Volt couldn’t remember how he got there. He wasn’t actually sure where ‘there’ was. Either way, it was a very tight space, with only just enough room for him to stand up straight. What bothered Volt more though were all the needles sticking out of his metallic Warframe flesh. Every few seconds, a tingling sensation would run up his body then drain away, as if the needles were… sucking electricity out of him? Volt wasn’t sure.
The last thing Volt could remember was being attacked by a literal ton of… No, they weren’t Zanuka Hunters. If they were, they had all have died to a single Discharge. They weren’t Hyenas either. Jackals? Possibly. They were bigger than normal. And they’d gone directly for Volt, completely ignoring the arguably more valuable Prime Warframes in his squad. There had been loads of them. The squad managed to defeat about thirty of them before they started overwhelming the Tenno. Eventually, they incapacitated Volt. But he couldn’t remember if the rest of the squad had tried to revive him or not.
Now Volt was here. In this little cabinet. There was a small, glass panel directly in front of Volt, but he couldn’t see anything through it. Just… computers and stuff, Volt guessed.
Clearly, he needed to get out of there. The tingling sensation was getting very annoying. It didn’t take long for Volt to think of a way out though.
Pressing himself against the glass panel, Volt concentrated hard, then fell still. His Operator, his real self, phased through the panel and appeared on the other side.
“Wow, that worked…” the Operator smiled, just a little.
Free from the confines of the cell, the Operator had a chance to look around, but decided to free his Warframe first. Luckily, there was a console on the free side of the panel, and it only took a little bit of fiddling around for the Operator to hack it. The panel disappeared into the floor, the needles retreated back into the ceiling and the Volt Warframe was now free.
Transferring back into the Warframe, Volt decided to have a proper look around now. His weapons were nowhere to be seen, but he had void-based lightning powers, so that shouldn’t have been a problem.
“Oh no…”
Volt immediately noticed that something bad was happening around there. He wasn’t the only captured Warframe. There must have been at least twenty other Volt Warframes, each one locked up the same way he had been locked up. But worse than that, they all looked like new Tenno. All of them were normal, non-Primed frames, all dyed and decorated in base colours.
That explained why those Jackals had targeted Volt. He looked like a freshly woken up Tenno, still getting used to things after spending decades asleep. They’d mistaken him for an Initiate.
Peering through each glass panel, Volt checked the Initiates, making sure that they were alive. They were, but almost all of them were unconscious. Except one. A Gold Initiate. Volt could tell because they were wearing their Mastery Sigil on their chest. Volt hacked the console and freed the conscious Tenno, helping them to their feet.
“Are you okay?”
The newbie Volt shook their head, then held up their hand. A mechanical device had been attached to their fingers, a miniature nullifier device stopping them from using their abilities. Volt checked his own hand and noticed that he didn’t have one.
“How long have you been here?”
The newbie Volt shook their head again. “I d-don’t know.” They were clearly not doing well at all. The elder Volt patted them awkwardly on the shoulder, then headed to the room’s only exit.
Surprisingly, the door was unlocked. Volt nudged it open, then peered through the gap. Outside were two Corpus grunts. One was a Tech, the other a lowly Prodman. Volt pushed the door open slowly, then quickly grabbed the Tech by the neck and smashed him against the wall, knocking him out. The Prodman stared blankly at the bright yellow Warframe standing in front of him, then collapsed, presumably in shock.
After checking that the coast was clear, Volt grabbed the Tech’s Supra and handed it to the Initiate. He picked up the Prodman’s Prova for himself. It was literally just an electrified stick, but it was better than being unarmed.
“Why did you give this to me?” the Initiate asked.
“Because I need you to watch my back…” Volt muttered as he tried to read a Corpus sign. It said something about a generator room. “Are they… using us to power this base?”
“I think so…”
“We’re going to have to wake those other Volts up then.”
The younger Volt nodded in agreement as he pointed at a switch by the door they had just passed through. “That switch there. That will wake them up!”
“Really?” the older Volt blinked.
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“I think so.”
Volt shrugged. “Well, you pull it. I’ll cover your back in the almost certain scenario that pulling that switch sets off alarms.”
The Initiate Volt walked over to the switch and hesitated. After some more hesitation, he pulled the switch.
The lights flickered briefly. Once they stopped, an alert started blaring.
“Knew it…” Volt muttered as he pulled the younger Tenno back into the room. “Okay, we need to hack those consoles and free our fellow Tenno. How good are you at hacking?”
“Not very…”
Volt sighed, then threw up an electric shield by the door. “Alright. I’ll hack these consoles and wake up the other Volts. You shoot anything that tries to get in.”
The young Volt did as he was told, aiming his stolen Supra by the entrance. He watched as Corpus grunts rushed by. Not towards the room though.
As the older Volt hacked away at each console, he realised just how young these captured Volts were. No wonder the Corpus so easily managed to get them. If they’d overwhelmed a squad of veterans, they would have easily caught these Initiates.
Most of the Tenno said little as they woke up. The younger Volt by the room’s entrance kicked over several weapons from a handful of Corpus they had killed, and several more Tenno joined them. One of the older Tenno, another Gold Initiate, helped the older Volt hack the remaining cabinets.
As the last Volt was freed, the veteran Tenno breathed a sigh of relief. Now he just needed to get everyone out of there safely.
Suddenly, everything shook. As if they had crashed into something. The lights flashed off then on then off again, reverting to emergency lighting.
“What now?” the Volts all asked each other.
The veteran Volt thought to himself. But a small beep interrupted his thoughts. It was a message.
“Hey Volt, you ok? Rhino said you all got attacked.”
“Yeah I’m fine…” Volt quickly replied. “Can you do me a favour and tell me where I am?”
The other Volts were beginning to get jittery. Volt threw up another electric shield, then slowly led the squad of Volts edged out of the containment room and out into a main hallway.
“How’d you get on that Corpus ship that’s floating around the Larunda relay?” Frost typed back. “Need me to join you?”
“I’m good. Just need a waypoint.”
“Done.”
“Uh, sir?” the Gold Initiate tapped Volt on the shoulder. “Is that a waypoint?”
“It is!” Volt smiled. “Alright, all of you, stay close to me, we’re getting out of here.”
In a flash of light, Volt activated his Shocking Speed power. All twenty Volts found themselves running at high speed, each one surrounded by an aura of electricity. The electric armada charged through the Corpus ship, destroying everything in their path.
“WEEEEEE!” several Volts squeaked as they skidded past stunned Corpus soldiers and blew up unlucky robots.
The army of Volts continued getting faster, tearing their way through the Corpus ship. After what seemed like both an eternity and not very long at all, the Volts found themselves in a large room. Standing in the centre of it was a very angry, very tall and very black Corpus leader.
“You kate tuited sy kpaty! I jipp kipp you!”
Several of the Volts looked at each other, not sure what the Sergeant had said.
“Really?” the veteran Volt snarled. “You’re threatening us for ruining your plans? Look what we’ve done to your ship.” With a blast of lightning, Volt knocked the gun from the Sergeant’s hands. “I’m going to give you a choice. Drop us off at the relay or we kill everyone on board. Or something like that.”
“Yeah!” the Gold Initiate Volt shouted, randomly firing his Supra across the room.
The Sergeant looked around awkwardly, then sighed. “Tery jepp. Tup you kate po tpy pkiy ykik youtyeptey!”
The Corpus leader rushed over to an escape pod at the back of the room and disappeared in a puff of smoke. More alarms started going off as parts of the ship began to break away.
“What did he say?” one of the Volts asked.
Volt tutted as he leaped over to the control consoles. “He said we have to fly this ship ourselves. Hang on, fellow Volts, things are going to get bumpy!”
…
The Lotus Operative sighed as she stared at the mess in front of her. After a large amount of eye rolling, she pressed the little red button on her console, summoning a microphone to call her superiors.
“Can we get a clean up crew to Larunda Hangar 7 please?”
“What is it?” a voice crackled from the other end.
“Some idiot left half a Corpus ship parked in here…”