Ember and the Helpful Stranger

The little Ember sent her message again, knowing that it would be ignored. Her message entered the Recruitment Channel and swiftly disappeared, pushed aside by a stream of other messages all saying things she didn’t understand.

“LF AXI L3”

“H 4X3 NEED HARROW”

“LF PROFITTAKER”

“H ESO 3/4”

None of it made any sense to the little Ember. She just wanted some help, but the Cephalon from the Global Channel had sent her here.

Suddenly, something beeped. A communication. A private one. Another Tenno had messaged Ember directly.

“Heya, do you still need help?”

Ember beamed as she hastily replied. “I do! I just need polymer and neural sensors!”

“Alright, give me a moment to get sorted and I’ll send you an invite.”

Overjoyed that she had received a reply after so long, Ember readied her best weapons, her brand new Dex Sybaris and her Dex Dakra, as well as her little Taxon companion.

An invite appeared with a collection of coordinates. Ember accepted the invite and her ship took her to the location indicated. It was a place on Jupiter. After a few minutes of flight, she jumped out of her landing craft and into a very orange landscape.

“Hello?”

“Heya!” A Nekros Prime, wearing black with yellow and blue trimmings and a pair of skeletal wings landed next to Ember, making her jump. Nekros was accompanied by a yellow and black dragon-cat thing that seemed very friendly. “So, neural sensors first, then Polymer farming, alright?”

Ember nodded.

“How many do you need?”

“3.”

“Cool. We’ll do five waves of defense, see how many we have then go from there.”

Nekros rushed to the cryopod they needed to defend. Ember was about to follow when she noticed Nekros’s Mastery Rank. “Woah! You’re a Silver Sage! That’s so much higher than me!”

Sirens suddenly blared. Corpus began to stream in via a large array of doors. Nekros did some sort of strange movement, then summoned a massive sword. He waved it at the cryopod and a flaming disc appeared that killed any enemy that came too close.

“You can be a Silver Sage one day too!” Nekros replied. “Just takes dedication, nothing more.”

Before long, five waves were over, but Ember only had 2 Neural Sensors. Nekros suggested they defend for five more waves, so she could get the last one.

But as soon as the sixth wave finished, three more Neural Sensors appeared.

“Typical!” Nekros tutted. “Oh well. Let’s finish this mission and move onto getting polymer.”

The pair of Tenno extracted at wave 10, leaving an extraction team to pick up the cryopod. Ember waited happily on het ship, waiting for more instructions.

“Hey, mister, while we’re here… Do you have any advice for me? So I can write it down and save it for later?”

Nekros didn’t respond immediately. Suddenly, a stream of advice poured in through the private communication channel. Ember beamed as she wrote it all down and stuck the advice on sticky notes on her Market screen. Just as she had finished, a new invitation popped up, inviting her to a place on Uranus.

Ember accepted the invitation. This time, her ship dropped her off underwater. She very slowly followed Nekros using her basic Archwing, before leaping out of the water.”

“Okay, this is the boring bit. I’m going to set off an alarm and then we are going to camp in a corner. Let the enemies come to us.”

Ember did as she was told and followed Nekros some more. This place looked weirdly familiar. There were some strange, eerie noises, but they were soon replaced by angry Grineer.

Nekros marked a location and yet again threw out his massive, flaming disc of death. Just as he promised, Grineer ran straight to them, being incinerated by the disc.

“Okay, so we’ll stay here until you get your polymer. Every so often, you’ll need to dash out and grab the fallen loot, but otherwise they’ll come to us and, uh, die.”

Ember nodded again, then started shooting at any enemies that made it past the disc. Occasionally, an enemy would appear behind them, but Nekros’s flamethrower would quickly deal with the threat.

Unlike the neural sensors though, Ember needed 2500 polymer, and it was trickling in slowly. Before she knew it though, 20 minutes had passed and she suddenly had 2600 polymer bundles!

“Omg! Thank you!” Ember couldn’t contain her excitement.

“No worries, kiddo!” Nekros replied. “Now let’s get out of here.”

Again, Ember followed Nekros, but somewhere along the line, she lost sight of him. She continued to Extraction on her own, getting worried about her weapons. They simply weren’t killing as well as they should have been and the enemies were getting tougher. After about a minute, Nekros appeared, slaughtering his way through some Heavy Gunners.

“Sorry about that. Thought I saw something sparkly!”

Ember shrugged as the pair extracted. “No worries! Also, I love your cat! Now I just need Nitain!”

As they returned to their ships though, Nekros’s tone had changed.

“Sadly, I… I can’t help you with that, Kiddo. I mean, I can help a little, but most of this week’s Nightwave tasks require you to be a higher level than you are now.”

“What’s Nightwave?” Ember asked.

“It’s a series of daily and weekly tasks, accessed from your radio scanner, that earn you standing and levels. You need 10,000 standing to unlock a new level and at level 3, you can get Wolf Creds and use them to buy Nitain.”

“Oh. And I’m… Level 0. That…”

“Yeah, that sucks. But it’s okay, I can help you with one task!”

A third invite popped up. Coordinates for the Plains of Eidolon. Wanting to impress, Ember fetched her Kubrow, a Helminth Charger called Kiki. Finally, Ember accepted once more and soon found herself outside the gates to Cetus. Standing in front of her was a bright yellow Volt Prime with blue metallic accents. Also waiting for her was a freshly stolen Dargyn, a small, one-man Grineer airship.

“Come with me, kiddo!” Volt waved. “Take the Dargyn and meet me at the Waypoint.”

Volt leaped into the air and disappeared, and a waypoint appeared on Ember’s display, some 500m away. She climbed into the Dargyn and went to the waypoint, where Volt was waiting. She knew Volts were fast, but not that fast.

The new position was very peaceful. A calm sea lapped against the beach and fish could be seen swimming around.

“You have a fishing rod, yes?”

“I do.”

“Good.”

Volt placed down an electric shield, then threw some baits into the water. The fish started to glow slightly.

“Catch the Murkray. I’ll stand guard. Use the electric shield if you’re struggling.”

Ember gazed into the water and watched the fish. A swarm of Murkray appeared, and with some effort, Ember finally managed to catch six of them.

“So what can I do with these?” Ember asked.

“Chop them up for parts, give them to the needy in Cetus. The really rare Glappid fish, you can sell for a little Platinum…”

“Aw…” Ember muttered. “I don’t have any Platinum… I wanted to buy a bed for Kiki but it’s expensive.”

Volt watched Kiki play with his own Kavat. It was a cute Charger, well looked after. Definitely well-loved.

“Follow the advice I gave you earlier and you’ll be able to trade for Platinum!” Volt tilted his head to one side. He seemed both happy and sad at the same time. “Unfortunately, I have to go now. Got people to terrorise, other kids to spook and help. You know how to get back to your ship, right?”

Ember nodded happily. “Thank you for your help, mister!”

Volt patted Ember on the shoulder, waved, then disappeared.

With a tired sigh, Ember made her way back to Cetus on her own. Thankfully, thanks to the stolen Dargyn, it didn’t take long, but it felt weird not having someone beside her for so long.

As Ember returned to her ship though, she realised that there was a package in the main roome. She hastily opened it up, squealing with excitement. Inside was a bed for her beloved Kiki. Feeling surprised and confused, Ember searched around to see who had sent it. Attached to the bed was a hastily scribbled note.

“This is for your lovely doggo. Good luck out there, kiddo…”