Archive of Our Own ^beta

The forests of Earth were dark, the light of Lua refusing to reach the undergrowth choked nooks and winding half-built bunkers of the grineer. The dim-witted clone soldiers skulked about in their nest, scurrying from place to place completing whatever menial tasks their distant queens demanded of them. They didn’t notice a shadow dislodging itself from a towering tree, running along an electrical wire. Her performance continued as she soundlessly slipped behind supply crates piled high. With whispered void-induced power her blade shimmered with oily luminescence. Death’s touch gripped all the tighter for the unfortunate potato-shaped cretins. She supposed to herself silently that their armour was too top-heavy, protecting everything but their legs and arms. Clone rot had claimed most of them, their stringy stubby limbs often replaced with mechanical approximations of what came before. From her first victim’s perspective a sword glint caught the moon for a second, vanishing between the slats of his bodysuit and up into his chest cavity. A scream was silenced before it even issued forth, his pounding heart carrying its death to every fingertip. She dragged him into the shadow, covering his silently working disfigured face with her cloak.

Her silence continued as comms burbled, many of them wondering where their compatriot had gotten to. A heavy gunner, female as they all were, told them to shut it and begin a sweep. Ah, some intelligence at last. Their invader slipped through a tunnel burrowed into a far too large tree. Sylvana’s last folly. Artificial infestation of plant life. Humanity’s hubris in controlling what wouldn’t be. The woman stifled a laugh. How ironic for her to say that.

A head was hewed from its shoulders as she turned a corner, her arm flashing across the space between them. So far, so silent. She dropped from the upper reaches of the hollow trunk, landing with a thud that attracted the attention of another grineer lancer. He brought his gun up, screaming in whatever strange dialect they used. As he fired repeatedly into the dark shape cowering in the shadows even he had to notice it wasn’t dying. He approached with fingers outstretched, ignoring the tipping tapping of footsteps running toward the circular door he’d been guarding. He called to his allies as black matter began to flake from the alluring feminine figure he saw. Only to stop mid-shout as a sword speared through his gullet. The dark shape rose, misting into black motes as she crossed the circular platform that was its creator’s extraction point. The moulted shade handed the sword back to its true owner.

“Good. Go explode on those idiots” the creator grunted. She had a sultry, deep feminine voice that would have drawn her mirror image’s affections were it sentient. She liked to think so. Despite her ego, the moulted monster galloped savagely across the distance between her and her enemies. It leapt upon a gaggle of lancers and detonated in a hail of toxic spores. Their hacking wretched coughs were almost nostalgic to the woman who heard them. “Good dog” she grinned, continuing further into the facility.
The end of stealth was announced with alarms blaring throughout the facility, stupid potato mouths forming that hated word. Tenno. Rolling her eyes she released her most potent weapon on the first imbecilic clone she saw.

His flesh sprouted thickly with fungal growths, mycelial netting surrounding massive fluid sacs of bloated corrosive fluid. She drew her bow over her shoulder and nocked an arrow as he began flailing around in panic. With a single poison-loaded arrow she catalysed the corrosive reaction into a burst of infectious spores. The entire thronging mass of soldiers coughed and spluttered as corrosive fluid brought their death to their throats, each sprouting with sacs much like patient zero had. A symphony of war crimes followed as their perpetrator tended her garden, growing the reaction with every arrow she fired. Her recurve bow, agile and quickly drawn, cracked its ammunition into many a skull as she moved with superhuman grace. It was as if her body were weightless, her strength manifold as she sprung in a twisting leap over their hoarsely shouting heads. She leapt over the islands of slapdash gangways they’d erected. Over the pools of crystalline water beneath them, her sword flashing whenever a cleaver-wielding soldier they optimistically called a butcher got close. She appeared before a bunker door with her sword singing back into its sheath, bisected bodies falling to the ground behind her. Even with their last breaths they still pleaded with their comrades to kill the tenno. Pathetic. Basted in ignorance and wrought in orokin hubris.

With a few quick twists of her heavily modified parazon the bulkhead door slid upward, revealing her target. A prison, such as it was. Little more than a few locked doors set into an overgrown wreck of a base. Sylvana’s trees had long since ripped the roof away in their inexorable grasp. Her eyes fell upon seemingly the only other woman in the base. But she knew that wasn’t true.
Her final enemy was a heavy gunner wielding a fully automatic weapon. She was slender and heavily armoured, her limbs replaced entirely with machinery. Her head was encased fully in a thick helmet with faceplate that concealed her identity. She cursed in their foul language as her enemy entered her sanctum, bringing her weapon up. Thinking better of using her bow the invader leapt into the air leaving behind a simulacrum of herself that quickly began drawing and firing with rapid pace. The dull creature she was tasked to kill looked to each, deciding that the oily sheen of a “tenno” blade was more than enough reason to prioritize.

With arrows pinging off her armour she let loose a slew of bullets that flashed through the night, deafening all those unused to gunfire. The invader slipped behind the turgid wooden walls of the prison, splinters flying as the grineer commander sought to use her machine gun as a sawblade. With a whistle the clone surged across the distance, leaping onto the gunner with an explosion of toxic spores. Aside from a wracking cough it seemed to do very little. The invader smiled despite that, leaning from her hiding place and snapping her fingers. Corrosive cysts began to bloom from the gunner’s armour, popping to reveal raw and red flesh. She fought admirably against the pain, pinging a magazine free before unloading another into the trees. Two shadowy figures split apart from the hiding place, the gunner following the one with the blade whilst her clone retrieved the bow. At least, that was what she thought was happening. With a sultry laugh, the cloaked figure fired an arrow point blank into her exposed shoulder.

“Tenno skoom!” the gunner howled in agony, her arm falling limply. The momentary indignant sound from the invader gave her a chance as she raised a hand, slamming it to the ground. The energetic shockwave that issued sent her enemy flying into the wall opposite with a grunt.

And the gun continued firing. With one arm causing the aim to wildly deviate, the cocky woman once again spawned two targets. Only that time she was less fortunate, taking several bullets to her leg. Her mind flashed red with pain she soon fought through. The invader had her revenge as she issued another whistle. Her sword emerged from the gunner’s chest, forcing her to her knee in soaring agony. Her day got all the worse as her enemy limped toward her. In the fleeting, dying moments of poison taking her she would have been able to see the bullets oozing from infested flesh. She didn’t have the arcanes or mods that would allow such a thing for Tenno puppets. But she had the void. And that was more than enough. She reached up with a taunting laugh, pulling her hood down.

“Not a tenno” she corrected the gunner, full lips parting over animalistic fangs. In her last moments the gunner would have seen a Saryn frame swaddled in black pigments, a cloak disguising the reality from those who saw her. She wore a sarong about broad hips, covering her infested flesh in swatches of cloth. Rather than the dangerous stilettos Ballas had thought more fetching she possessed thickened technocyte that resembled knee-high boots. One of which quickly stomped upon the gunner’s chest, squeezing her last breaths from her. “Be a doll and save me some time, would you? Which cell holds the pirate?” the invader asked, her hair hanging over yellow eyes with black sclera. No, not hair. Tendrils of technocyte approximating hair.

“Clem yourself, skoom” the gunner replied through reedy breaths. Her murderer rolled her eyes, and a flash of steel soon sent the gunner’s head rolling from her shoulders.

It took several tries. Two empty cells met with sounds of disappointment before the final one revealed the invader’s companion. A young woman in a bodysuit undulating with hidden muscle. It had been augmented with thick armour plates, her short spikes of dirty blonde hair held back by a bandana. She had strong features ran through with a few blade scars and a bionic eye. She was helped to her feet as the invader greeted her with a cocksure grin, a clap on her back signalling the offer of her favourite pistol. It looked like it had been welded together from scrap.

“Nice. Edgy even for you” the rescued woman chuckled as she checked her magazine. “Going to become a superhero?”

“You of all people would know better than to call me that,” came the reply.

“I don’t know. Secret lair in the stars, brooding cape and superpowers? You’re halfway there already” she quipped back. Her arm suddenly snapped up, a lance of fire searing its way through a butcher screaming into the landing zone. “Optimistic cobb wasn’t he?” the piratical woman snorted, holstering her weapon. “Here, thank you” she added with half-lidded eyes.

“You don’t thank the sun for rising, Yuna” the swordswoman winked, snapping her fingers toward the lancers spilling toward them. Several erupted into pustulant sores before they’d even gotten their guns out. “See that Gaia gets us out of here would you?” she indicted, glancing over her shoulder as she passed a communicator back. Yuna offered her a smirk as she leapt across the space, arms crossed over her chest as she soared toward the fulminating mass of cloned flesh. Suppurating in its suffering buboes as it was, she viewed what she did next as a mercy.

A purple sweet-smelling haze manifested from the void, suffusing the air and lungs of everyone not currently donning a respirator. Yuna looked on with muffled laughter as the grineer spasmed and coughed, their bodies ravaged by a viral agent. Their skin sloughed from muscle, their armour dissolving in a deluge of corrosive bile as bone was exposed to the elements. They couldn’t scream. All that was left to them was to crumble on their rusting limbs and meekly wheeze their last while their assailant crunched down on one of their brothers. The mushy remains of his skeleton were lifted by a boot made for stomping, a noise of disgust leaving the cloaked figure. She scraped it against the browning steps beneath her before idling toward Yuna’s admiring form. She didn’t admire for long however as a landing craft breached the atmosphere and slowly came to a halt. It was a liset based off tenno designs which couldn’t be helped. An occupational hazard of piracy. Rather than offering its belly however it hovered, opening its front like a hungry animal to receive them. It even rolled out a set of stairs like a panting tongue.

They ascended the steps with japes and playful pushes, both of them climbing through the slim entryway they’d somehow wrangled. The cockpit was little more than a nest of wires and slapdash technologies stuck together with tape and a dream. The main area wasn’t better as both made their way to the living space every liset possessed. If one had the right segments. Or one very adventurous partner and pliers. They fell onto the sofa segments as Gaia did her duty. Not so much a cephalon for a single ship but several. Claimed to enjoy the challenge.

“So, do I get to thank my knight in shining armour?” Yuna asked with a mischievous air. Her arm fell over her saviour’s shoulders with all the subtlety of a ferrite block to the face. She even lowered the other woman’s hood, exposing her pale complexion and additional vertical eye. All three of which rolled as their lips met in a kiss. “Mm. Can almost taste the sarynite” she teased with a slow run of her tongue over her top lip. They cuddled up close, somachord blaring their favourite tunes from Nora Night as they decided what to do with the rest of their day. And whether Yuna had heard anything useful in the grineer camp. Mostly concerning corpus and tenno movements. As always, the pair resolved to avoid that hot mess of stellar politics. It hadn’t been the same since Alad V’s operation had collapsed. One of the few corpus fixers who’d deal with pirates. The technocyte pirate pondered whether Steel Meridian or the other factions wouldn’t be too prissy for a job or two. The Wisteria was getting expensive to run. And almost as if summoned by her thoughts of it, Gaia informed the amorous couple they’d arrived at the flagship.

The Wisteria was a stolen corpus stanchion that had since been repurposed to blare neon purple and blues into the cold dark of space. It looked little better than a hulk with wear and tear all over the place. From asteroid dents to negligible battle damage the entire thing looked like it shouldn’t have been able to move. Which was the point. To the big nobs who knew it existed, they thought it was little more than a dive bar. As the liset pulled along side and docked the pair of them descended into one of the many hangars the Wisteria possessed. Peddlers of every stripe with their ships slotted into place and awnings covering their stalls hawked their less than legal wares as they entered. Several rough figures tore themselves from the anxious drinking they’d been doing and flung themselves toward Yuna and her rescuer. She removed her cloak, telling Rustbucket his bedsheet had served her well. He complained about the holes fussily as he folded it over his mechanical arm. His name was prophetic. Still, Yuna and their friends were soon packed off for celebratory drinks, leaving the stealth-suited bioweapon behind. She’d felt a tingle up her nape. Turning back she saw a figure standing beneath the liset slowly being shelved for later use.

It was herself. But she’d seen that version of her before. She knew it had eyes as black as the emptiness of space, dotted with light enough to know it wasn’t you. She took a few steps toward it trepidatiously, a hand rising to her hilt.

“Hey Suki-Chan” it said in that echoing timbre. Like it was speaking across the vast emptiness of a cave. Using her childhood nickname for twisted fun. “I’ve got a job for you. Want to hunt a tenno?”