Volt waved cheerily as he watched the young Mag fly off in her plain grey Liset. He had accidentally stumbled into a Grineer mining facility where they had been secretly broadcasting attack patterns and security information to other Grineer ships waiting in orbit, and this poor Mag seemed to be really struggling on her own. Like most lower ranked Tenno, the Mag hadn’t said much, but she had been amazed when Volt took her to the dojo and gave her a few useful mods to help her on her way.
Once the Liset was out of sight, Volt wandered around the now empty dojo, not sure what to do with himself. He had intended to do some conservation on the Orb Vallis in order to buy more floofs, but Volt was feeling lazy and warm and didn’t want to face those cold, Corpus–ridden winds. He had also considered earning some Focus in Cephalon Simaris’s Sanctuary but something about the Cephalon bothered Volt and he had recently unlocked his fourth waybound.
For now, Volt decided to just hang around the dojo. Sure, there was chaos among the Origin system, but Volt was just one Tenno, he couldn’t always be on duty.
As he wandered around the dojo, a couple of clan mates wandered in and out. One of the new recruits, a Tenno who insisted on always dragging Excalibur Umbra around, was just grabbing new blueprints to build. The other was a regular, an Inaros who would spend hours drifting in and out of the dojo, trading with Tenno from other clans. Today they were brief, doing a trade and disappearing as soon as they were done. In doing so, they had left their trade partner, a primed Mesa, behind.
The Mesa looked at Volt and waved awkwardly.
“Hi.”
“Hiya!” Volt waved back.
“Nice dojo, did you build it?”
“I did!” Volt beamed. “Thinking of redesigning it soon though. Gets kinda old after a while.”
“I like it!” Mesa smiled back. “Since I’m here, do you guys have Ignis Wraith blueprints?”
“We do!”
Mesa seemed pleased. “It was one of those ancient events I missed. Could I get one?”
Volt nodded as he sprinted over to the trade terminal. Mesa threw in a common mod to complete the trade.
“Thank you! Kinda wish I got to participate in that old-time event!”
Volt beamed, always happy to be of help. “No worries! The event was pretty dull though. Just hours and hours of defection.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, we didn’t get actual defection missions until months later. Still not fun though.”
The Mesa bowed. “You must be a really old Tenno then! Thank you for the gift, I must go!”
“Alright, have a good one!”
“You too!”
The Mesa disappeared. Volt blinked his neural sensors in confusion.
Breaking the silence, Inaros reappeared, holding a huge pile of Platinum.
“What are you staring at, Volt?”
Volt continued to blink. “That Mesa called me old.”
“That is because you are old,” Inaros tutted before disappearing again.
Volt blinked some more. He didn’t feel old. He still felt like a small Volt. A Smolt perhaps. But as Volt checked his stash of Platinum, his overflowing credit balance and his own mastery rank, Volt came to a startling realization.
“SHIT, I AM OLD!” Volt screamed as he ran down the hallways. “I’M SO OOOOOOLD!”