Chapter 1: Beyond the Veil
Notes:
AN: This is a Harry Potter/Warframe crossover fic. For those not familiar with Warframe, think of it as a Sci-Fi, dystopian world, thousands of years in the future.
[Ashwinder] - a magical serpent that is created from the remains of any magical fire that is allowed to burn unchecked.
Pairing: This fic will not have a conventional romance. It will be with Warframes. That being said, the romance will be very slow; there won't be any actual romance for a long time, not while the Warframes are still little more than rage-filled killing machines. Things will slowly but steadily change as Harry interacts and bonds with the Warframes, with both parties influencing each other in the process.
Important 1: I know that Warframes have some silly power levels in lore. Punching asteroids, creating anti-matter, stopping time with the strength of a foot stomp etc. In general, you won't be seeing that sort of stuff in this story. I will keep it mostly like in the game. If there are some fantastic power fantasy moments in the future arcs, they will not happen easily or often.
Important 2: Harry is not the chosen one in the world of Warframe. He will not take the role of the [player] Tenno and push them out of the story. Canonically, there are hundreds or maybe thousands of Tenno. Harry will be similar to those.
One last thing, you can read this particular chapter (and the next one) on ptron, at /grumpywolf, for free, if you wish to read the chapter together with pics and gifs that I attached to them (FFN does not support that sort of stuff).
-------
FFN is ahead of ao3 with 2 chapters. You can read more over there
Chapter Text
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl when Bellatrix Lestrange's curse hit Sirius in the chest, and Harry watched how his godfather fell through the Veil.
"SIRIUS!"
He ran towards the platform on which the Archway stood, repeatedly screaming Sirius' name in desperation.
Someone grabbed him from behind, their arms locking around his torso.
"He's gone, Harry! There's nothing you can do!"
He recognised their voice. It was Remus Lupin.
"Let me go!" Harry fought with all his might to break free, all the while yelling himself hoarse. "He's not gone! We can still save him!"
"Harry -"
"SIRIUS!"
"Please, stop. You can't save him now… Sirius is dead," the werewolf pleaded with him, all the while doing his best to stop the struggling teenager from running to his death.
But the boy would not listen.
Lupin didn't know what had happened. One moment, his arms were wrapped around Harry from behind, immobilizing him, and the next, he was lying on the floor, over 10 metres away from his initial location.
A pit appeared in his stomach as he raised his head to look at the platform. It was just time to see Harry's back disappearing through the Veil.
⁂
Having broken free of Remus Lupin's grasp, Harry charged through the Veil of Death with no regard for what would happen to him afterwards.
He ran through the shadowy archway as though it were a normal door and scanned his surroundings hurriedly, searching for his godfather.
"Sirus! Where are you?!"
"Sirius!"
The echo of his voice was the only answer he received.
It appeared as though he was in the same place, but try all he might, he could not find his godfather. It was not just Sirius whom he could not find. Remus and the rest of the Order of Phoenix members were nowhere to be seen either.
The Death Chamber was empty, and, on a second look, he realised that he could not see the ends of it. Its walls were shrouded in darkness, like a veil.
An unsettling feeling rose in his heart.
The sounds of footsteps reached his ears and his head whipped in the direction of the noise. Whatever words he was about to say got stuck in his throat when he saw who was the newly arrived person.
It was him. Or better said, a person who looked like himself, like a twin brother or a clone, down to the tiniest detail.
No, something was different. Harry had never seen himself grin so widely, in such a twisted and menacing way. And then, there were his eyes. . . they were not green like his. That clone, or whoever they may be, he did not have his mother's eyes. No sclera, no iris, and no pupils; they were dark, purple, with myriads of lights in them, greatly resembling a nebula in the night sky.
The moment his eyes met those of his counterpart, outside of his own volition, Harry's life flashed before his eyes. Every single memory, experience, thought, and emotion he had ever had came to the front of his mind, even memories he had forgotten or never knew he had.
"The Boy Who Lived."
His clone's voice sounded exactly like himself, but the tone was filled with a malicious glee and an undertone of mockery.
Incomprehensible terror washed over him, and he backed away, stumbling in his panic on the platform on which the Veil stood and falling to the floor with a thud.
Mean laughter came from his doppelganger, mean but filled with amusement and . . . a sort of excitement?
He had fought Dementors, fear incarnate. He had killed an enormous Basilisk and battled an entire colony of car-sized, monstrous spiders. He had also faced off against the cruellest Dark Lord in modern history multiple times, and he had never backed away. However, at that moment, he was frozen in terror.
"Two souls inhabiting one human body. How fascinating," the doppelganger said, and, in the blink of an eye, he was right in front of Harry, their faces less than 10 centimetres apart.
Survival instinct burning stronger than ever, Harry jumped back, trying to distance himself from whoever that being was, but it was faster than him. A searing, burning pain came from his arm as the doppelganger grabbed him from the bicep. Then, a headache as if someone had split his forehead with an axe followed when the clone placed its other hand on his scar.
A cacophony of screams and crazed laughter was heard as Harry howled in agony while his doppelganger laughed out loud.
Blood started pouring from his forehead like a river, and a chilling screech coming from neither Harry nor his clone was heard, but it was fleeting.
"P-Protego!" Harry somehow had the presence of mind to cast a spell.
His desperation did not go unanswered. His magic flared like never before, and he cast the most powerful shielding spell he had ever cast.
His doppelganger was pushed back for a dozen metres, and, for the first time, that malicious, wide grin and the ravenous look on his face were replaced by an expression of surprise and wonder.
A second later, that grin returned, and it looked even more terrifying than before.
Fear still dictating his movements, Harry broke into a mad run towards the Veil of Death. It was not a conscious decision but instinct.
"Harry! I'm over here!"
Shocked by suddenly hearing Sirius calling out to him, Harry's sprint came to a halt, and he turned towards the voice. Tall, with long dark hair, and handsome facial features, it looked identical to Sirius. . . if not for the strange, nebulous eyes.
As Harry started running again, the creature that took on Sirius Black's appearance shouted after him, using Sirius' voice too:
"Don't run, Harry. Are you going to abandon me again?"
Harry ran without looking back. He ran as fast as he could, but it felt as though the distance between him and the Veil was not decreasing in the least.
"Did you not come to save me? Why are you running?"
Cracks appeared on the platform on which the Veil stood, and the entire world began to shake.
"Ascendio!" he shouted, his voice hoarse from how much he had screamed in pain earlier under the creature's torture.
His feet left the concrete platform that was now beginning to break off into pieces and get swallowed by darkness, and his body was launched into the air, straight towards the Veil.
The creature's fingers almost grazed the back of Harry's neck, missing him only by a breadth. Fortunately, he had managed to throw himself through the archway just before the creature could get its claws on him.
Heart beating as if to jump out of his chest, he looked back at Veil to see the creature that had now reverted to imitating his appearance. Its face was twisted by rage, and the archway shuddered when the doppelganger smashed its fist into it. It could not pass through the veil like he did; it could not follow him outside.
A deep, ear-deafening, inhuman scream came from its mouth, and the Veil started shuddering and shaking all over before unexpectedly exploding.
⁂
The Corpus was one of the three strongest factions in the Origin System. It was a conglomeration of plutocratic commercial and industrial interests in pursuit of financial profit. Morals, ethics, laws, blood relations—most Corpus members were willing to forgo anything for the sake of Profit.
The Corpus was led by a council called the Board of Directors, a group consisting of the wealthiest and most influential individuals in the world. Alad V was a member of the Board as well.
As it may be easy to imagine, Alad V had many reasons to be happy. He was one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the Sol System. Millions of Corpus envied and worshipped him. He also ruled over the Jupiter planet and two dozen of its moons. But that was not enough for him. Alad V wanted more. He desired more. Greed was the Corpus' religion, and Profit was their object of veneration.
And more he did obtain. Currently, Alad V was over the moon.
"Sweet Profit, someone pinch me so that I know I'm not dreaming!"
When one of the MOA robots nearby tried to follow his command, he kicked it away and rolled his eyes.
"It's just a saying, you stupid tin can. I'd lose an entire arm if you were to really do that."
Ignoring the bipedal robot that was tilting its gun-head at him in confusion, Alad returned his attention to the sealed laboratory room.
Two days ago, Alad V had done the unthinkable: he had captured a Warframe. A whole, living Warframe. If he could not believe his luck back then, he was simply in disbelief in the present.
He had been in the middle of testing the upper limits of that Warframe's tolerance to electric shocks, taking delight in torturing the creature, when his subordinates told him in a frantic voice that someone had come out of the Void gate that they had been studying.
Alad V himself had never been able to make sense of Void gates. After all, his field of study was genetics and robotics and this Void gate, in particular, was rather strange. It was different from the normal ones. He had acquired it from the Grineer on Earth a few months ago, and he had nearly forgotten about it until now.
"Erratic heart rate [...]"
"Signs of shock [...]"
"Increased cerebral activity [...]"
He tuned out the reports of the scientists monitoring the sealed laboratory until a particular line attracted his attention:
"Readings indicate high levels of Void energy. Most Esteemed Chairman! IT'S A TENNO!"
"What did you just say?!" Alad V's hearing had not gone bad, but he could not believe his ears.
The alleged Void gate started shaking, and the monitoring devices and sensors all started blaring. Alad did not have time to issue any orders before a violent explosion shattered the sealed room and a wave of Void energy burst forth. All power went out as if an EMP bomb had been detonated.
Jupiter was a gas giant; therefore, it was not habitable. The Corpus colonies that lived on Jupiter were not located on the planet itself but on massive floating cities in its atmosphere. Millions of Corpus lived and worked in those gigantic, miles-long facilities to harvest the planet's Helium-3 gas.
That being said, it would take more than a power outage for such marvels of technology to come undone. The secondary generators kicked in, and the floating city regained all of its functions right away.
Other than Alad V, whose state-of-the-art energy shield had protected him from the explosion of the Void gate, the rest of the scientists and robotic units in the sealed laboratory's proximity had all been killed instantly. Fortunately for Alad, a few moments later, after being alerted by the explosion, a large number of MOA robots and Corpus Crewmen rushed to the site.
⁂
Momentarily paralyzed by the doppelganger's inhuman roars, Harry was unable to react and cast a Shielding Charm in time. In the first place, he had never expected the Veil of Death to explode. All he could do was crouch and cover his head with his hands in a subconscious attempt to protect his vitals.
He waited nearly half a minute after the explosion before he finally dared to put his hands down and look around himself. He realised, much to his disbelief, that he was not dead. His elation was quickly doused when he saw the ruins of the laboratory getting swarmed by what looked like a few dozen bipedal, armless robots and just as many men wearing red suits and square metallic helmets that covered their heads completely.
'Are those… muggles? And robots? ...Where am I?!'
He gripped the handle of his wand so hard that his fingers turned white.
'Why are there muggles and robots in the Ministry of Magic?'
A node appeared in his neck when he noticed that all those men who had burst into the laboratory were wielding futuristic-looking rifles. He heard those men shouting something at the robots which started to scour the room with their flashlights on.
'What language is that?'
He couldn't make sense of the situation. No matter how he thought about it, his surroundings did not look like the Death Chamber from the Ministry of Magic, and those people around him were not speaking English either.
'What should I do?'
Dizzy and disoriented from the traumatic experience he had gone through only a few moments ago after stepping through the Veil, Harry's current mental faculties were not at their best, to say the least. He had yet to make a decision when the robots and the Crewmen began advancing into the room.
It was only when they reached his position and the closest robot was only one metre away from him that Harry finally came to his senses.
'Wait. . .'
The robot passed by him as if he were completely invisible.
Harry glanced at himself and then at the Crewmen and bipedal robots swarming the room. He saw them repeatedly flash their lights in his direction and all over the room, but it truly looked like they could not see him.
Taking a better look at himself, Harry finally noticed the cloak of blue energy enveloping his body.
'Am I invisible to them?'
He knew how to cast a Disillusionment Charm but, unless someone had skills comparable to Professor Flitwick, they could not achieve perfect invisibility; that was the reason why Invisibility Cloaks were still so popular and expensive.
'Is this accidental magic?'
He was not foreign to that phenomenon. He had even teleported by accident once when he was a child, and he almost made his aunt explode by looking at her three years ago. Therefore, Harry did not think too much about the strange spell that he had somehow managed to cast and took it in stride.
'I have to get out of here…'
He did not know anything about those people, but it would not do him any good to get caught by them. Robots and futuristic-looking guns were a big red flag.
Still crouching and moving slowly while doing his best not to make any noise, Harry slipped away from the laboratory through one of its demolished walls.
Once he was out of sight, he stood up and broke into a run.
Unbeknownst to him, however, when he stood up, the cloak of energy enveloping him vanished and he became visible once again.
⁂
"I don't care what you do, find him! Even if you have to scour the entire vessel, you have to find him, no matter what!" Alad V shouted into his earpiece.
He gnashed his teeth in frustration.
'I almost had him! I was this close to capturing one of the Betrayers!'
He was not going to let him escape. He wanted to capture him regardless of the cost.
'All the credits in the system are not as valuable as having a Tenno owe you a favour. Now imagine if you were able to control one!'
The prospect of having a Tenno as one of his subordinates was too tempting. The idea of having one of the most fearsome immortal butchers the world has ever known at his beck and call was enough to make him salivate.
Leaving the ruined lab behind, Alad V rushed to the nearest laboratory and barged inside, roughly pushing aside all other scientists and Corpus personnel to get access to their computers.
While he quickly typed on the keyboard and interacted with the artificial intelligence to scour the security camera network, one particular scene made him freeze.
"No, no, no, NO! This can't be possible!" he shouted.
A blood-curdling scream came from the computer, and Alad watched with a pale face how one of his subordinates had his chest gored out by a vicious, bright orange claw. It left a watermelon-sized hole in his torso. The beast let out a savage growl before throwing itself at the next one, turning into a whirlwind of gore and death as it ripped through the Crewmen and MOA like they were nothing.
It was not the brutal demise of his men that distressed him so, but the creature performing those acts.
Despite the severe situation, Alad regained his calm and connected himself to all the speakers in the floating city.
"Alad V towards all MOA and Crewman on board: prepare for battle. All civilians are to evacuate to shelters. Code Orange. This is not a drill. A Warframe is on the loose."
As loud alarms started ringing throughout the floating city of steel, the Corpus civilians scampered to the shelters, and hundreds of Crewmen and MOA swarmed the now empty streets and corridors.
'It must've escaped during the power outage.'
It was the only explanation. The power had been out for only a brief moment, but he knew better than to underestimate a Warframe's capabilities.
He clenched his fists in anger and frustration. Managing to capture a living warframe and then seeing a Tenno land in his lap, out of nowhere, had made him think that that had to be the luckiest week of his entire life. But that perfect life was thrown into chaos by the explosion of that strange Void Gate. Not only had the Tenno vanished, but the Warframe he had captured escaped too.
As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours, and misfortune never comes alone.
A beeping sound came from the high-tech visor covering his eyes. He rejected the transmission with a tap of his finger, but another one came right away.
"What is it this time?!" Alad shouted as he received the transmission.
"Most Lucrative and Honoured Director-"
"Yes, yes, tell me already what you want!"
"Two Tenno Lisets just landed on the dry dock of Gas City Amalthea! We are under attack! Requesting immediate- aarrgh!"
The transmission was cut as the Corpus Crewman burst into screams of pain.
'Did that Tenno who had slipped through my fingers call for help? …Fortunately, it's not this city. I have enough of a headache with this Warframe on the loose.'
Alad V was currently on Thebe. Amalthea was a different city, one of the many Corpus facilities floating in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Unlike Thebe, Amalthea was built primarily for the sake of storing and protecting research materials and data.
The Corpus Director started typing quickly on the keyboard, and the footage from the cameras installed on Amalthea's dry dock showed up on the screen of the computer.
Warframes: abominations of flesh and steel, violent and savage, they were the most feared killing machines in the Origin System. And then, there were the Tenno who used those Warframes as "meat suits", controlling them with their Void powers to unleash destruction upon the Corpus.
Despite the dire situation he was in, Alad V could not stop the urge to taunt the Tenno, sending his voice to the speakers installed all over the facility.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Betrayers? Have you come to make a donation to my newest enterprise? Excellent! Please report to my lab for reconstruction."
The hologram of a young girl, no older than 12, appeared in front of his eyes thanks to the high-tech visor he was wearing.
"Cut the crap, Salad! I'm coming back for my Warframe!" she shouted at him.
Despite the insulting nickname she used to address him, Alad V snickered in amusement.
"You have loyalty issues, Tenno. My Zanuka project will put your Warframe to much better use."
"Don't waste your breath with that clown, Angie," came the voice of the second Tenno, but Alad could not see his appearance. "Wash your neck and wait for us, Alad. We're coming for you."
Going by the sound of his voice, he appeared to be older than the girl and more experienced. His actions confirmed that theory in the next moment as the Warframe controlled by the boy let out a roar and a layer of shiny, brown metal appeared all over his body like a second skin. Then he charged towards the entrance of the facility.
All the Corpus Crewmen in his way were smashed away violently, with many of them getting turned into a gory mist while the MOAs that tried to stop him exploded into countless shards of scrap metal.
It was a Rhino. One of the physically most powerful Warframes controlled by the Tenno. He was an unstoppable juggernaut.
"Hey, wait for meee!" the younger girl yelled after him, and a pink rectangular portal of light appeared in front of the female Warframe she was controlling.
Jumping through the blue portal, the female Warframe appeared to have teleported, instantly catching up to her colleague from behind.
Her pink colour and the girly adornments she was wearing would almost tempt one to think she was cute. . . until they were reminded of who, or better said, what she really was: a Warframe. A killing machine.
⁂
Back in Thebe, Harry was running as fast as his legs could carry him, ducking and covering his head with his arms every time a gunshot whirred past him.
Fortunately, every single blast door he encountered opened for him before he could even reach it, despite the fact that he was running at full speed.
When it looked like he was slowly getting away from the security crew, the clang of robotic footsteps echoed in the empty hallways, and a group of MOA started chasing after him from behind, quickly covering the distance between him and them.
Realizing he would never be able to outrun those robots, Harry turned around and shouted:
"Reducto!"
A blue bolt came from his wand and blasted one of the MOA to pieces.
At his display of aggression, the other MOA also opened fire. Initially, Harry had unconsciously underestimated those robots, being more wary of the armed humans instead. After all, those robots were rather small and looked almost like a wingless chicken. They didn't look scary in the least.
But when the plasma rifles serving as their heads lit up and the blasts they fired melted holes in the walls of the facility, Harry was forced to reconsider his opinion of them and broke into a run once more.
After making a turn and noticing a blast door to his left that did not open when he ran past it, Harry abruptly stopped running and came back to it.
"Alohomora!"
Despite the high-tech locking mechanism, the blast doors were opened, and Harry quickly rushed inside.
"Colloportus!"
The heavy blast doors were shut close after him before the robots could reach his location.
A few moments later, he heard the loud clangs made by the MOA's metallic limbs while running, and he tensed up.
The robots had lost sight of him when he had made a turn, and he managed to slip into this locked room without them seeing him. Now, the robots were walking around, back and forth, and staring at their surroundings in confusion, wondering where he had escaped to.
Hearing the sounds of their footsteps fading into the distance, Harry let out the breath he had been holding.
Finally getting a moment to catch a breather, he fell on the floor bonelessly, as if he had reached his limit. His clothes were soaked with cold sweat and his face, neck, and arms were stained with the dried blood that had come out from his forehead.
When his mind went back to what he had experienced after jumping through the Veil, Harry forced himself to stand up and started inspecting his surroundings in an attempt to distract himself from those thoughts.
'Men with guns like in a sci-fi movie and actual robots firing laser blasts? Is this some top-secret Muggle facility with technology that they never showed to the public?'
The movies he had watched as a child about secret organisations and espionage were making his thoughts run wild.
He went to one of the many metallic lockers in the room and whispered the incantation for the Unlocking Charm again.
The locker's door opened with a soft click, and Harry found a stash of thick red clothes inside. They were identical to the uniform worn by the security personnel who had tried to apprehend him. He also found a square, metallic helmet like those worn by them.
He decided to put them on. He didn't know how effective his disguise was going to be considering that he couldn't understand a word they were saying, but it was better than nothing.
It took some work figuring out how to put on those clothes and how to zip them up, but he managed to do it after a few minutes of struggle. He also grabbed the helmet and was going to put it on when he heard loud noises coming from beyond the blast door.
Grabbing his wand again, Harry turned towards the entrance anxiously. His face turned pale at the death cries and disturbing, squelching noises he heard.
Someone or something was causing a bloodbath outside.
The terrifying sounds stopped, and, for a few moments, Harry dared to hope that whoever that may have been went away.
However, five bright, flaming claws suddenly stabbed through the blast doors, and Harry jumped back in surprise when a large portion of the thick, metallic door was ripped apart as if it were cardboard.
Then he saw it: it was a humanoid being, female by the looks of it. The armour she was wearing and the crown-like helmet covering her head may have been white once but their colour was almost indistinguishable due to the grotesque amount of blood they were caked in.
The creature let out a loud, savage scream that could not have come from a human's throat before leaping at him, her fiery claws stabbing towards his neck.
Chapter 2: The Tenno
Notes:
FFN is ahead of ao3 with 2 chapters. You can read more over there
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Two Warframes sprinted and bullet-jumped through the long and wide corridor of the gas city at breakneck speed, a large group of MOAs and corpus crewmen hot on their tails.
"Angie, prime them with anti-matter! I'll protect you!" the Tenno who was controlling Rhino said to the girl next to him.
"Alrighty~" the girl sing-sang a reply.
The pink Nova stopped, and Rhino got in front of her, using his Iron Skin ability that reinforced his durability to block the rain of bullets and laser beams coming at them. With Rhino protecting her, Nova raised her left arm and a sphere of red light formed in her palm before she slapped it on the floor.
With Nova as the centre, a radial wave of anti-matter erupted from her, somehow avoiding Rhino but still afflicting every single one of the enemies around her. The crewmen and the robots started moving like in a slow-motion movie, becoming more than twice as slow as they used to be.
As the two of them ran away, leaving the slowed-down enemies in the dust, they soon arrived at a chamber whose floor was covered in laser beams.
"It's not here!" the Tenno controlling the pink Nova said.
Blue light suddenly manifested from Nova, and a pink-haired girl no older than 12 materialised in front of the warframe.
"I left it right there, in front of the terminal!" she said, her voice sounding as if she was going to cry. "Trust me, Galen, this room is the last thing I remember before my transference was cut off!"
Another blue light manifested from Rhino too, and Galen, the Tenno who controlled Rhino, materialised in front of his warframe too. He was a 16- or 17-year-old teenager with a short crew-cut hairstyle and black marks that looked like scars on his neck and jaw. They were traces left by the void.
"I trust you, relax. And don't worry, the Corpus must've taken her away, just like they took away your Liset. We have to recover that one too."
Angie nodded obediently and transferred her consciousness back into her Warframe, with Galen following suit. Then, they left the room with lasers and started running/bullet-jumping again, heading towards another wing of the enormous gas city.
"Hey, Galen."
"Yes?"
"What if it's too late? What if we can't find my Valkitty anymore?" asked Angie.
"You can always build another one, can't you?" Galen said.
"I can't. I need Tellurium to craft her, and that's so hard to obtain. I'd have to infiltrate Uranus again, but you know how difficult that is. That place is crawling with Grineer," the girl said hesitantly.
"Why would you need Tellurium to craft her?" he asked in confusion. He had a Valkyr too, and he had not needed that material to craft her. "What are you not telling me?"
". . . My Valkyr was a Prime," Angie said with half a mouth.
"A Prime?!" the boy shouted incredulously.
He was so surprised that he even stopped running. His own Rhino wasn't a Prime but a clone of the original. "How the hell did you lose her?! Primes are invaluable!"
"I didn't mean to, okay? It's the first time I broke into a Corpus facility on Jupiter! Salad's ships are different from any other Corpus ships!"
Rhino ran a thick, armoured hand over his helmet, showing Galen's disbelief.
"Why in the hell would you take Valkyr to a spy mission?"
Angie didn't have any excuse for that.
"I was just so excited. . . I never had a Prime before and wanted to try her out. . ."
"No shit that you never had one! There are less than 100 primes in the whole world! They are unique! And you lost her! Haaa. . . what are we to do with you?"
Thoroughly chastised, Angie remained quiet. Luckily for her, an incoming transmission for both of them stopped the older boy from scolding her any further.
The hologram of a woman wearing a lotus-shaped helmet appeared in front of their eyes, and she spoke to them:
"Tenno, I'm sensing a very high density of void energy in one of the Gas Cities nearby. I've sent the coordinates to the cephalons of your ships." (1)
"Does it have to be us? We're kind of in the middle of something," Galen replied.
Suddenly, alarms started blaring, and the blast doors, which had been opening for them automatically until then, were all shut down, opening only for a large group of MOAs who flooded the corridor.
To make matters worse, poisonous gas was ejected through the ventilation holes. The MOAs were robotic, so the gas did not affect them, but that was not the case for the Warframes, who were an amalgam of flesh and steel.
"Shit, this is bad! Alad seems determined to get rid of us."
"What do we do now?" asked Angie. Despite her age and her apparent inexperience, she did not seem to be worried in the least.
"I'll open the way for us. Keep up with me no matter what. Don't get left behind!" Galen said, and the Rhino he was controlling let out a Roar, increasing his and his ally's strength.
At the same time, the Lotus continued talking to them as if she were unaware of the perilous situation they had gotten themselves into.
"It is imperative that you two go there. You are the only two Tenno deployed on Jupiter at this moment. My readings indicate that Alad V has captured one of your fellow Tenno."
"How is that possible?! We never leave our Orbiters!" the young girl could not believe her ears.
The reason for her lack of worry despite the life-and-death situation she was in right now and the reason why she was still alive after her Warframe had been captured was that she and Galen were actually not there.
Only Nova and Rhino, their Warframes, were present there. The Tenno controlled those super soldiers through an action called "transference": by sending their consciousness, their astral projections, into the bodies and minds of the Warframes.
Angie and Galen, and all Tenno, with no exception, never left their Orbiters, the mother ship housing their real bodies. While their enemies could kill or capture their Warframes, they could never kill the Tenno, the ones who controlled them. And the Tenno could normally just craft another Warframe in place of the one they had lost.
Galen was just as surprised as Angie, but he didn't freeze.
"Focus Angie!" he shouted at her.
"Y-Yes, yes!" she said, startled.
Rhino let out another Roar, buffing himself and Nova with increased strength. Rhino's body glowed with a brown, earthly colour, and his speed increased abruptly as he Charged at one of the blast doors.
All the MOAs in his way were smashed away like bowling pins, and their laser blasts bounced off his Iron Skin, not leaving even a scratch behind.
Then, a deafening crashing sound rang, and the entire room shuddered as Rhino smashed his way through the reinforced blast door, blowing it apart.
Escaping from the room filled with poisonous gas, the two Warframe bullet-jumped continuously along the corridor, heading towards the nearest dry dock where their Cephalons were waiting with their Lisets.
"Couldn't it be just a Void Gate? I know the Corpus researchers like to study those. I've seen a few on Europa," Galen asked the Lotus while they were running away.
"I am 100% confident. That is the signature of one touched by the Void. I don't know who was reckless enough to leave the Orbiter on their own, but we cannot let Alad V get his hands on them. They are your sibling. We have to rescue them no matter what."
"Understood," Angie and Galen replied at the same time.
The dry dock was just ahead of them, on the level below, when another group of Corpus Crewmen and MOAs appeared in front of them, cutting their way. Furthermore, the level below was infested with enemy troops too.
"I'm low on energy," Galen said. "Maybe got enough for only one more ability."
"Leave it to me," Angie replied confidently, and a rectangular portal appeared in front of her.
Throwing herself through the portal, Nova teleported right into the middle of the enemy squad, drop-kicking one of the crewmen in the head. She had just landed on the ground when she also took out two twin, white submachine guns and fired wildly at everyone around her, killing them mercilessly before they even realized what was happening.
"Galen!" Angie shouted after massacring the squad of Corpus units and threw a portal in front of her partner.
Rhino threw himself through the portal, which teleported him to the level below them, right above the dry dock swarming with enemies.
Time seemed to have stopped as the juggernaut of a Warframe landed on the ground with a powerful stomp, lifting dozens of robots and Corpus humans in the air.
Nova also teleported onto the dry dock next to Rhino and unsheathed her melee weapon, a massive scythe. While the enemies were still suspended in mid-air as if through magic, she started swinging her scythe crazily, not minding the blood, gore, and metal parts that splattered all over her when she cut them in half.
Not one to be left behind, Rhino took out a heavy-looking gun, which let out extremely loud sounds with every bolt it fired. The gun was so powerful that its bullets would send the crewmen and the robots flying, nailing them into the distant walls.
Once the enemy was dealt with, two Lisets landed on the dry dock, and the Tenno rushed to embark.
⁂
The terrifying sounds stopped, and, for a few moments, Harry dared to hope that whoever that may have been went away.
However, five bright, flaming claws suddenly stabbed through the blast doors, and Harry jumped back in surprise when a large portion of the thick, metallic door was ripped apart as if it were cardboard.
Then he saw it: it was a humanoid being, female by the looks of it. The armour she was wearing and the crown-like helmet covering her head may have been white once, but their colour was almost indistinguishable due to the grotesque amount of blood they were caked in.
The creature let out a loud, savage scream that could not have come from a human's throat before leaping at him, her fiery claws stabbing towards his neck.
He had no time to cast a Shielding Charm. She was too fast, way faster than he could react. In desperation, he could only instinctively raise a hand in an attempt to protect his head.
The sound of an explosion was heard, and Harry found himself slammed into the metallic lockers behind.
Groaning in pain, he opened his eyes to see that the female creature that had tried to kill him had been blasted backwards too, just like him.
He had thought that he was going to die. He had no idea how he had survived or how he had sent the creature flying.
Harry was not aware of it, but, in his desperation, he had called upon the Void powers a second time that day. The first time he did it was when he turned invisible and escaped from the Corpus after coming out through the Veil of Death.
As for what had sent the Warframe flying now, it was a Void Blast.
Coming back to his senses, Harry quickly raised his wand and cast a Shielding Charm.
"Protego!"
However, when she stood up from the floor, the Warframe did not seem to bear ill intent for him anymore. She walked towards him slowly, her arm raised as if to touch him. But her fiery claws were stopped by the thin membrane of light that Harry conjured to protect himself.
As the saying goes, from the fire into the fire pan. Not only was he cornered by a vicious, violent creature in a room with no escape, but, at that moment, he also saw a group of armoured soldiers appearing in the corridor, just outside the broken blast door.
He was not the only one to notice them; the creature did too, and Harry was startled to see her turning with her back to him to face off against the group of men and robots.
Dozens of laser blasts started raining upon the two of them, and he was shocked to see none of the beams reaching him. The creature in front of him started blocking and deflecting all the bullets and laser beams to the side, the stray projectiles leaving deep holes and scorch marks into the metallic walls of the locker room.
Harry did not know it, but, upon feeling the Void energy from his Void Blast, the Warframe mistook him for a Tenno and stopped attacking.
'Is she. . . protecting me?' he thought in realisation after a few seconds when he saw the armoured female extending herself to block a laser blast that was not even close to hitting her but could have endangered him in the back.
He was still coming to terms with the fact that the creature who had just tried to kill him had suddenly taken his side when a loud voice rang from the many speakers installed in the facility. Harry could not understand what it said due to the language barrier but the enemy soldiers did.
"The Warframe and the Tenno are both together? How touching! Hahaha! Bring out the sonic battalyst prototype!"
No sooner than his words ended, a Corpus crewman rushed towards the broken door, pushing a circular, heavy-looking device on wheels. While the rest of his fellow crewmates and MOAs were firing continuously upon the Warframe, another crewmate came and inserted a half-a-metre-long power cell into the device.
The so-called sonic battalyst prototype lit up with cyan light, and an extremely powerful sonic wave exploded from it, blasting the Warframe back, into Harry's Shielding Charm.
Harry himself cried out in pain as his eardrums were ruptured and blood flowed from them down his neck. Unable to concentrate anymore, his Shielding Charm broke, and the Warframe's body was slammed into his chest, pinning them both against the metallic lockers behind.
For the third time that day, his newly acquired Void Powers unknowingly flared, and the Warframe lying against his chest was bathed in a bright, powerful blue light.
Energised by the Void Power flooding her system, the Warframe let out a savage cry, and a red aura enveloped her body. She went into Hysteria.
She got up from Harry's chest and, seemingly completely immune to the devastating sonic attack that was still being fired at her, she leapt with the grace of a feline towards the Corpus device.
What followed next was far from graceful. Enraged by their previous attacks, the Warframe started swinging her claws left and right, tearing everything apart.
"Get to the Tenno!" Alad V's screaming voice came from the speakers. "She cares about the Tenno! Attack him to handicap her!"
Was it pure instinct? Or did she understand Alad V's words? The Corpus Director's voice had yet to fade away when Valkyr let out a powerful Warcry.
The crewmen and even the MOAs were momentarily disoriented, and they sluggishly turned their weapons towards the Warframe.
"Imbeciles! I said to shoot the damn Tenno! Are you deaf?!" Alad V screamed.
"S-Sir, we can't!" one of the crewmen shouted while firing his Detron handgun at Warframe.
They didn't understand what was going on, but Valkyr's Warcry had not only made them sluggish, but it also made them unable to turn their attention away from her. For all intents and purposes, it was a Taunt, locking their aim to attack her.
Harry didn't know if it was because he was just barely conscious and his eyes were playing tricks on him or if the creature's speed had suddenly more than doubled, but she became like a blur in his eyes.
The Warframe threw herself at the still-surviving crewmen and MOAs, killing them brutally. She ripped their intestines out of their stomachs, sliced them half from the waist, broke their spines, or kicked their skulls into a gory paste.
If he had been in a normal state of mind, that display of gore and savagery would have made him empty the contents of his stomach, but, at that moment, everything only seemed like a bad dream to him. With his eardrums ruptured and a blinding pain coming from his back, he could not even stand up.
At last, the screams of people dying and that of robots being destroyed ceased, and the Warframe returned to his side. The last thing he saw was the creature coming to him and picking him up from the floor. She put him on her back and tied his body to hers with a rope before she broke into a run.
In spite of how hard he was shaken by her run, his eyes closed, and he fell unconscious.
But even in his dreams, he could not find peace. Cruel laughter that sounded like himself (but it was not his) and an enraged, female scream filled his mind with an anger that did not belong to him.
Incomprehensible flashes of memories flickered at the front of his mind. Glinting of white and gold, loud sounds of steel and gunfire, and momentary but acute episodes of pain that made him break into a cold sweat and shiver all over.
They were things he had never seen before. They were flashes of memories that did not belong to him but seeped into his mind all the same, consuming him.
Fortunately, that torturous experience did not last forever. He was woken up from his restless slumber when the armoured female who was carrying him on her back stopped. The rhythmical jolting of his body while she was running ended when she stopped and the sudden stillness woke him up.
⁂
As Nova and Rhino disembarked from their Landing Crafts, they checked the holographic map of Thebes that the Lotus had sent them and started running towards the point that she marked on it in real-time, the source of the Void Energy signature that she had detected.
"The Void Signature is heading towards you fast!" the Lotus warned them. "Be careful!"
Nova took out her twin handguns, and Rhino grabbed an enormous hammer from his back. The Lotus may have told them that the Void Signature was a Tenno, but the situation was so unusual (never had a Tenno been captured before) that they could not help being cautious.
Mere seconds after they got into a fighting stance, they saw a formerly-white Warframe, stained with blood and other bodily remains from head to toe, sprinting towards them.
At the sight of them, she lowered her speed gradually until she arrived in front of them.
"That's my Valkyr!" Angie suddenly shouted. "It's really her!"
"How is she moving by herself?" Galen asked in bewilderment.
When the girl materialised her consciousness outside her Warframe, Galen shouted at her:
"Angie, don't be reckless!"
The young girl didn't listen to him and walked closer to Valkyr, her hand raised in front of her and talking to her in a gentle voice, as if she were talking to a cat:
"There, there, Valkitty, it's me, Angie. You recognise me, don't you?"
But when she got within 4 meters of her, the Warframe let out a threatening sound, making the girl freeze in her tracks.
"Angie, fall back. Something is not right," Galen said, willing his Rhino to pull the girl back.
"Let me go, Galen, let me go!" the girl shouted at him rebelliously. "Don't you see? It's my Valkyr! She came to me!"
"She didn't come to you. Open your eyes and look at what she's carrying on her back!"
At his words, she finally realised that her beloved Warframe was carrying a boy on her back, his body tied to Valkyr's back with her Ripline.
⁂
Waking up, Harry looked at his surroundings in confusion due to the vivid but terrible dreams he had been having. Furthermore, everything appeared to be blurry.
His hand went to his face, trying to fix his glasses, only to realise that they were missing. They had fallen off when the sonic attack coming from that Corpus device had slammed him into the locker.
Nonetheless, it wasn't as though he was entirely blind. He could recognise the shape of two humanoid beings that looked rather similar to the one that was carrying him on his back. Moreover, a young, pink-haired girl stood in front of him, talking to him in a loud voice.
"[...] Valkyr [...] to me [...] mine [...]"
Whatever the girl was saying, he could only understand some broken words from it. But it was strange that he could understand anything at all because that was clearly not English.
After a while, the creature that was carrying him started letting out some threatening sounds. However, he could sense that they were not directed at him but at the people blocking their way.
⁂
"I've never seen that guy before," said Galen. "I would have remembered someone like him."
There were less than 1000 Tenno; after spending so many years together, he remembered all their faces and even knew most of them by name. For better or worse, they were all of similar ages, children and teenagers who had been touched by the Void.
"Lotus, do you know him?"
If he, by chance, did not remember a green-eyed boy with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead, the Lotus surely would. After all, she was like a mother in all but name for them.
"I don't. I don't think he is one of you, the survivors from Zariman."
Angie's face stiffened and her astral projection vanished, returning into her Warframe.
"Could it be him?" the girl asked in a fearful voice for the first time.
"What should we do?" asked Galen as his Rhino clenched his powerful hands on the handle of his enormous war hammer.
"It's not the Man in the Wall if that's what you're afraid of," the Lotus said, putting the two Tenno's worries to rest. "He appears to be severely injured."
"Then what should we do? He's got my Valkitty!" Angie started whining again now that she knew that the boy in front of them was not the sinister creature of the Void that all Tenno were afraid of.
"I'm pretty sure your Valkyr has got him, not the other way around. Look, she tied him to her back with her Ripline," he remarked.
"Seeing a Warframe act on its own is unusual. Most Warframes do not possess sentience. However, it is not entirely unheard of. Angie's own Umbra Excalibur showed such sentience too, did it not? I also know of a Mirage and a Voruna who had done the same. There are cases when Warframes act out of their own volition. . . I suggest you allow her to pass. Follow her from a distance and observe her actions," the Lotus spoke to them.
Although she was very dissatisfied, Angie did not disobey the Lotus. Still grumbling to herself, she followed Rhino's example and took her Nova out of the way, freeing the path.
With Rhino and Nova moving out of the way, Valkyr stopped growling and broke into a run again. She wasn't running at random; it looked as though she knew exactly where she was heading.
Following her from behind, Angie and Galen began to wonder why none of the Corpus crewmen and MOA were coming to attack them. But when the pools of blood, piles of corpses, and heaps of robotic parts started filling the corridors, they understood that Valkyr had already killed everything that moved long before their arrival in Thebes.
A few minutes later, the Lotus and the two Tenno finally saw where the female Warframe had led them to: it was a hangar on the other side of the Gas City.
Hanging from the tall ceiling of the hangar was a pink Liset, painted with blue and yellow flowers.
"That's my ship! So that's why I couldn't find it at the Orbiter!" shouted Angie.
Normally, if the Tenno's Warframe was killed in action, a good and responsible Cephalon would pilot the Landing Craft back to the Orbiter.
The scorch marks marring its surface revealed the fact that the Corpus had tried picking the ship apart, but it appeared that they had yet to succeed in their endeavour because the Liset was still in one piece.
"Seriously, Ordis! How did you get captured?!" Angie came out of her Warframe and yelled at the ship.
The hologram of a cracked cube of light appeared in Angie's eyes, and a voice filled with emotion rang:
"Operator! Ordis is so glad to see you! Ordis is jubilant! I have been worrying myself insane over your safety!"
Galen also materialised himself outside of his Rhino, and a fed-up expression appeared on his face.
"Angie, why do you still keep this bat-shit crazy Cephalon with you? Just get a new one, for Void's sake!"
"Hey, don't be mean to him! I like Ordis just the way he is!" Angie said in a defensive tone, forgetting all about her anger at the Cephalon once Galen insulted him.
Completely ignoring the rude Tenno, Ordis asked Angie:
"Operator, who is that - filthy - um, wounded, boy on your Valkyr's back?"
The Lotus spoke to them at that moment, cutting their chatter short.
"We don't know when the Corpus' reinforcements may arrive. I suggest you leave as soon as you can. Angie, take your Liset and return to the Orbiter. We will be having a discussion later."
"Understood," the girl said obediently and walked to her Landing Craft.
"Galen, lead Valkyr and the boy to the dry dock I marked on the map. I have already informed your Cephalons to move your two Lisets there."
"Are you sure it's a good idea to bring this guy with us up there?" Galen asked as he looked at the green-eyed boy who was glancing around him vacantly; it was as if he were not fully present or aware of his surroundings. "Even if he's not the Man in the Wall himself, he could still be an agent of his."
"The two of you will not go to the Orbiter. Head towards Larunda Relay. I have already contacted Darvo, the weapons dealer, and instructed him to place our subject in a containment chamber and treat his wounds."
"Understood."
The situation was still strange and unclear, all the more so because of Valkyr's unnatural behaviour. But, for now, Galen stopped thinking too much about it, feeling content with the fact that the weird warframe was following him as the Lotus said.
Notes:
AN:For those who want to see more of warframe, I strongly recommend these 2 cinematics:
Warframe's Official Cinematic: watch?v=MsbL8lFHrZI (6 minutes long, but it's freaking awesome. One of the best video game cinematics out there)
Valkyr Prime cinematic: watch?v=9ubZLPNE4Lk (2 minutes, 47 seconds)
Trace7187 on Chapter 1 Fri 07 Mar 2025 09:55PM UTC
Comment Actions
grumpywolf_ao3 on Chapter 1 Sat 08 Mar 2025 03:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
Romedov on Chapter 2 Tue 09 Sep 2025 07:42PM UTC
Comment Actions