#like Drifters

[vaszametili]

the new war was something

[kivaember]

sits bolt upright

bringing Umbra into 1999 is a really good idea bc imagine the interesting dynamic he can have with Eleanor because he is, literally, a physical embodiment of her fears: of losing to the infestation and killing those closest to her and potentially losing all aspect of herself with only the memory of that haunting her - but he's also a physical embodiment of hope, because despite all of that Umbra still came back to himself, in a way, in some form of fashion, even if it wasn't completely whole and back to the person he used to be.

me initially about bringing umbra to 1999: teehee umbra getting to space dad drifter in the past and the hex needing to get on his good side while drifter gets on theirs

me after thinking about it so more: oh my god there is so much potential for interesting character interactions between umbra and eleanor, and umbra and quincy, and umbra and-

[alcyonsa]

yeah about that ....

[knightwhoisni]

aoi, pumped after a round of faceoff: haha wow that was a lot but what a riot! amir, zipping back and forth: haha yeah everything was like KABOOM!!! drifter, a little tired but enjoying everyone's company: well, i've worked up an appetite. let's head back to the mall and get ready to dig into a big ol' slice of pizza! teshin's disembodied voice out of nowhere: YOU HAVE PROVEN YOURSELF ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE, TENNO. YOU APPROACH THE NEXT CONCLAVE RANK QUITE QUICKLY. drifter: aoi: amir: drifter: i. uh. i honestly have no idea how he just did that.

[andr0nap-wf]

orowyrm encounter

[tapeworrmart]

Red Dead Revenge (low honor Arthur)

[sevastiels-art-box]

Unfortunately for him and the drifter both, the fishnets kept catching and ripping on the sides of his thighs. But thigh high stockings would do.

Im putting him in the microwave I'm exploding him mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[squidelyfish]

Time traveling champion taking a snack break.

A.k.a. my Drifter and his Warframe taking a breather from the Hex's shenanigans.

[kaiserouo]

civilian in the mall

[choccy-milky]

the place me and my roommate were supposed to move into today was so disgusting and uninhabitable we just took our stuff and left and now we're gonna be staying at airbnbs and hotels until further notice/until we can find a new place hopefully quickly...........im in my homeless drifter era y'all!!!😍😍so if im not as active then thats why LMFAO

1 like = 1 prayer

[s0fter-sin]

trans!soap taking his baby and running away from his rich abusive husband

(cw angst, financial abuse, single threat of child abuse, single mention of transphobia)

he's owned soap for years, since he was a teenager; paid for his medication and all his surgeries and tied them so deeply, soap’s lost hope of ever getting away. he gets even worse when soap falls pregnant. he was always controlling; blowing up at him if he spent too long out of the house or did something without telling him. but he becomes utterly possessive during the pregnancy

soap knows it has nothing to do with his safety or the baby's

he knows he sees his baby as an investment; another being he can control and hold over him

he gets worse and worse but there’s nothing soap can do. there's been nothing he can do for a long time. then a few months after the baby is born, soap doesn’t watch his tone closely enough and his husband threatens to drop his baby in punishment for it

soap doesn't think. he doesn't plan

he takes his baby and runs

he sneaks out of the servant's quarters of the sterile mansion he's been forced to live in for almost a decade and walks down the street without a backwards glance; his baby the only thing in his arms. he knows all of his husband's cars have trackers, all of them in his name since he never lets soap drive or go anywhere by himself, so he walks far enough to be out of view of the mansion's cameras and steals one. it doesn't have a car seat and all he can do is clutch his baby to his chest as he drives

he doesn't know where he's going beyond away

he doesn't know what he's going to do; he doesn't have any money, no supplies for his baby, he doesn't even have water for himself so he can reliably breastfeed him. he's terrified his husband will find them; he’s always felt omniscient, always everywhere and seeing everything he did. if he didn’t have eyes somewhere, he paid someone who did and they always dutifully reported back to him

soap just keeps his eyes forward. just keeps driving and driving, lost to the road and numb until the low gas light pops up on the dash and it all hits him at once

he turns into a gas station he can't pay for, in a car he stole, and parks behind it and his baby immediately starts getting fussy

he can't even call him by his name sometimes; too afraid to get attached, too afraid to lose him. as if he doesn’t love him more than life itself

even throughout his pregnancy, as happy as he was to finally have a baby, he didn't know if he could carry to term and that fear just let his husband dig his claws in even deeper; paying for extra scans he could never hope to pay for, favours on top of favours so he would aways owe him and isn’t he such a loving husband? taking soap in when his parents kicked him out for being trans, looking after him for all these years? you can’t even take care of yourself john, you’d still be a woman without me, john, what is this tantrum about john-

soap tugs his shirt up to let his baby feed, drops his head back and cries

he can't stop it; wails loud and uncontrolled, chest heaving with his sobs enough that it sways his baby, occasionally breaking his latch and he can't even do this right-

he can't save him

a light knock sounds on the window and soap flinches, curling over his baby to protect him from his huband's cruel hands

but it's not his husband outside the window

soap blinks tears from his eyes and looks at the large stranger standing beside the car. a neck gaiter covers his mouth and it should be off-putting… but something about him stops the feeling in its tracks. the stranger takes a half-step back and lifts a chilled and sealed water bottle, pressing it towards the window

soap quickly swipes his face clean and rolls down the window. "sorry 'bout that," he apologises with a choked laugh, the careful front he’s built over the years cracked and bleeding

the stranger gives a dismissive but somehow not diminishing shrug. "long day?" he asks

"could say that," he gives a shrug of his own and pats his baby's back as he makes a disgruntled noise, unconsciously swaying him

he politely keeps his gaze up on his face. "looks like you could use a break."

soap's breath hitches, anxiously darting his tongue out over his bottom lip. "could say that," he repeats uselessly and takes the water with a quiet “thanks,”; his throat dry and screaming for it after crying so hard

the stranger hums, watching him down the bottle and soap doesn’t notice his eyes drifting to the backseat and footwell of the passenger side. doesn’t notice the slight tension in his fists at what he sees. "how long you been runnin', lad?"

soap freezes, the water settling in his stomach like a stone. he swallows thickly and the bottle falls from his lips

"not long enough."

the stranger just nods, looking idly back down the highway

"you know, this place is connected to a garage,” he starts, nodding back to a building attached to the station without taking his eyes off the road. “lotta people drift through 'ere on road trips; too many to keep track.”

soap frowns slightly, shifting his hold on his baby

“funny thing is, plenty of 'em just abandon their car when they break down. like yours,” he adds and finally turns back to him with a pointed look. “got a whole junkyard of 'em. just rustin' away. be pretty easy to convince me to trade ya one."

soap’s mouth parts in a gasp as he realises just what the stranger’s saying. "how easy?" he whispers

he shrugs and even with his face hidden beneath the gaiter, he doesn’t feel afraid. "i'd say this car'd be a good deal. would blend right in with the rest of ‘em; no one’d ever notice it. what say i take it off your hands?"

soap's breath shudders out of him, his whole body going limp with relief. his baby's eyes fall shut with a satisfied hum and for the first time he can remember, he feels the gentle touch of hope

"i think we can work something out."

🧼💀

ghost owns the service station soap pulled into. he wanted something quiet and isolated after he retired and you can’t get much quieter than a backwoods servo surrounded by forest. he hasn’t had anyone pull in in days so he’s quick to notice soap’s car. he’s also quick to notice soap's subsequent breakdown in one of the cameras. the sight of him crying, desperately clutching a baby like they’re all he has left in the world, is so familiar he felt sick with it

he knows someone running when he sees it

if he didn't check on him, if this lad disappeared one day and the baby along with him, he'd never forgive himself. the lad doesn't even have a baby bag or car seat with him, and the personalised sticker on the back window of a lady and a dog is a dead giveaway that the car is stolen

but the lad is terrified. and when he startled him, he didn't turn. didn’t lift his arms to protect himself. no

he covered his baby

like he was afraid he'd be hurt

that's enough for ghost

🧼💀

i'd wanna set this in the 80's or 90's, just to make it even harder for soap to get away from his husband. he's a trans man with a newborn; he has no one to run to and no resources to help him. his husband's bought and paid for everything for him since he was 17; a few whirlwind weeks of unbelievable dates and extravagant gifts and he was living in his mansion, getting married the day after his 18th birthday. he thought it was love. thought he was being looked after and cared for the way he’s always wanted

he was in pain and alone and naive enough to believe the first person who came along and promised to make it better. nothing's in his name, not his insurance or his meds, he doesn’t have a bank account or savings; other than a birth certificate, nothing even ties him to his baby. his husband could take his world away from him with a snap of his fingers and he made sure soap always knew it

he never had a chance of getting away

but ghost is ex-military

he doesn’t know the lad’s story, doesn’t know the details of what he’s running from. he doesn’t need to know

he decided he was helping him the second he pulled into his service station

[thefirstknife]

Y'all. He's not even here to defend himself.

[eliasdrid]

little self indulgent Drifter x Aoi doodle

⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

[elysiae]

do you think operator & drifter treat their warframes wildly differently?

somewhat insufficient TLDR: i think the operator and drifter are emotionally attached but in vastly, strikingly different ways, and it manifested very, very differently too.

in operator's case, it isn't that they dont *care*, but they know how durable a warframe is. they know they can take one hell of a hit, and they'll be okay because that warframe takes the brunt of it (albeit with some phantom pain if the damage is bad enough). theyre less comfortable outside the confines of those large, bulky war machines because they know they're ultimately safe. those warframes can take hits. they cannot. the operator knows they were people, but they never met those people before the tragedy. besides... a lot of them really are just empty shells. they're hardly the people they once were, especially since they recreated those warframes from blueprints. don't get me wrong, they do remember the anguish of the originals - they were there, they lived it, and they still have empathy for them... but the operator knows the limits of every warframe like the back of their hand - they can maneuver however they want, they can take hits, they can run into armies and not be too afraid because they (as in the operator and the warframe this time) be fine. even if the warframe is damaged, they can fix the damage, so no harm done.

but drifter on the other hand? at first i think they never really realised the power they had. in their mind they were still them, just running, rolling on the occasion, it took them ages to maneuver those things *properly*, and probably only ever really learned with the operator's guidance. they would not let a warframe take a hit, not because they felt empathy for it (at least not a lot, last i checked you kind of need at least *some* to have effective transference?) but because they were so used to walking around vulnerable. yknow, not inside a killing machine. but what would've really solidified the difference was after they went to 1999. sure, hearing that these things used to be people is one thing, but at the end of the day, to drifter, they're still just machines. drifter never got to experience what the tenno did, they never had to deal with reaching into their freshly scarred minds to ease their anger, sorrow, fear, rein them in like the terrified animals they were turning into and hush their cries with understanding - they only knew the dead inside remnants... but it's an entirely other thing when you go to the past and see the people who were hurt. you meet them and you get to know them, become their best friends - maybe even date one of them - and it hit drifter like a fuckin' freight train. they have this entirely different view on warframes from that cold perspective they had at first. they weren't just war machines. those are people. every time they go into the head of those machines, they're looking through the eyes of *people.* people who had families and desires and hobbies, things they looked forward to, entire futures ahead of them that were snuffed out. people who were scared, people who didn't know what was happening. people who knew what was happening, who lived in fear knowing they weren't able to stop it... people who lived in fear of losing themselves. and i think it hit drifter a lot harder than they'd ever admit.

but thats not to say one of them is more attached than the other - both of them care deeply about their warframes. it's just that, they have different ways of looking at them. after all their experiences were so vastly different, it'd be impossible to look at them the same way.

(too lazy to type it out all over, but i have an example in the tags i think kinda helps pull it together more)

[gruvu]

SO fun fact, about 76.8% of the reason why I picked Arthur is due to the stubble. None of the Hex were really... For me? SO I was like I need to atleast aim for one. Arthur was the only non smooth faced adonis in the six and I went "Okay. I guess that will do". And now I like him for his personality I swear. Also Tsun will never want him to shave. Would not recognize the man if he did.

[kivaember]

another 1999 thought about drifter and umbra (i have so many and you will all suffer with me):

drifter asking umbra to "spar" with them because they don't wanna get "lazy" relying too much on warframes in 1999. gotta keep their duviri bod where they stood toe-to-toe with the Dax there (who, if they were a child's perception of a Dax, are hilariously likely stronger than an actual Dax), and they trust Umbra to spar with them without accidentally killing/injuring them.

the hex getting to watch drifter and umbra spar and all of them being like sol. drifter can fucking fight. (imagining before this they thought they relied on warframes or their ~void powers~ to be a threat but no, they can fight fucking warframes as a peer with just a sword and their footwork).