"Tenno Tenacity" - A Dramatic Retelling of A Sortie-Based Fiasco

[Librus_107]

[Not sure where dramatic moment retellings fall into the forum categories. If this isn't in the right place, feel free to move it.]

Friends! Countrymen! Space Ninjas! Gather around as I tell you the (dramatic retelling of a) tale of four Tenno who refused to let a bugged enemy spawn force them to retry a mission. It is a tale of a (not really) epic battle against an unseen foe, and proof that even the most insurmountable bugs can be whittled down with obscene amounts of dedication. It is a tale of a trashy Limbo Main (yours truly) managing to be a hero in the end, scarfing down enough energy pizzas to make even the gluttonous Lephantis choke. It is the tale of not letting your pride be spat on by the Corpus machines, standing up to true adversity in the form of one single, self-destructing, airborne robot.

It's also mostly a tale of not wanting to go through a LV.100 Sortie Defense again when the target was one rift bubble away from certain death. 

[I didn't realize to start snapping screenshots until the very end (not only do I main a salt-producing frame, I also am rather daft!), so I apologize, but I'll do my best to set the scene until we get there!]

The place? Lua. The final stop on today's sortie mission, where we were tasked to defend a very fragile little operative against some questionably tanky foes. Our heroes were a Nydus (Tehkku), a Nezha (Jynxed86), a Saryn Prime (King-Gampo) and yours truly, a Limbo Prime (Librus_MT). At first things went well enough, my overly ranged rift bubble allowing the others to make quick work of our foes, and keeping Nydus fed well to sustain his abilities. When the floor caved in to reveal the next stage, things grew dramatically more intense, as my sworn rivals, Nullfiers, used their own nefarious bubbles to pop mine, rendering our A+ strategy useless! Many of us were toppled, hiding away in hopes to regain energy so we could rush in and save our teammates, and more importantly, our very unfortunate operative until I could deal with the dastardly anti-bubble bubbles and place my own down again to turn the ever-growing assault into a field of helpless statues once more. Things grew tense as we were dropping like dominoes, doing our best to race over and revive the others. But finally, we passed wave 10, the last of the assailants falling onto the dusty lunar rock and lying still... 

Or so we thought...

It took a moment for us to realize things weren't quite right when we didn't get the rewards screen to appear and be handed yet another pineapple. It took some digging around, but finally we were alerted to one last straggler: some mysterious, floating point behind the walls of the edge of the map! For whatever reason this singular opponent managed to find their way down to where the next five waves usually occur, a good 50 meters below us! My extensive bubble couldn't reach that far when placed against the wall, and the rest of us couldn't reach it either. Our last saving grace, Nydus, was also helpless to assist, their mutation stacks having dwindled down to a feeble zero, their plan of simply reeling this mystery enemy in for a pummeling like an overweight Norg now useless. 

But we couldn't give up, right? I mean, that assault, barely scraping by... and what if it wasn't a pineapple again? A riven, maybe? We couldn't pass up the chance, at least with this fiasco only having lasted five minutes. No, we needed a plan. The game is still in alpha, after all, we just needed to find a bug of our own to throw at this other, more annoying bug. But what...?

And then, our saving grace was found: wallhacks. 

As this unseen enemy skittered about like some cockroach in the walls, I found out if I stood just at the seam of the wall where it met the floor, I could send out my rift bubble and deal... some damage. Tragically my current build was more for utility than offense, so I had foregone ability strength for duration and range... only able to deal roughly 130 damage to this LV.100 tank. But with Nydus, the only other one capable of reaching past the walls out of food, I could only stand by and slowly blow and pop bubbles through this tiny seam in hopes of whittling down this mountain until it broke. 

But then, the bastard moved.

Unable to wallhack it anymore, we considered giving up. Some of us tried to jump up to the top level again and force it to respawn, only to come tumbling down. We tried using our Operator amps, we spammed other abilities, and we were just about to quit when it fell into a small hole of collision layers, funneled into the very center of the map. Now only 40 meters away, but still out of reach, I realized I could actually turn my reticle red if I hovered over the red target mark. I could actually see and hear the little pest now! And it was trying to shoot us, it's shots pinging against the floor, the iconic pew pew pew sound of Corpus laser impacts sounding along the ground. After some deadeye-sniper-tier scoping, we could see the enemy health and it's identification. It was an Oxium Osprey, and at roughly 2/3rds health! And luckily enough, by hovering over it's exact position, I could bubble it again, taking damage as it was hurled through and back out the rift again and again. With hopes it'd try and explode on us when it was at half HP, this flew us into a flurry of activity, spamming amps and abilities once again, yet only I being able to reach it with the bubble's infinite spawn range.

Many, many pizzas were placed down to feed the bubble's intense energy consumption of being cast and popped again and again... and even then all three teammates pizza reserves ran empty, the enemy standing (er, flying?) in defiance of our efforts. I even had stood on the very spot I could only reach our opponent so long, I had stopped regenerating energy, needing to move around a bit or get the full AFK penalty. And yet I continued to whittle it down, learning that I could Rift Surge it while the bubble was still up for some bonus damage when it popped. Waiting for 150 energy in my pool, then pressing 4, then 3, then 4 again, then waiting... it became almost mechanical in it's execution. And also, very, very boring.

The clock ticked on to 20 minutes, then 30, as I continued to rinse-and-repeat my bubbles and rift surges... the rest sat back and tried to devise other strategies, sometimes looping back to giving up. But then it hit all of us. No! We couldn't give up! We had spent so much time throwing ourselves at this wall, this one enemy that had decided to spawn where it shouldn't. It was sitting there, taunting us. We couldn't let it win, even if it took us the rest of the day. We had committed to a cause. A silly one, maybe, but Mars would freeze over before we let this one out-of-range opponent best us today.

And so it's health slowly ticked down, to 2/3rds, then 1/3rd, then 1/5th, then 1/8th... and then 1/10th. With every swipe of my bubble, it's health bar would tick down one tiny notch, a sign that we could still come out victorious. Bit by bit. Pixel by pixel. Sloooow and steady. Just... a bit... more...

A tiny sliver of red remained, the rythmic sound of the bubble slamming open and close again and again burning into my psyche.

Eventually, the bar was all grey, the value too small to even be seen on the counter. We were all so tired. I think Nezha was just running in circles around the map. Nidus has just... fallen asleep at my feet. Couldn't even see what Saryn was up to. A few more ticks, right? A few more bubbles? I gave some very over-the-top anime lines, about channeling my strength, for the glory of us proud, few, salt-resistant Limbo mains everywhere, I would be a hero!

Pop!

And so, finally, the Osprey died, popping apart and it's remains clattering down into the void that lay beneath the map. We finally heard the victory drums, the victory screen pulling into view. We cheered, but... was it worth it? What was our reward for overcoming such a tricky Corpus opponent? Another pineapple? A small handful of Credits or Endo, or even Kuva? Maybe a Potato blueprint? We all said together that this wasn't about rewards, that this was about making a point, but deep down, we all wanted to know what we'd earn from this hellish trial, watching some blue Limbo pressing his face up against the dusty ground, clapping his hands over and over dramatically... Slowly, our gaze turned towards the rewards tab, and...

OH

MY

SWEET

SUN-SURFING

SENTIENT-SINGING

SANGUINE-SLAYING

SOUL-SEARCHING

MOTHER

OF

ALL

LOTUS:

A real, actual, fully-there-not-some-dream LEGENDARY POWER CORE was in front of us, it's infinite, fractal design ours for the taking. The rarest of the rarest items. Years have been shaved off just trying to obtain one of these. Countless soldiers of all factions have been struck down in droves in hopes of some Tenno getting their hands on one of these. And there it just was, for four nerds watching and feeding a Limbo gallons of energy as he clapped like a seal against the floor for 20 minutes, slowly ticking down the health of one, persistent Osprey. 

So yeah. It was well worth that tiresome dredge, that super-Osprey, the last-ditch effort by some cheap Corpus tactician to get us to give up and go home. "No!" we said. We wouldn't be so easily thwarted after such a tiresome and tense fight. And then with a bit of luck, we watched me spawn a thousand bubbles through the floor to succeed, proof that no threat is insurmountable to the Tenno cause. 

The friends we made, the time we shared... it was a real adventure, all made worthwhile by this shiny, yellow orb now in each of our possessions. I don't know if I'll even spend it. It's a memento to this silly, wonderful, tiresome challenge we set ourselves. We could have easily just restarted, but no. We did it.

 

So, thanks to all my squadmates for having faith (and all those energy pizzas) in me, and ganging up to fight a bug with a smaller bug. To all Limbo mains out there: strive against the hail of salty teammates. You too, can go down as a hero, be the saving grace your team needs in their most desperate times. You all are awesome, with your fancy hats and dapper coats. 

And that is this overly dramatic retelling of how I got my first core, and the friends I made along the way. I thank you all for sitting through this silly story!

[And yes, I know the salt isn't so bad about Limbo anymore, I just have grudges to settle. :P]

[(XBOX)oOJeshuanOo]

*clap*

[Archforge]

I'm just here 'cause youtube is down atm. Good story tho 10/10 IGN

[ReinAxefury]

That was a great story.

[Guest]

Basically the most Orokin way to brag about an L-core drop. Garnish it with loads of pointless glitter and gold.

I liek. The dramatic exaggeration makes everything look fun even though in truth it is a pointless slog. You did good ... with your exposition skill.

[sleepychewbacca]

Came in expecting Ayatan story. 

Left disappointed, and mildly jealous. 2/10. 

Jokes aside, glad everything came out on top for you OP! I would have alt-f4'ed for another day. 

[(PSN)watt4hem]

You are very, very patient.

[(PSN)WeeMalk5]

You got writing talent

[Librus_107]

2 hours ago, Datam4ss said:

Basically the most Orokin way to brag about an L-core drop. Garnish it with loads of pointless glitter and gold.

I liek. The dramatic exaggeration makes everything look fun even though in truth it is a pointless slog. You did good ... with your exposition skill.

This is the best way anyone has described my writing skills. I'm taking that. 

Penmanship Prime. 

[(XBOX)Clockwork Geoff]

A beautiful of Epic Glitchery goods sir.

An inspiring tale, RNGesus recognized your struggles and rewarded you.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

as a great man once said...

Spoiler

cool story bro.

glad you got a core, but the trade value has gone down somewhat over the last year, they used to be priceless, now they're only about 200p, you can get more for some Rivens (if you're into that sort of thing.). if it were me, I'd use it on a Sacrificial/Umbral mod, it'll save you like 40k Endo, but that's up to you. and props for using Limbo right, you're a rare breed of gentleman.

Edited October 17, 2018 by (PS4)robotwars7