“It feels like I fell asleep,”
“And woke up in a nightmare...”
“Fallen into a world of chaos,”
“You're the reason that I'm here...”
— Aviators, Monster
A voice screamed in the back of Hayden’s mind as a bullet struck her Warframe in its back thigh, the impact knocking it off balance. Its quadruped body promptly toppled from the wire it was scrambling along, its fleshmetal wings flapping in an unsuccessful attempt to slow its fall as it slammed into the Grineer-made flooring beneath.
“Rhue, gar Tenno son-of-a-gutora!” Hayden instinctively rolled to the side, dodging the machete flying toward her even as she scrambled to her feet—well, hooves, actually—and crouched, bracing to launch herself at the Grineer Scorpion and smash its head in.
‘NO!’ The warframe staggered, its actions mirroring Hayden’s experiences as burning pain flooded through her. She’d felt this before. It was called Transference Static, and it happened every time she tried to manifest on the battlefield, but something disrupted the transfer and flung her back into her warframe. Or, in this case, when a consciousness most warframes lacked tried to force her out and failed. ‘No killing! I-’
The warframe’s panicked statement of intent was usurped by a scream of agony, mirroring the guttural roar of pain erupting from what remained of the Warframe’s vocal cords as the Grineer soldier’s machete sliced into its shoulder. “Fine! Change of plans.” Hayden snapped back, presenting a different course of action to the warframe. She didn’t get a response, at least not a coherent one; the presence in the warframe was too overwhelmed to do anything but scream inarticulately.
Hayden couldn’t blame it. If she’d been in its (purely metaphorical) shoes, if she’d been an innocent civilian shoved into a twisted new body and the nonstop murder-fest a typical foray into the interior of a Grineer Cruiser entailed, she’d probably be screaming right with her.
But Hayden wasn’t an innocent civilian. She was a Tenno, a veteran of centuries of slaughter at the behest of those hated golden lords. And she was far, far too preoccupied with not dying to deal with this shit.
She lashed out with her front leg, sending the Scorpion’s machete flying, before jumping on it and spring-boarding off of its chest. Her hooves made contact with the rim of an entrance to a cylindrical ventilation tunnel, and she heaved herself up with practiced ease, scrambling into said tunnel and rounding a corner as the Scorpion’s grappling hook clattered uselessly against its steel walls.
“Sekure kle agrea! Ran's tet klem ket arai!” A harsh, voice shouted as Hayden scrambled deeper into the shaft, an unwelcome reminder that she still had who-the-fuck knows how many bloodthirsty Grineer on her tail. And I don’t have any weapons, I’m stuck in an unmodded frame that I don’t know how to use, and said frame has a conniption fit every time I try to kill one of those Grineer-
‘WHAT THE BUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!’
Hayden staggered to a stop, more from the surprise of the warframe’s sudden outburst than the pain of the transference static that accompanied it. “...what?”
‘How can you consider killing them acceptable?!’ The presence in the warframe responded, equal parts horror, disgust, and fury rolling off of it in waves. ‘Haven’t you seen what you look like?! What you’re trying to do?! They’re trying to kill you because YOU’RE the villain here! As far as they’re concerned, the only monster here is YOU!!!’
For a long, long moment, Hayden was silent, the warframe’s final scream of “YOU” still echoing through their shared head. ‘...you think these Grineer are trying to kill us because they’re convinced we’re a monster?’
‘Yes!’ The presence answered. ‘Because that’s what you are! A monster!’
The warframe let loose a soft, rhythmic moan as Hayden chuckled sadly. “Yeah, it can seem like that, can’t it? After all, only monsters kill their own mothers, right?”
The warframe jolted from surprise and horror; if it still had a proper jaw, Hayden suspected it would be hanging open from shock right about now. ‘You… you killed your mother…’
“I didn’t want to. Not that it mattered.” Hayden had to pause for a moment. Digging up her past like this hurt, hurt in ways that no amount of bullets or acid or blades or flames could replicate. “She loved me, more than anything else in the world. But that didn’t stop the Void from twisting her mind, from turning her into a monster and unleashing that monster on me.” Distant memories came flooding back to Hayden as she told her tale, memories of a loving, caring mother turned into a bloodsoaked madwoman, of said madwoman snatching up a knife and throwing herself at her with murderous intent. “From forcing me to use the powers it gave me to kill her before she killed me.” More memories, of the coppery stench of her own blood, the nauseating fragrance of burnt flesh, the sobs of a child stripped of a parent by her own hands.
“I’d give anything to be able to go back. To get the chance to talk her out of it. To not have to kill her.” Hayden admitted. For once, Hayden was glad Warframes didn’t have the same biological functions as ordinary humans; her eyes would be burning like hell from all the tears if they did. “But nothing I could say would make her back off. Just like nothing you do will make these Grineer live and let live.”
“Ovegr gregre! Hut grent klis gray!” Hayden lifted her head—the warframe’s head—toward the Grineer voices, her thoughts shifting from mournful to venomous. “These things don’t want to kill us because we’re a monster to them. They want to kill us because we aren’t Grineer.”
Hayden’s thoughts turned towards more recent memories, memories of whole villages burned to the ground, of the old and young alike butchered for the high crime of not being born into a xenophobic regime’s cloned armies. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve seen villages that have done nothing to offend them and pose not the slightest threat wiped out to the last man, woman, and child just because they aren’t Grineer. Whole ecosystems poisoned and consigned to death solely to make a world more suitable for their purposes.
“They don’t care about the fact that you don’t want to hurt them, that beneath this infested steel you’re a bright-eyed, cheery pony who doesn’t want to hurt anyone and would rather everyone just live and let live. All that matters to them is that you aren’t Grineer. That’s all the reason they need to kill someone.”
A shadow began to creep around the corner, and Hayden tensed, bracing the warframe for the upcoming fight. “And if you don’t let me kill them first, then neither of us are going to be getting out of here alive.”
For a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, the presence in the warframe—Twilight, her name is Twilight, Hayden reminded herself—was unresponsive, the only indication that she was even present the horror and despair radiating from her thoughts. By the time it responded, a Grineer soldier had rounded the corner up ahead.
‘Just tell me when it’s over.’ Twilight responded, her voice a soft, broken whisper. And with that, she fled into a deep, dark part of the warframe’s mind, mentally curling up and locking out the living nightmare she’d awoken to.
“I will.” Hayden responded as the soldier turned toward her, leveling its Karak assault rifle. She leaped forward without hesitation; the orokin had crafted her to be a murderous tool, and so she would murder, so that Twilight wouldn’t have to. “I promise.”
‘Twilight?’ Twilight recoiled from the voice, curling up tighter. No… no more…
‘Twilight, it’s okay. It’s over.’ The former alicorn blinked… well, she tried to, at least. Kinda hard to blink when one didn’t have eyelids, or the eyes that usually went with them. But despite the lack of eyes, she could see that she wasn’t onboard that ‘cruiser’ anymore, despite what the vomitous shades of yellow and green the space around her had been painted in might have one believe.
“Wh-where-”
‘I found a drop pod. We’re safe, for now.’ Twilight nodded, too relieved that the slaughter was over to care about the implications behind those last two words.
A window caught her eyeless gaze, and she trotted over to it, doing her level best to ignore how heavy her newfound exoskeleton felt, to ignore the sticky blood coating her hooves. Through that window, she could see her planet, could even make out the shape of the continent her home country was situated on. But it wasn’t the view that drew her attention.
It was her reflection.
Twilight came to a stop in front of the window, staring at the monster that gazed back from it.
Its skin was the same bright shade of violet as her old coat, and the same was true of the collection of flowing transparent fibers that had replaced her tail, but those were about the only things she could recognize. Her furry coat had been replaced with a layer of horribly organic steel, one that covered her whole body and left her face a blank slate, devoid of eyes, a muzzle, or a mouth. Her horn and wings were covered in the same sort of steal, the tip of her horn and edges of her wings made lethally sharp. And then there was the matter of the blood all over her.
A sound reached her ears, a low, hiccuping groan, a sick mockery of a pony’s sobs. It took Twilight almost a minute to realize that the sound was coming from her.
‘It’s okay…’ The voice—its name was Hayden, if Twilight was remembering correctly—reassured her as she collapsed to the floor and curled into a ball, the sobs increasing in volume.
‘I’ve got you.’
Author's Note
Yep. I went and turned Twilight into a Warframe. Needless to say, nobody's happy about this, least of all Twilight and the Tenno that she's now stuck with.
Credit to Frames Of War for being the inspiration behind this fic. I strongly recommend that you go check it out.
Once again, credit to Aviators for the little snippet of one of his songs on display above. While Monster's lyrics are more closely related to Discord being told no and not taking it well than they are to this fic, the tone of the song fits the tone of this piece pretty well, and it's an awesome song. I cannot recommend looking up Aviators' stuff on Bandcamp enough.
