Power Pissing Contest

“Hey kid!” Frost grinned as he slapped the young Volt on the back. “Yellow, black and grey? Unusual colour combination. Did Ordis tell you his sensors were bleeding when you equipped that?”

The Volt, who was holding a mod he’d just picked up, trying to work out whether it was useful, blinked. Or, at least, his inexperienced operator did. “W-we can talk to each other?”

“Um, yes, of course we can talk!” the overly friendly, trench coat-wearing Warframe continued to grin. Unlike Volt, he was wearing his best primed syandana, a word Volt could barely pronounce, and a fancy helmet that looked a bit like a halo. Of course, he was decked out in a white and blue colour scheme. “Did you not know that? Our operators all have microphones and some also have text to speech capabilities… That was a rather silly question.”

Volt shrugged. “Not many people talk to me. The Titania who used to guide me was always mute and only communicated in gestures and waypoints.”

“A Titania, hm?” Frost was still grinning. It occurred to Volt that Warframes can’t grin, so perhaps he was just picking up on Frost’s operator, who was grinning through his transferance. “Weird lot, them Titanias. Too distracted by the wildlife, I find. Which reminds me! What’s a little Volt like you doing here on E Prime? Ain’t exactly the right place for mod hunting.”

The two Warframes were suddenly interrupted by about twenty Grineer of various shapes and sizes. In a flash of panic, Volt leaped into the air and unleashed a Discharge, stunning all two dozen Grineer at once.

Again, Frost began to grin. “That seemed a little excessive, don’t you think, Volt?”

Volt stared blankly at the Grineer being electrocuted around him. He hadn’t unlocked an Intensity mod yet, so even at this low level, the clones were taking their sweet time to die.

“Probably. But I panic easy. Still, it looked cool, right?”

“Yeah, but this will look cooler.”

With a flick of his wrist, the air around them grew cold. In a handful of fluid movements, Frost made the ground and the Grineer freeze solid. Another hand gesture and they all shattered in a fancy explosion of ice and snow.

The yellow Warframe tipped his head to one side. “I guess that was cool. Oh, hi, Ember.”

An Ember, in gold, red and orange, appeared, having just been dropped off by her Liset. She was carrying an Atomos and an Ignis and some sort of flaming sword, to really drive home that fire theme.

“Hey, boys! What’s up? How’s the mission?”

Volt pointed at all the ice on the ground. “We were, uh, comparing our powers. Frost here has this cool ice ability. I don’t see many Frosts using anything apart from snow globes on various missions…”

“Newbie, eh?” Ember smiled. “You seen an Ember as good looking as me before?”

“I, uh, um…” Volt hesitated. “I’ve seen lots of pretty Warframes. I think cosmetics are a lot more… popular now than before I went to sleep…”

Frost grinned yet again. It was beginning to bother Volt. “Nice save, kid. Yeah, we were just comparing our powers before we go and kill everyone in this Exterminate mission. This Volt here’s young but one day, he’ll be stunning everything on the entire map.”

“Oh really?” Ember smirked. “The entire map, you say?”

Slamming her fist into the ground, Ember created a huge wall of fire and flames that engulfed everything and killed pretty much everything that wasn’t a Warframe.

“See you at extraction!” Ember giggled as she ran off.

Frost and Volt both stared at where Ember was, for an awkwardly long time. Finally, Volt took a step forward and picked something up off the ground.

“Weren’t we supposed to wait a bit, so enemies would drop these Void things?” Volt asked.

Frost glanced at the fissure, then at the kill counter. 29/29. Everyone was dead, and there wasn’t a single reactant anywhere.

“Shit.”