Halloween on the Plains
“COME ON, FROST! YOU’RE TAKING FOREVER!”
Rhino pounded on the front of the white and blue Liset, waiting for its owner to finally open the door and come out. Behind him were Ember and Volt, both being a little more patient than their heavily armoured friend.
“I’m not coming!”
“WHY NOT?” Rhino whined. “You said you WOULD! Don’t make Ember all upset! She got all dressed up for the Day of the Dead, why can’t you?”
Ember shrugged and glanced at Volt. “I’m not sad.” She was wearing a bunch of bone and skeleton-related things, with a bone necklace around her neck and her favourite Day of the Dead syandana, coated in cute little sugar skulls. “But the festivities on Cetus are perfect for you, Frost. The theme is white. You can do that, right?”
Next to her, Volt was wearing a tattered lab coat, a pair of rubber blue gloves and some boots he’d found while fishing. On his back was a crudely made backpack. Rhino continued to bang on the door, but Volt quietly hinted for him to stop.
“Frost, why don’t you want to come?” Volt asked.
“Because I don’t have a costume!” Frost shouted. “I was going to go as a mummy but Rhino is doing that already! I bet he’s all wrapped up in that weird bathroom paper that we stole from that last raid on Pluto!”
Rhino blinked as he readjusted some of the looser bits of his costume. “What do you mean, bathroom paper? I thought this was leftover receipt paper from the Corpus stock exchange?”
Volt and Frost both ignored Rhino. Luckily, Ember had brought a backup costume in case her fancy bone one broke. She pulled a large, white and pink sheet out of thin air and handed it to Volt. “We’ll just make him into a ghost then! You know, like those kids we saw in that Mars colony?”
“Yeah, but ghosts aren’t stripey?” Volt wasn’t sure. “Either way, there’s loads of things Frost could be. He could be a ghost, he could be a snow man, he could even be a white Kavat! I don’t know why Grineer find Kavats scary around this time of year but that’s an option.”
“FINE!” Frost shouted through the door. “I’ll be a ghost! But I have to find a REAL white sheet first. Give me ten minutes and we can head off.”
The trip to Cetus was awful. There was literally nowhere to park. Rhino and Ember had been lucky to get two good spots in low orbit, but Volt ended up parking his Liset miles away and had to walk to Cetus. When he finally met up with the rest of the group, he realised they weren’t in costume, but instead had swapped their normal colour palettes out for white with black, sugar skull spirals and flares.
“Uh, guys?”
Ember looked around and tutted. “No one else is in costume. I actually meant to ask you earlier, Volt… What in the name of the Lotus are you dressed as?”
Volt glanced down at his lab coat. “I’m, uh, a crazy German doctor.”
“What’s a German?” Rhino asked. Volt gave up and took his costume off, leaving it on a rock. It was too much effort to explain. Of course some little kid would probably steal it all later, but Volt didn’t care. The whole costume only cost him a handful of credits anyway.
Frost was not impressed. He sulked to himself, then changed the topic. “So we are just going to stand around with the rest of these idiots, in the hopes that we get candy that we can’t even really eat?”
“Noooooo!” Ember explained. “We’re going to go from stall to stall, saying “trick or treat” and saying thank you when they give us candy.”
“But every other Tenno here is doing that! Plus, Volt’s bright yellow!” Frost protested. “There’s going to be no candy for people not in costume!”
“I’m always bright yellow,” Volt frowned. “But I don’t want to walk back to my ship just to change my colour palette.”
“Volt has a point,” Rhino sighed. “Really, we should go trick or treating out there! Grineer don’t care about costumes!” Rhino pointed at the massive Orokin gates that led out to the Plains of Eidolon.
“Now?” Ember asked.
“Yes! Now!” Rhino grabbed Ember and threw her over his shoulder and charged through the gates. Frost, in a panic, grabbed his Tigris shotgun and chased after them. Volt just hesitated, before doing the same.
Out on the Plains, the sun had set and only a few rays were scattered on the horizon. The Milky Way glistened across the sky. The air was still, broken only by the sound of crickets and Grineer sirens, calling everyone to return to their bases.
“This is a bad idea…” Frost muttered.
“As long as a Teralyst doesn’t appear, we’ll be fine!” Rhino beamed, just as the tortured wail of a Teralyst echoed through the valley. Everyone stared at Rhino. “Fine, change of plan. As long as we stay away from that bloody Eidolon, we’ll be fine.”
Ember shrugged and pulled a pink and red bag from an invisible pocket. “Sounds doable. Let’s go get some candy.”
The first Grineer outpost wasn’t too far away. The four Warframes sneaked up on the handful of Grineer minding their own business. It was the only way to not get instantly shot. Somehow, none of the Grineer saw the three white frames and one bright yellow one.
Once they were in talking distance, Frost readied a shield. Rhino stepped forward and made the first move.
“TRICK OR TREAT!”
The Grineer jumped. A Butcher immediately charged forward, but was held back by the Eximus Lancer who seemed to be in charge of the camp.
“Tenno skoom.”
“Tenno want candy!” Rhino shouted as harmlessly as he could.
“Basically,” Frost growled, “if you give us candy, we leave you be.”
“Bloody hell,” Volt whispered as the Grineer complied with Frost’s demands. “When he puts it like that, we sound like monsters.”
“We ARE monsters though…” Ember smiled. “How many Grineer have you killed over the years?”
“If they didn’t always try to kill me, I wouldn’t have to kill them…”
A bag of candy thrown in Volt’s face made him quickly shut up. Rhino and Frost both waved thank you and dragged Ember and Volt off into the tall grass.
As they walked, Ember and Volt chatted quietly, while Rhino and Frost compared bags of sweets. The candy had changed Frost’s mood and he was actually enjoying himself now. They arrived faster than expected at the next camp, which was much larger and had way more Grineer at it. Clearly someone had radioed ahead, as none of the Grineer attacked on sight.
“This is eerie…” Volt whispered as they walked though the camp, straight towards the camp’s leader. They reached the biggest tent, where a Helion was waiting with four bags of candy. He did several weird hand gestures, which a nearby Hyekka Master translated.
“Tenno not skoom! Tenno stay south. North, Tenno still skoom.”
“Thank you,” Frost, Volt and Ember all bowed. Rhino simply waved.
The next few camps were all similar, despite the small amounts of candy. Volt had been forced to calm Rhino down when one camp only gave them one candy each, explaining that resources were scarce around there.
As the team finished the last southern camp, everyone was satisfied, but Rhino wanted more.
“Should we try that camp there?”
“No,” Frost sighed. “They’ll get annoyed and attack us.”
“So? We can take ’em!”
“But they might ruin our candy!” Volt worried. “Then this would have all been a waste…”
Rhino grunted, then relented. “Fine. Let’s head back.”
Suddenly, a familiar wail filled the air. The Teralyst was close. Way closer than they thought. So close in fact that they almost ran into it as they reached the top of a hill.
“Shit…” Ember hissed. “What do we do?”
“Just be really quiet and walk around it…” Volt whispered, pulling everyone close. “As long as no one tries to harm it, it will leave us alone…”
Surprisingly, Rhino did as he was told. He’d not brought his hunting gear anyway. Well, he probably could fight it, but he couldn’t be asked. Candy was more important. Volt led the way forward, around the Eidolon’s rear.
“How do you know this?” Frost asked.
“Done this before… Just don’t use Skyw-” Volt replied, before abruptly stopping. Something had caught his eye.
A Grineer Firebolt ship flew by in the distance, briefly distracting the massive Sentient.
“This is dumb!” Rhino growled, throwing out a beacon. The beacon beeped and hissed, the sounds of which echoed way louder than he’d expected. “Let’s just use Archwing!”
Without warning, the Eidolon roared, turned around and smashed Rhino’s Skywing Beacon.
“Shit.”
“RUN!” Ember screamed as she ran down the hill.
“We not gonna try and fight it?” Rhino asked.
“What are you, retarded?” Frost bellowed, chasing after Ember.
“Probably!” Volt shouted back, sprinting off in a shower of yellow sparks.
“Good point…” Rhino shrugged as he picked up Ember’s bag of sweets and followed the others back to Cetus. After all, it would have been a shame to lose all that candy…
