Fireteam- Series Finale- Steel Meridian

[Sixty5]

Soylent Green is people!

Definitely would not want to be a Grineer right now.

[NyxOOX]

Archeron-426

 

Dat reference.

[Domesticon]

And so the plot thickens.

[Doozy84]

Archeron-426

 

Dat reference.

I was afraid no one would catch it.

 

DON'T SAY IT IF YOU KNOW IT, ITS A SECRET.

[WarframeStigma]

I was afraid no one would catch it.

 

DON'T SAY IT IF YOU KNOW IT, ITS A SECRET.

plzz i want to know things! tell meee

 

edit: ohhh, so it was called "acheron"...i didnt even know that...lol...i know it by...the oth-[withholds information]

Edited October 26, 2014 by Deathshatter

[TrashSpider]

Soylent Green is people!

Definitely would not want to be a Grineer right now.

I saw it more as protein shake, literally... 

[Doozy84]

I saw it more as protein shake, literally... 

WAIT TIL WE GET TO THE PART ABOUT CANNIBALISM.

 

spoiler alert: Cannibalism.

[S.T.M.P.D]

A lost thing with the number 426, you say? My, my.

[connorpistol]

OH KILLEM!

[connorpistol]

Why would the part about cannibalism be about cannabalism?

[duhadventure]

Meat slushie

[S.T.M.P.D]

WAIT TIL WE GET TO THE PART ABOUT CANNIBALISM.

 

spoiler alert: Cannibalism.

"We're trapped in these tunnels and we're gonna starve to death!"

"We need to eat someone!"

Dedam:"Why's everyone looking at me, Deeve?"

Deeve: "Because you've had this a long time coming, son."

[Doozy84]

"We're trapped in these tunnels and we're gonna starve to death!"

"We need to eat someone!"

Dedam:"Why's everyone looking at me, Deeve?"

Deeve: "Because you've had this a long time coming, son."

five more lines of dialog and you can call yourself a fan fiction writer! Solid gold!

[Doozy84]

fireteam will update at some point this halloween weekend. I finished my novel so hopefully updates will become more frequent until everyone dies.

Maybe.

I dunno. I promised myself I'd add another session to my workout routine to sink all that time I'm not writing right now, so we'll see how that goes.

[Doozy84]

Deeve spread a map out on Dedam’s back and looked at it with his flashlignt.

 

“Which way, sarge?” Derew asked.

 

The fire team was stopped at a four way junction in the duct. Deeve was checking their patrol route.

 

“Straight forward.” He said.

 

“You sure, sarge?” Dedam asked, straightening.

 

“Sure as hell.” Deeve insisted.

 

“What if the tenno is down there?” Demeg asked.

 

“It’s a four way stop. That’s only a 33% chance that the tenno is down any of these tunnels. Those are odds I can live with. Besides, I’m sure we won’t run into it if we stay on the patrol route- Even a tenno would be a fool to just keep going in a straight line, right? That’s too obvious.” Deeve explained.

 

“It’s a little obvious for us, too.” Derew mumbled into the darkness.

 

“There’s an entire platoon of marines down here searching these tunnels.” Deeve reminded him, “I don’t know what the hell that thing is or what its capable of, but every tenno kill recorded in the Grineer Marine Corps was made with overwhelming force. It didn’t make any difference if the tenno was fresh-thawed or out of cryo for years, if we throw enough marines and enough lead, they all catch bullets eventually.”

 

“Not if it only has to fight us five at a time.” Dereb observed.

 

“Listen. We know its killed engineer teams. Engineers only have small arms on their best day, sidearms on most days. There’s a lot of us wandering around down here, we have to logically assume its going to avoid some of us. The reports of a single tenno scoring a 100% casualty rate on a whole platoon are massively exaggerated.” Deeve rationalized.

 

“Except when they’re not.” Demeg muttered.

 

“Belay that Red Veil S#&$, Demeg.” Deeve snapped at her. He didn’t have to be a thought criminal to know that Red Veil propaganda channels were flooded with gruesome after-action reports to demoralize their enemies.

 

He looked at his marines.

 

They were afraid.

 

He was afraid.

 

“We go straight. If it makes us obvious, good. Maybe it will avoid us instead of jump us. If it means we’re on a wild goose chase? Even better. It’s a 33% chance we’ll go down a tunnel its been down, and every boot-as-F*** marine knows a straight line isn’t exactly an ideal ambush path. Now suck it up marines, 33% is pretty good for anything in the Corps, whether its casualty rate, chance of tenno attack, or the daily nutritional requirement on the label of your protein bars.” Deeve commanded.

 

“Dedam, you’re on point.” He said.

 

“I don’t want to cross that junction, sarge.” Dedam said.

 

“You picked a hell of a day to finally start fearing for your life, private. You got a second brain cell to rub together in that skull now?” Deeve asked.

 

Dedam swallowed air, rearranged his gear, inhaled, and then sprinted through the open intersection between the tunnels. He made it to the other side, smiling.

 

Deeve went next. He didn’t waste any more time than Dedam did.

 

Derew.

Demeg.

 

Dereb brought up the rear.

 

“Continue the patrol marine.” Deeve ordered.

 

Dedam marched forward slowly, and for what felt like three hundred yards, there was nothing unusual- Except for the ominous, dark, claustrophobic tunnel of the ship’s arteries.

 

Then, his eyes fixed on a hunched object in the darkness, like some kind of ghoulish figure resting on its haunches over a lump of carrion. The mournful sight chilled him to the bone, but thankfully, Dedam was more well-trained than he was intellectually endowed, and his discipline took over his brain.

 

He made the hand signal for silence, and like shadows, the Fireteam flattened themselves against the wall of the tunnel. Stay close to the walls. Always stay close to the walls.

 

He signed back to Deeve.

 

Pointed his fingers at his eyes. Then forward, then made a motion like a blade slitting his throat to the sergeant.

 

I see a target.

 

He made the slit-throat motion again, pointed to his eye again, then cupped his hand in the shape of the Grineer alphabet question mark over his head.

 

Target appears unaware.

 

Deeve nodded. He pointed to Demeg, then gestured with his finger like he was shooting himself in the head, and then pointed forward. The meaning was obvious. He wanted her to take the shot. One bullet in an unaware target, one nice big rifle round through the base of the skull, one clean kill, go home, laugh about how scared they were of one lonely tenno.

 

Demeg slowly peeled herself off the wall with a silence so profound that a mouse would not have suspected her murderous intentions. She raised the giant vulkar rifle to her shoulder, and peered into her scope. There was a slight clicking noise that only she could hear as she switched the safety off, but it sounded like a peal of rolling thunder in her ear compared to the murderous silence of her bionic legs.

 

She peered into the scope and inhaled.

 

She could see it, the thing Dedam thought was a tenno. It was crouching over a corpse, probably another unlucky Grineer engineer.

 

She bracketed the tenno in the scope, bent over as it was, its back facing her... She could see the ridge-like structures on its shoulders, the organic, crested helmet. She didn’t want to think about the human inside the warframe. Tenno were something else, something more or less human. They were cryo-sleepers from another time, it was anyone’s guess what they were beneath the warframe.

 

It still had a neck though. It was covered in some kind of sleeve of bio-mechanical flesh that looked like muscle, but a neck was a neck and a spinal cord was a spinal cord. One clean shot, and the bullet would travel through the creature’s neck into the nervous center of the brain, slashing the motor functions at the base of the spine, and killing the victim before it even knew it was dead, it would drop like a bag of hammers when the signals to the body from the nervous system suddenly stopped.

 

Demeg took the shot.

 

The vulkar cracked louder than ever, thunder reverberating down the tunnel with the gun shot, and the head of the tenno burst like a ripe melon.

 

But so did the rest of it. It popped and deflated like a balloon full of shaving cream, rotten fruit. It looked hollow, it didn’t look like how a person was supposed to die. Was her subconscious right? Were tenno really not human? What if a warframe was just an empty shell, what if the occupant inside had fallen into dust during cryo-sleep long ago, and the warframe itself just persisted under some kind of haunting homunculus AI, a specter?

 

Demeg exhaled.

 

“Dedam, check that kill.” Deeve commanded.

 

Dedam padded forward.

 

“There’s nothing here but... Acidic sludge and tenno leather, sarge.” Dedam reported.

 

“Tenno leather?” Deeve asked.

 

“It looks like the shed skin of a Martian sand skate, sir.” Dedam replied. “And that goop it was full of, its acid. Its burning through... Through whoever this guy was. I can’t even tell now. He’s a puddle sir, everything this thing splashed on when Demeg killed it is liquefying.”

 

 

“S#&$.” Deeve swore under his breath.

 

Dedam looked back up at the sergeant, his face white as a ghost. Behind Dereb, an evil looking shape in thigh-high boots with rockin $* was lurking. There was no detail on its bony face, but for a heartbeat Dedam thought it was winking at him with eyes he couldn’t see.

 

“Sarge!” Was the only word he could shout.

 

Dereb turned around to see the tenno, but couldn’t get her gun up in time. In the tenno’s hand was a parasitic looking creature, with clutching tentacles wrapping her wrist up to the elbow. It had a jaw like an eel, and it opened in a crocodilian smile to reveal a puckered orifice like the sheath of flesh a snake’s tongue hissed out of. Caught in the moment of fear during the heartbeat before time happened, Dereb could pick out every detail of the disgusting bionic gun.

 

Then the tenno shot her.

 

The parasitic snake gun fired corrosive quills that hissed as they left the weapon, bubbling venomously when they left the barrel. Dereb’s gorgon took all of the fire as she held it in front of her, and one of the acidic rods glanced off the slope of her shoulder armor and ricocheted, hitting Demeg in the helmet.

 

“My eye!” Demeg screeched, dropping her rifle and ripping her helmet off of her head. The corrosive dart had melted it, and acid-slicked molten steel and plastic dripped down her face and burned her flesh, popping her left eye like a ripe grape.

 

Dereb was luckier, but not by much. The gorgon was useless molten slag, it melted out of her hands and took most of her trigger finger with it. One of the quills was embedded in her bionic arm, severing the cables, burning through the circuitry, and throwing sparks everywhere as it shorted it out. Dereb’s primary weapon was destroyed and her right arm was scrap metal hanging off of her shoulder. As she lost her balance from the sudden shift in weight from losing the machine gun, she twisted on her hydraulic ankles and fell to the floor.

 

Derew, Dedam, and Deeve turned to fire, but the women were in their line of sight, Demeg writhing her hands in her face, and Dereb rolling on the ground, parts of her molten gorgon sticking to her uniform.

 

The tenno was a disappearing shadow, until a fleshy tendril with a barbed point lashed out of the darkness, wrapped itself around Demeg’s bionic legs and pulled her off her feet. She fell face first on the floor and was ripped into the darkness, disappearing around the corner in the junction they had just recently passed, her scream echoing down the tunnel.

 

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

[Kaokasalis]

I LOVE IT!!!

 

I swear when i came to the part where Demeg was taking the shot time slowed down and everything got super exciting. The way you desribe Saryns attack on our unfortunate fireteam sounds both horrifying and satisfying at the same time. One part reader, one part gamer.

Edited November 2, 2014 by Afsky

[Sixty5]

I really wish the Tysis worked like that ingame.

[S.T.M.P.D]

1. Man, popping out of a cryopod and haunting fools should totally be a gamemode. Stealth is prioritized, etc.

 

2. We do need an expansion of the Galleon tileset that is its own tileset that is just... these tunnels.

 

3. Now I want a Saryn buff.

 

4. The loud hot girl is always the first to die. Dedam is next, then... Well, it'll be just Deeve and the Saryn Predator-style.

 

5. I wonder if the Tenno permanently digitize and store the souls of those they kill? It seems like they do that for the Capture targets, and probably the best explanation for Shadows of the Dead.

 

6. We are terrible people.

[Doozy84]

I really wish the Tysis worked like that ingame.

 

the tysis shines late game when you care more about status debuffing than raw damage. All the mobs have an HP cap somewhere around 46k anyway, so a lot of the most popular weapon builds over-perform already. Tysis on the other hand is beautiful because its base damage is innately corrosive, so you can dual toxic proc on it like corrosive/viral.

Also, I'm pretty sure the whole 'elemental weapon drawback' thing is going to go extinct eventually, DE is already scraping the bottom of the barrel for new mods, those slash mods from the last event were pretty basement tier. It won't be long before we have the tools to make any mastery-bait weapon into murder machine without trying.

 

4. The loud hot girl is always the first to die. Dedam is next, then... Well, it'll be just Deeve and the Saryn Predator-style.

 

 

6. We are terrible people.

Dead? We can do so much worse than dead...

[Sixty5]

the tysis shines late game when you care more about status debuffing than raw damage. All the mobs have an HP cap somewhere around 46k anyway, so a lot of the most popular weapon builds over-perform already. Tysis on the other hand is beautiful because its base damage is innately corrosive, so you can dual toxic proc on it like corrosive/viral.

Also, I'm pretty sure the whole 'elemental weapon drawback' thing is going to go extinct eventually, DE is already scraping the bottom of the barrel for new mods, those slash mods from the last event were pretty basement tier. It won't be long before we have the tools to make any mastery-bait weapon into murder machine without trying.

That is true, but the problem is that the Tysis doesn't shine until you get to that high level stuff, and until you get to that point it is outshone. I wanted to love the Tysis but I just couldn't. Mostly just personal preference since I use the Lex Prime.

I was more referring to the actually dissolving enemies part. If the nukor can balloon up heads then why not?

[Netsuki]

I was more referring to the actually dissolving enemies part. If the nukor can balloon up heads then why not?

Yeah, I would love to see more screaming-melting piles of mess after a good corrossive proc-kill :D Just like how using a blast config on really good slash melee weapons results in flying gore!

 

@OP

This is so fun to read :D Thanks for the gif aids, though I'm wondering if the tendril at the end is supposed to be our good ol' dominatrix using the scoliac too

[TrashSpider]

Always wondered what the caliber would be on a Vulkar, especially considering how effective it is on us. 

[Kalenath]

 

Dead? We can do so much worse than dead...

 

>:)

 

Oh yes we can. Dead is so boring.

 

Now... WHY would a TENNO of all people NOT kill a Grineer who is known for 'thought crimes'? Hmmm?

 

Or is she dead? Inquiring minds want to know!

Edited November 2, 2014 by Kalenath

[Atrophon]

I ought to start buying stock in popcorn at the rate I'm going through it here. Looking forward to the possibility of more in-depth looks at some of our infested weaponry. Any chance the Phage will come out to play?

[Doozy84]

I ought to start buying stock in popcorn at the rate I'm going through it here. Looking forward to the possibility of more in-depth looks at some of our infested weaponry. Any chance the Phage will come out to play?

hadn't really thought about it because I always thought it was kind of boring, I mastered it and tossed it. The appeal of a laser shotgun wears thin pretty quick.

However, nobody's been killed by a primary weapon yet, so we don't know which one it is yet. Kind of a toss-up at the moment, they're all pretty gruesome ways to die and naturally the scariest one will win. Infested fart gas? bio-lightning? pink bio-laser shotgun? decisions, decisions.