered armour that allowed her other putrid concoctions to leak through their life support systems and begin liquifying them in turn.

Jumping from her position atop the vehicle, Saryn sprinted through obliterated Scaldra lines to where Aoi and Frost had fallen. While she lacked defensive capabilities of any kind, the woman placed herself before the pair and began firing upon any remaining Scaldra who had the wherewithal to attempt to put the fallen down for good.

Lettie, ducking Eleanor's psychic fury, rushed not for the Scaldra but for the civilians they had corralled nearby in a long-forgotten skate park. As the battle raged and slowly died around her, she crest the concrete barrier and froze in place, staring down at the hellscape before her. Realising the battle had been lost, Scaldra made sure that the Hex would notch only a pyrrhic victory. Several large pillars had been spiked into the ground and poured forth a sickly green gas, choking out all life within. The procedure was as efficient, sterile, mechanical as could be - an extermination.

After a breath to compose herself, Lettie pulled her rifle to her shoulder, turned, and began head-hunting.

Withering fire from three sides caused the Scaldra forces to soon break. While they fought to the death and no quarter was given, the battle had been won. If only on paper.

As the final Scaldra met their fate at the end of Eleanor's barrel, an eerie silence fell over the battlefield. Only the burning of destroyed vehicles filled the air, acrid smoke billowing to the clouds above.

"Sound off," Lettie drew herself up as best as she could, assuming command of the situation.

"I'm 'ere. Wish I weren't," Quincy spoke, voice low. "Amir. Don't go to Lettie. No matter what."

"I- uh. Okay. Okay. I won't. Thanks," Amir, jittery and uncomfortable, jogged to a stop next to Saryn.

"Aoi and Frost are down. They'll... probably live," Saryn spoke softly. "I believe in Lettie's miracles."

"El, you good?" Lettie questioned, staring across the battlefield at her companion. Her friend. Eleanor had fallen to her knees, fingers clutching at the earth, and seemed to be fighting with something.

"My children... my beautiful, beautiful children..." the psychic wept; all could see the toll the battle had taken on her, all could understand how badly the Techrot's infestation had started to rot the woman's mind.

"Stay with us El," Lettie spoke slowly, carefully. "We can't lose you."

Several heaving breaths later, Eleanor bolt upright and screamed to the heavens. Her long, Infested tongue snaked from her mouth and thrashed about, it’s will struggling against hers. As the tongue suddenly curled back and drove around her neck, the woman bit down with her full force. Vicious, sharpened fangs split flesh and muscle to shear her tongue clean off, leaving it flapping, floundering, and flailing uselessly even as it tried to choke the life from her.

Lettie and Amir sprinted over to Eleanor's side but a powerful 'STOP!' command in their minds froze them in place. Eleanor ripped her severed tongue from her body and tossed it aside, spitting blood and viscera in the process.

"I'm good, I'm good," she coughed, hacked, and spat again. Blood trailed down her chin and leaked from the corners of her mouth. "I'm me. I'm still me." Her words, spoken aloud, carried as much weight as she could muster.

But for how long, they all wondered.

Chapter Text

Eleanor's mouth ached. Her heart ached. Her bones, her mind, her soul, all ached. From the skate park filled with civilians breathing their last to the sensation of the Techrot sinking its fangs ever-deeper into her consciousness to the final vestiges of agony and torment skulking in the back of her skull, Eleanor hurt. Dragging herself upright from her knees after severing her own tongue, the looks of betrayal, fear, and hurt in the eyes of her closest friends... she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and die. She had the sidearm at her hip to make her dreams a reality and in that moment, she sorely considered it.

When Quincy had come down from his sniper's perch, it had not been with dry eyes. It had not been with the confident swagger he so normally bore. His gaze had not been able to hold with Saryn's form, aghast at her toxic capabilities and war crime levels of destruction. No matter how pointed. No matter how controlled. It was still a war crime.

Amir had been a good little soldier and did what he had been ordered. He did not approach the dumping ground. He did not behold the desolation behind him. But he didn't need to. He could feel it. He could see it on the faces of his comrades. He could see it in Lettie's movements, her actions. Her pain. They had failed. As he helped Saryn drag Aoi's inert body to her feet, he knew that whatever weight the others carried would be coming for him.

It took three to move Frost's body. The Warframe was so heavy, so encased in ice, that he had to weigh north of a quarter ton. Neither he nor Aoi would die this day; the Infestation writhing within their bodies made sure of that. The bullet holes had sealed off, the blood loss had stymied. But the damage was still catastrophic. They would have weeks of recovery before them - if they recovered fully.

The trek back to the mall had been arduous. Undertaken in utter, desolate silence. Even their footsteps were slow, quiet, and heavy. A crushing weight hung above them, making every step a battle in and of itself. But they carried on.

Only upon reaching the mall and escorting Aoi and Frost to the medical facilities - a bathroom that had been repurposed, cleaned, and still, miraculously, had running water - did they rest. Quincy retired to his room in short order, the door slammed shut in Saryn's face. Eleanor spent quite some time cleaning her face, scrubbing the blood from her lips and trying desperately to recover what of herself she had lost. Lettie tended to Aoi and Frost's injuries, picking lead and metal from tissue in the hopes that whatever was within them would start to glue the rest together. It was a hope she would not have put much stock in, nor one that she was overly proud of, but given the circumstances she worked with what she had. Flickering lights, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, scissors, tweezers, and prayer. At least this time, there was no Doktor involved.

Amir, jittery as always, could hardly sit still. Before retiring, Quincy had given Amir a small package and told him, patently, not to open it. Amir dutifully kept his promise and carried it to Arthur's office. A knock, the door swung open, and Amir found himself caught in a hell he could not have ever imagined.

Before him, in the small sitting area, was Cait - one of the Drifters that had come through time and space to help them fight back. She was the Drifter that had put down Major Rusalka and chased away whatever interdimensional being had been possessing her. The woman's form was wispy and covered in strange quicksilver hoops; these, Amir had grown accustomed to. Her black, gold, and blue bun, messy and loose, did not startle him anymore, nor did her brilliant golden eyes, or her heavy, prismatic mask. She lay flat on the floor, arms splayed out to her sides, staring through glassy eyes at the ceiling.

It was not Arthur that caught him off guard, either. Not entirely. It was the look in Arthur's eye, it was his lips pursed in a tight line, it was the closed off, almost tense posture. Arthur was spinning his sword one-handed as quickly as he could, practically boring a hole into the tile floor. That, and the third figure, one Amir had never seen nor spoken to before. "Uhhhh... bad time?"

Arthur jolted slightly at Amir's voice and sat back to peer at the young man. His smile was sad. Exhausted, even, utterly bereft of warmth. "No. Unfortunately not."

The third figure awkwardly offered a hand forward. "I'm Kay. I'm... another Drifter, I guess. The one that brought Saryn and Frost here."

Amir fumbled briefly but shoved his hand forward. "Uh, hey. Amir! Nice to meetcha? I think?"

Cait huffed a weak laugh from the floor. She looked about ready to reach for a bottle of alcohol and drink herself in oblivion. "Hold onto that for me, Amir. Please."

Kay nodded and gave an awkward little bow to Amir. The new Drifter's pale skin seemed eerie in the offputting, fluorescent light of the dingy office and his orange-brown eyes, burning like hot coals, held a deep sadness inherent in those who had seen far too much. Blue-black hair, slightly longer than Cait's, had been tied back and both his narrow nose and sharp jaw caused his frown to grow ever-deeper.

"Do we...?" Kay began, though Arthur cut him off.

"No, no. Not here. We... tell everyone. At once." Arthur heaved a world-weary sigh and forced himself to his feet. "C'mon."

"Now?" Cait questioned from the floor, her head falling back to hit the drywall.

"Now. There's no point beating about the bush. We tell the truth. We tell it now. And then... I don't even know anymore." Arthur snatched his sword, letting it hang from his hands as he shoved past Amir and into the hallway.

"Uh, guys? Guys-and-girl? Is... is everything okay?" Amir sidestepped as Kay passed him by then offered a hand to haul Cait onto her feet. She felt impossibly heavy.

"No, Amir. Things are really, really bad," Cait replied. She even stepped in and gave the young ProtoFrame a firm hug, hard enough to cause him to grimace.

"Well I'm scared now," Amir half-joked, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The nervous energy was back immediately. If only Cait's face held any degree of mirth, he might have felt better.

The quartet made their way through the dingy corridors until they found their way to the food court. Arthur called a stop and took up a seat upon one of the plastic tables, his sword immediately finding purchase on the seat between his legs, spinning listlessly. "Amir, gather everyone."

"We uh. Can't? We can't. Aoi and Frost are FUCKED up man. They're lit up like a Holiday Tr-"

"Amir," Kay stepped in to silence the jitters. "Get everyone else, then. Meet us in the medical facility."

Amir swallowed and nodded rapidly, darting off in a blaze of sparks.

"This is gonna suuuuuuuuuuck," Cait groaned, nearly slumping over then and there.

"Yes, it will." Arthur agreed. His gaze finally lifted to the pair of Drifters. "And there's nothing you can do? Nothing at all?"

"Unfortunately, no." Kay's voice was mechanical. "There's... just nothing we can do. On either part. The choice is ultimately yours."

"Is it now?" Arthur's voice rose with venom but dissipated shortly thereafter. No use getting angry at an impossible situation. "... sorry."

"I'd be livid too," Cait sputtered a half-laugh. "Hell, I'd be taking heads."

"I've considered it," Arthur sighed. "Alright... let's move. Pull this fucking tumour out as quickly as possible."

Amir darted from room to room in a haze of anxious energy. It took some effort to convince Quincy and Eleanor to attend an all-hands meeting; Saryn was already there, her helm jammed over her face, sitting upon the counter and watching Lettie work.

"Y'got a reason ta drag us all inta this hole, fam?" Quincy snapped as he shoved through the door. Unwilling - unable - to look at Lettie's work, he mashed his back against the nearby wall and refused to look anywhere but directly at Arthur.

"Unfortunately," Arthur's voice was low. "I'll let Kay and Cait explain it. They understand the situation far better than me."

Cait groaned softly and planted herself at Arthur's side, immediately drawing Quincy's laser-focused ire. Kay stood awkwardly off to one side.

"We... have been trying to find a way to do this for a while, now. We weren't going to tell you until we knew for sure but now we do and there's kinda no way around it," Cait began with a deep breath. The five Hex still standing turned their gaze to the Drifter, the woman they had entrusted with Transference and their lives to defeat the Indifference.

"The... loop. The time loop that you all got stuck in. We can't break it." Cait pressed her lips into a fine line. "There's no breaking it, there's no getting out of it. The last, I'unno. Hurrah? Fuck you? From the Indifference was to enforce the loop as best as it could. It's forcing the cycle to continue.” She took a deep breath. “Forever."

Silence fell upon the group, all eyes turning to fixate upon Cait. Even Lettie paused her surgical duties for a moment to stare at the Drifter. After a long pause wherein the only sound was the buzzing of the shitty lighting above, Cait continued.

"The loop was set up before we got here. The bomb dropped, things got blown to hell, everything reset. That one day, over and over, infinitely. Entrati was using it to try to build up enough power to forcibly throw the Indifference back, I think. Or stall for long enough that we could get here and do it ourselves. The Indifference was using it to grow stronger with every passing cycle. When I got here and forced the loop back to the start of the year, it gave us some breathing room. Not a lot, but some. And that was enough to... shake things loose, I guess."

"What she's trying to say," Kay cut in. "Is that this time loop is being enforced by two extremely powerful entities, neither of which we can get to. Entrati's here but not here. The Indifference is here, but not here. We can't track them down. We can't pin them down. We can't undo what they've done because they are far, far more powerful than we are. It took Cait and all of you to beat the Indifference once here. Which stopped the Indifference from destroying ‘here’, but it didn't really do much other than give It a hangnail."

Arthur sighed heavily. "They've explained it to me about four times at this point and I still don't understand it. The rough and ready of it is this: our world is dead. We can stay here for a thousand lifetimes and nothing will come of it. New Year ticks, boom. We reset to square one. No Drifter, no Entrati, no Indifference. None of it matters now."

Eleanor's gaze turned down to the floor beneath her. The voice in the back of her mind gnawed ever-on and compelled her to ask. While her severed tongue did little to help her speech, at least she could ask aloud. "But things will change, won't they. I can feel it. I can hear it. The Techrot is getting stronger, isn't it?"

All eyes turned briefly to the psychic before returning to Cait and Kay. "It... is. Yes," Cait agreed with a solemn nod.

"Wot does that mean for us?" Quincy demanded.

"It means that if you stay here in this loop, the Techrot is going to eat you alive. You're going to turn into soup and then you're going to reconstitute as Techrot. There's no escaping it. There's no running from it. Each loop, you will be less, and less, and less. Until you are gone." Kay explained in no uncertain terms. "Entrati's experiment here, to make ProtoFrames, was originally intended to turn you into Warframes that we - the Drifters - could use. In a way, you're all failures because you're not soulless, mindless automatons. You're still people with hearts and minds and bodies. And his failure is the only reason we won."

"The... caring thing. Right." Amir nodded slowly. "Because we care we can fight the Indifference. If we don't, then we can't. And being stuck here, over and over, doing the same thing with no reward and no way out..." he trailed off.

"Means eventually you'll become hollow vessels for the Indifference to return," Cait finished the thought. "The best case is you decay into Techrot. The worst case, you become another tool for the Indifference."

"Y'said stay here," Quincy pointed out. His heavy arms shifted slightly, folded over his barrel chest. "Explain."

"I-..." Kay trailed off, forcing his head up to gaze about from Hex to Hex. "I can get you out of here. For good. It's a one-way trip to freedom."

When he was met with silence, Kay began to overexplain. "Each of us as Operators... we share the same universe. The same shard, I guess. But each of us Drifters ended up spread across time and space. Hundreds of universes, all tied together through us, through the Zariman. And my particular universe, where I brought Saryn and Frost from... the Techrot - Infestation - wasn't made by Entrati in the same way yours was. It's not out of control. It's not constantly struggling to overtake you and eat you alive from the inside out. If we bring you to my universe, we can cure you. We can save you from Entrati's experiment."

Collectively, the Hex sucked a breath. Once more silence overtook the group until Lettie, who had finished patching Aoi back up, spoke.

"But we'd be leaving everything. Familia. Our world, our people, all the civilians, everyone. Everything." She stared at Kay, eyes already starting to water at the implication.

"I-" Kay trailed off and Cait stepped in to take up the slack. Someone had to be the villain, after all.

"You wouldn't be," Cait spoke softly. "Because they're not here anymore. They're long gone. Entrati's been gone for centuries. Millenia, maybe. Just days, it feels like, but we can’t even begin to piece together how this place even exists anymore. Meaning this place, this 'world', hasn't existed for centuries. It's been dead, a bubble of memories and ghosts, for... ever. For as long as I've been here. From the second Entrati stepped his feet on this world, it ceased to exist in any form."

Lettie's face darkened and clouded. What spilled from her lips was unintelligible for any but the white Warframe laid out on the grubby bathroom floor.

"So you're tellin' us that our world, our home, our memories, our dreams, our families, are all fuckin' GONE?" Quincy snapped.

Cait flinched visibly, grinding her gloved hands together as she looked up at him. "They... yea. That's the short version. All of this is a dream. A bubble on a pinhead, held together by six heroes on the brink of annihilation."

Countable moments passed as all processed what they had been told. Amir shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, mind racing back to his life before the epidemic. Before he accepted Doktor Entrati's "gifts". Too trusting. Too rash. Too stupid.

Lettie turned her gaze to stare down at Aoi's form and noted a single tear beading from the young woman's eyes. Without a word, she reached up to wipe it away; exhausted, battered, and turned into swiss cheese. Still there. Still alive, still fighting to maintain some semblance of self. Only to hear, unable to move, react, or ask, that it was over. It was done. Lettie's own eyes drift shut and she cast her mind back to Xipe Totec. Life. Death. Rebirth. Never in her life did she think she would be asked to take his hand and start over. To bury her family well before she was ready and step forth into oblivion with the promise of salvation on the other side.

Eleanor and Arthur exchanged glances. Never would there be another get-together with family. Never would there be another awkward dinner 'round the holiday tree. The world they knew had simply vanished in a wave of a hand, a promise by a dead man, and a careless thought.

Quincy's eyes had drift shut as he processed. He had expected a great many things from this whole shit-show. From the beginning, it had felt like an elaborate trap. More than once, he tried to escape. To cut and run. But his sense of self, his morality, his values, his debts to Arthur, his belief in humanity… had dragged him back. Kicking and screaming at times. He thought back to the children playing in the Höllvania square. Dancing in the snow, scrambling over Efervon tanks, a danger impossible to explain to youngsters.

"All the pain. All the sufferin'. All the killin'..." he spoke slowly, carefully.

"It was... for nothing," Eleanor completed his thought. The deaths she had seen, the times she had lost herself to the Techrot. The plates of scabby armour covering her body, the tongue that had tried to kill her. Inevitable. Impossible. There was nothing for them but complete and utter annihilation here. And if they left, the world would face the same.

An entire universe, a bubble of soap balanced upon the point of a needle.

For long moments, no one spoke. No one could find the words to express how they felt. No one could truly process what the day had become. From a simple mission, to a disaster, to oblivion in the span of a few hours. Hours they would be forced to relive over, and over, and over, until they were no more. No better than the rotten televisions and computers they fought on a daily basis.

"I'm goin'." Quincy was the first to break the silence; his voice near cracked. He paused for a long moment, cleared his throat, and spoke again. Firmly. Powerfully. "I'm goin'. I'm goin' to this safe universe an' I'm gonna get better. An' when the time comes, you fuckin' wanks better pull me in to put Entrati and this Indifferent fucker in. the. ground."

Cait nodded. "I swear. On every life here, on every life in my universe, on every life in Kay's. When we track them down, you're going to get the first kick. I swear it."

Quincy raised a rough hand to wipe at his face, carelessly forcing the tears away. "I'm holdin' you to that, fam."

"So am I," Cait pushed herself up a bit straighter.

"I'm going too," Lettie spoke firmly. "Mi cariños, mi armas, y mi saña. When the time comes, I am going to fry Entrati's huevos and force-feed them back to him."

"Amir?" Arthur glanced sidelong at the youngest member of the Hex, still bouncing on his feet and anxious beyond words.

"I- I- I- I--"

"Breathe, Amir." Arthur's voice was the gentlest it had ever been.

"I'm going. The future's gonna be cool, right? Great! Great. I'll be great. I'll get to see all kinds of cool stuff and I'll be cured and maybe I'll be normal and-"

"Amir," Cait spoke up. "It's okay."

"Eleanor?" Arthur looked up. Her face, set in stone, said more than words ever could.

"Someday, I will return. And I will leash this 'Indifference' in a basement until it begs for mercy from my cold, dead heart."

The faintest hint of a smile crossed Arthur's lips. "That leaves only me, I suppose." His gaze turned to Cait and he bowed his head to rest against hers. "Thank you. For trying."

"Trying isn't good enough, Arthur. We'll win. No trying."

"Glad to hear it."

"What about Aoi?" Amir questioned, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"I assure you, she's in agreement," Eleanor half-snorted. "I'd pass along what she's saying but I've never heard half of her curses and those I do recognise, my mother would slap the taste out of my mouth for sharing. I will say she's furious and she will be back someday. Swinging."

With the six in agreement, Kay stepped forward and lift his arms. "I'm sorry. All of you. Truly." When his hand dropped, a veil of quicksilver doused them all. They would reappear again, someday; in another lifetime, in another place. When the Void came into play as it did, there was no telling what time, space, or existence meant. All that mattered was that they were free. Their shackles twisted, broken. Perhaps into another set. Perhaps into a worse set. But for those who had nothing and had given all for it, anything was better than nothing.

Anything had to be better than Indifference.

Chapter Text

Landing on the massive space station, buried deep in the outer reaches of the Sol system had been simple enough. Disconcerting. Sickening, even, as the Hex reconstituted from liquid dreams and quicksilver. Amir had thrown up immediately upon forming into his normal self, a combination of incredible anxiety and stress mixing perfectly with the Translation sickness that oft came with such a massive shift in reality. Kay hadn't looked overly solid upon landing either, but he managed to keep his lunch where he had put it. Of the travellers, only one seemed to land on her feet; Cait, the second Drifter. The problem child.

Within moments of having feet hit the deck, a few Warframes had rushed over to help and carted the Hex off towards the medical facility for a full check-up. Neither thank you nor fuck you in the intervening time, nor any time to process what they had just been through. Tests had to be run and given the buzz surrounding them, several of the Hex managed to deduce that their medical situation was not exactly engendering much confidence.

Both Aoi and Frost had been hurried off for a more thorough checkup and cleaning; Lettie's work was enough to stabilise, but perhaps not enough to get them back up as quickly as any would have liked. The likeliness of infection may have been low but it was still there. While Lettie was loathe to admit it, this place seemed to have the medical facilities to do more than she could in a dirty bathroom.

The medical facilities themselves were sterile to a point; there were plants scattered about, alive and well cared for. Not everything was in stark white, much to Amir's chagrin; most of it was smooth edges with glowing screens which helped satiate his curiosity and excite his mind. Perhaps not the best given his anxiety but it was a much-needed distraction. While easy to lose themselves in the moment, in the swirling maelstrom of mental noise, Eleanor stayed quiet.

This whole situation was nothing but terrible. Truly awful. Breathtakingly terrible. Yet, unseen, she knew that this was for the best. She would never be able to admit to it. Never be able to force herself to see things in any light but the one before her. But how often did people wish for a new beginning, a chance to simply wipe the slate clean and start over? No, a new start would not push down the trauma. It would not force away the pains and agonies of a lifetime misspent. But... Here? There was a chance. A chance to maybe turn a new leaf and see through a life unlike any they could have ever dreamed of. She watched Cait, the Drifter who had seen them through so much, as she hovered. Near her little brother. The way Cait snuck her hand into his for a brief squeeze, thinking herself slick. The way Arthur reciprocated, thinking himself the same. Something Eleanor had never expected to see. It made her heart sing even in the darkest moments.

As the Hex sat themselves atop the medical cots scattered about, a new face marched into the facility. She was tall, though slightly shorter than Eleanor, and had a large mane of ebony locks to compliment her dark complexion. Full lips, deep brown eyes flecked with gold, and a bright gaze filled with brilliant intelligence cut through the group's collective haze like a lighthouse through fog. She had brilliant golden freckles that caught the light and threw it every which way and a single band of gold in the dead centre of her lower lip.

"Right," she opened her mouth and everything came to a screeching halt. "You lot. I've only been briefed on a bit so you'll have to excuse anythin' I get wrong." The woman's imperious stature and regal look clashed so horrendously with her rough-and-ready accent that Quincy had to double-take.

"You sound like me love," he half-teased. "Ol' Blighty still kickin' these days?"

The woman's gaze snapped to Quincy and locked on. Everyone sucked a breath as they expected a dressing down of catastrophic proportions but when her smile broke, it was wide and earnest. "Could say that. From Leeds. Not the posh bits, mind."

Quincy nodded slowly, processing. "From the rubbish bits, then?"

"'s why I'm here," the woman shrugged. After a moment, she nodded to the group. "I'll introduce myself so you can get a feel, yea? Short 'n sweet; name's Holly, callsign Trinity. My Warframe, that is. I'm..." She looked at Lettie and pursed her lips. "Well I suppose I'm you, given your armour and style. Before you ask, no, I don't know how this all works. But I am the doc on Olympus and I'm here to help as best I can. Once everyone settled, we're probably gonna be workin' together." She bowed her head slightly, mane of hair bobbing in the process.

"Puta madre," Lettie groaned while rubbing at her face. "Does that mean there's an 'us' for each of us? How alike are we? Are we the same person?"

Cait stepped in. "No, you're not the same person. The timelines... Converge sometimes. But they also differ tremendously. There's only six Hex, right? Here they have... Sixty? Warframes?"

Kay nodded as well. "Similar. Not the same. But similar."

"If I'm older than this universe's Arthur, I swear I will Lord it over you both until the ends of time," Eleanor allowed herself a spot of humour in the rather bleak moment.

Arthur sighed heavily. "Sol, I beg you, if you have any sense of justice..." Cait merely snickered under her breath.

"Well, I'm not about to parade your new selves out and make you do a song and dance," Holly offered a lopsided smile. "But if you've questions, I got answers."

"Can ya stop this bloody bug in us?" Quincy cut to the quick.

"Yes," was the emphatic reply. "But it won't be pleasant."

"Rotting from the inside out ain't real pleasant chica," Lettie countered.

"Yeah now that I've made the stupid jump here to try to make things better can I get like six whole weeks out of this without the Techrot eating me alive?" Amir blurted out. "I feel like a murder Twinkie right now."

"Understandable. Well, right now, you've got ‘bout a day before the serum’s ready. Since someone," Holly glared at Kay.

Kay flinched visibly. "Sorry..."

"Didn't give us much time to prepare fer your arrival." Holly set herself before Lettie first and foremost. "You've been through this song and dance a thousand times, yea doc?"

Lettie rolled her eyes. "Ay, more times than I want to admit. Get it over with."

Holly grabbed a simple set of tools - stethoscope, flashlight, some swabs - and took Lettie's vitals as quickly as she could. Efficient, gentle, and understanding; or as understanding as someone could be given the situation the Hex found themselves in.

Meanwhile, Eleanor reached a hand over to rest upon Amir's shoulder. The young warrior had once again curled into a ball, rocking back and forth upon the medical cot while his eyes pinballed around. Overstimulated was such an understatement for the poor kid. Eventually, Eleanor spoke aloud.

"I hate to do this to you, Holly, but would you be willing to answer us some questions while you work?"

Amir's gaze twitched to Eleanor and a smile broke across his face - distraction. Information. Both things he desperately needed.

"Do what I can but I ain't perfect and my knowledge is pretty limited. Shoot."

"Tell us about your home? Planet... Leeds, was it?"

Holly snorted softly. "Yea, Leeds. It's a hole. Almost literally. When the Britannia made landfall on New London, they stripped the place right quick. Polluted it to hell but all the rich knobs live there now. Even the poorest person on New London's makin' in a year what my family pulled in over a lifetime. Leeds's the industrial hub of Britannian space. Iron, copper, gallium, rubedo, uranium, tellurium, rare metals, you name it. Whole planet's basically a strip mine." She paused before pulling a needle from a nearby tray. "Sorry," she murmured to Lettie who simply grunted.

"That's... remarkably depressing," Eleanor commented dryly.

"Pf. Yea, home's nothin' but acid rain, mines, and big-ass equipment. But it's home."

Nods went up from the Hex as they realised how much that meant.

"Hmm... you mentioned the Britannia. Care to elaborate?" Eleanor forced the conversation to continue as Lettie's procedure completed and she was given liberty to scoot back onto the cot. Next up was Eleanor herself, causing her questions to fizzle while Holly worked.

"Well... I dunno the whole history, y'gotta ask someone who's studied it. But the short version's that there was a big-ass war. One side started winnin’ and the losers decided to build giant sleeper ships and punt 'em into deep space. There was a few... the Liberty, the Rhineland, the Britannia, the Gallia, the Yamato, and… another one. Most made it, one way or another. The one I can’t remember got roughed up though, ‘m pretty sure."

So much for not knowing much.

"Each of the Sleeper Ships landed out in Sirius, where they settled an' started buildin’. Going off the people you've met... Frost's from the sleeper I can’t remember, I think? Amélie is Gallian and trust me when I say that she'll let you know." Holly rolled her eyes in irritation. "An' I'm Britannian. If the accent weren't a giveaway." A pause. “Tannit! The last ship was the Tannit.”

"Love it," Quincy quipped, bright grin on his mug. "Britannia like home? Lotta chip shops and football?"

"Both! And alla the ugly stuff they don't want the tourists to know about too. You'll have to see it, someday." Holly nodded in his direction.

"Take me?" Quincy grinned further still.

"Dinner first," Holly fired back. At least there was someone to match the sniper shot for shot all the way out here in oblivion.

"So they all became different states?" Arthur questioned. "And what of the Tannit?"

Holly jolted slightly and glanced up, from Eleanor to Arthur and back again. "Fuck he sounds posh," the words came before she could stop herself. Eleanor clapped a hand over her lips while Quincy simply bellowed out a laugh. Even Cait pulled her lips in and bit down hard to keep some semblance of a straight face in the moment.

"I'm not posh," Arthur grumbled under his breath, eye narrowing considerably.

"Near's I know," Holly picked right back up. "She made it. Just not in one piece. This is where history starts to get a bit... Wonky. 'cause see, I was taught that there was six ships launched, five that made it. The Gallia was damaged, yea, and she landed a century later'n the others, but she made it. And then the Tannit was just gone. Turns out that ain't quite right cause I know we've got two Tannitian Warframes here. Frost an' Isabella. She's a sweetheart, you're gonna love her."

"It's a good name," Lettie mused aloud with a shrug. Slightly biased.

"The way they tell it, the Tannit made it in two pieces. They managed to land 'em, but way out on the periphery of the sector. Two planets on opposite ends. They grew and grew, but they were in a rough way. Only half the matériel to get going and half the crew. So... They turned to piracy. Turned into two huge pirate... Cartels? Whatever you wanna call 'em. The Outcasts and the Corsairs. Over time they've started to like, mix back in with the rest of Sirius society but they're still a bunch of pirates at heart. Fucking scary ones at that."

Multiple heads turned to where Frost had been carted off and slow nods followed. If there was a society of people like him, no one wanted any part of it.

Holly followed their stares. "Yeah he's a pill. I've had times where he came back with more holes than a sieve and I coulda poured him into a bowl. But he's always lived."

"Pill is an understatement," Amir grumbled. "I'm uh. I'm gonna ask the question. None of those names are Arabic, or African, or like. Indian. Why?"

Here, Holly had to shrug. "I dunno. I know that when Terra finally unified, it was under a few big blocks. But I know that Arabic is still a main language in Gallia, Liberty, and Britannia? And Yamato has at least seven recognised languages, including Chinese and Vietnamese."

Eleanor's interest was piqued. "Chinese? Do you know which?"

"You're askin' big questions," Holly replied helplessly. “There was some kinda big push centuries ago, I think. Combining the different languages into one? Maybe... You'd hafta ask Junichi, he might know. I sure don't." Holly shrugged and offered a half-smile as she moved to her next patient. Almost done.

"Totally fair," Eleanor nodded. "Can't expect you to know everything of our new home, I suppose."

"Thanks, appreciated." Holly's dry, sarky response caused Eleanor to snort. At least sarcasm hadn't died out.

"Can you give us an idea of what our next twenty four hours will look like?" Arthur stepped in to silence any more questions with one of his own.

"Step one, run tests. Specifically, I'm gonna track down whatever form of Infestation his Majesty and the king’s merry men have." Holly's eyes glittered with mirth and Quincy, once more, broke into a huge grin. "From there, we cow it. Stop it from spreading, turn it inert, and make it your bitch. Work for you, not against you."

"Which stops us dying," Arthur ignored the quip.

"Hopefully. Once that's done, you're into the next round of testing. That's to basically get you vaccinated, dewormed, and chipped so we don't lose you."

"Lovely. We're pets." Arthur deadpanned.

Holly checked her charts quickly. "Says here you're survivors who've been adrift at sea for several years stuck in a time loop, have been wrenched away from everything you knew and loved in hellacious circumstances, are of questionable mental stability due to a combination of stress, trauma, and anxiety, and we'd like you to all make it through the next few weeks without you killing yourselves and-slash-or whoever you get your mitts on." Her delivery was icy cold and clinically humourless. Being beaten over the head with their situation certainly caused the Hex to sink into their seats. When Holly spoke again, it was much softer.

"I understand that each and every one of you is an exceptionally talented, skilled, and independent person who has seen horrors I can't even begin to imagine. And once you're back on your feet you're going to get all of your toys back with some new ones. Cait and Kay have debriefed us all on the situation. As much of it as they can. And while I'm so sorry for everything that has happened, I need you to understand that, as a medical professional, my concern is about making sure you survive the next week first and I'll worry about spilled milk and hurt feelings after. Okay?"

Nods from all around. While no one would fault Holly's words, her bedside manner could use a touch-up.

"You're not idiots. You're not children. You're not pets or playthings or broken toys. You are exceptionally powerful men and women who have been through hell. All I'm gonna ask is that you let us work so you can live to fight another day. Okay?"

Quiet hung over the group for a long time and, eventually, it was Quincy who broke the silence. "Aoi and Frost... Are they gonna be okay?"

Holly turned to face him. Her smile was gentle, but earnest. "Both of them will make a full recovery. Swear on me nan."