#this is an unpolished scramble + the drawing is a play on the void. we're all juiced up on the stuff

[ritens]

[wf] Nothing Is As It Was 5. Spoonful of Sugar Makes The Poison Go Down

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It’s been three weeks since Kyn and Lane’s stint through the resurfaced smelly shores of Earth, since the time drifter was last seen outside a warframe. He hasn’t been able to figure it out and whatever Kyn had suggested Lane try, has bore no fruit. The operator even attempted to push the drifter out of the frame with force but instead ended up controlling Lane as though he were an unoccupied warframe. Just like Kyn had already suspected. At this point they’re certain it’s not transference.

Though Lane has managed to break doors, vases, cups, chairs and even bulletproof glass, he appears to be an otherwise useless warframe with no abilities. He looks like a Limbo Prime but lacks the wit of one. It’s no surprise. He’s a stranger to the rift and the best he can do is use the improvised sword fighting techniques that he’s picked up in his foggy life. Luke has taken it upon himself to teach the drifter at least something regarding the potential that riftwalkers normally possess despite the drifter’s lack of mathematical understanding. In the end he seems to be best at wielding melee weapons. So Kyn and Luke made sure to provide him with a pair of Kronens and the Nepenthe Ogris for some ranged action.

Because of this Kyn had to bring Lane to an acquaintance’s Helminth to have the drifter slash warframe patched up. They had to take care of the hopefully temporary vessel no matter how inconvenient it may be. The injuries mattered.

It was a nightmare to get Lane to sit still in the chair. Confused, scared and unaware of his own strength he caused a lot of damage. All for nothing too, because the fix was so quick he didn’t even notice it.

—

“There should be a registry of some kind. A list of all the classes and pupils. We could start by asking Melica.” Luke narrates the course of action as they get out of their landing craft and onto the floating corpse of the Zariman Ten Zero.

One evening after Lane has gone to bed, Luke pulls Kyn out in the camp before their orbiter to put forward a previously untested idea - they should try and search for answers regarding the story of operator Lane on the Zariman. It could give them an idea on how to help the drifter with his current predicament, and perhaps, eventually reverse the change. Of course Kyn isn’t a big fan of this. Luke’s reasoning is sound, it makes sense. It’s just outside Kyn’s comfort zone.

The last time they wandered through the abandoned halls and classrooms of the Zariman they cleared up Kyn’s own questions. He was finally able to put the memory of his own parents to rest.

They had sent him on the ship alone on purpose and stayed behind themselves. And the whole time he thought they were around, just didn’t want to see him. He grew up resentful. Back then he didn’t understand why. He still doesn’t. What kind of monster sends their child alone to Tau? That failed and afterwards they still didn’t put in the effort to check if he’s even alive. No matter how he looks at the past, his parents still end up being pieces of shit in his eyes. Truth hurts.

Luke chuckles at that. “It’s not like we have anything else to do.”

Kyn follows his warframe, with hesitation in each step.

“This would take forever. There are so many tenno out there. So many classrooms.” he sighs, “Lane doesn’t exactly look unique either. He’s pale and has almost white hair. Many kids looked like him.”

Both of them walk up to the first cephalon console they see. Melica lights up when they come close enough. The cephalon immediately addresses Kyn and tells him to stay out of trouble. She lives in the past and still sees him as a pupil despite him being all grown up. This means that she’ll likely avoid giving him any background information on other ‘schoolmates’.

The Limbo Prime waits for his operator to walk next to him, then takes the other’s hand in his own. “I miss having a purpose. Try to think of this as a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle. There’s a pretty picture to be revealed.”

“How do you know it’s pretty?” Kyn looks into Luke’s glossy blue orb. He sees his own reflection staring back at him and pulls his hand out of Luke’s grasp. “How do you know none of the pieces are missing?”

“I don’t. But we’ll find that out. We don’t necessarily need the whole picture, just enough to understand what’s going on.” Luke blinks his imitation of an eye and Kyn turns away to hide a hint of a smile. Luke has always been good at convincing him.

Luke pats him on the shoulder and speaks up. “Cephalon. How many students by the name of Lane are aboard the ship?”

“Greetings, director of advanced biomechanics development unit 3. There are 57 Lanes on the Zariman.” Melica responds.

“Oh that’s less than I expecte- DIRECTOR?” Kyn stares at Luke in disbelief. “I thought you were a mere volunteer with a slight background in biology??”

Operator and his warframe exchange looks at that. Both of them are thinking the same thing. Lane is not their guest’s original name.

“Hush.” Luke waves Kyn away and continues interrogating the cephalon. “Do you have full body scans? How many of them have heterochromia and three moles on their left cheek?”

Melica’s light dims for a moment as she runs through her data. “There are no Lanes whose appearance would match your inquiry.”

“That makes things a bit more complicated.” Kyn crosses his arms thoughtfully. “Maybe try asking how many students share physical details with him. I hadn’t thought of the moles myself.”

Luke nods. “He has a couple scars on his upper body from what I saw during our first meeting but those are unreliable and likely timeline specific.”

“Cephalon. Same details but black hair.” Luke makes another order. Kyn raises his fake eyebrows at that. Smart. The warframe variant of Lane has a black ponytail. Maybe there’s more to that.

The warframe turns back to the cephalon. “How many students have blue and green heterochromia, three moles on their left cheek, one on their right, white to grey hair.”

“Apologies, director. There are no matches.” Melica responds quicker than anticipated this time.

Melica runs through data once more and then lights up with a promising response. “There are two students whose appearance matches your inquiry.”

“Names.” Luke’s tone remains commanding.

“Leander Coeth and Elna Warren.” Melica states as well as provides a helpful hologram of the two students. Kyn feels like a rock has been shoved down his throat upon hearing the name of one of the two pupils.

“Cephalon, coordinates to Leander Coeth’s dormizone.” Luke intends to inquire Kyn about what went down between the two tenno later. 

“How could I miss this. The eyes and the strange curls of hair. Leander is Lane. We were classmates.” Kyn frowns.

Luke turns to Kyn. His operator sports an aura of discomfort. “One of the kids you bullied?”

Kyn nods. “The one I singled out. It’s complicated.”

—

The dormizone is a ransacked mess and provides no meaningful information for the two investigators to collect.

“I remember Lane lived together with his cousin and her parents. He had no family of his own.” Kyn ponders out loud while rummaging through some trash in a desk drawer. He briefly stops to look at a couple half-decent drawings of kavats and other creatures. He and Lane shared similar hobbies it seems. Art has always been a passion of Kyn’s.

“What’s the cousin’s name? Maybe we can find her and learn more about the fate of operator Lane that way?” Luke suggests. He’s not particularly interested in going through the junk in the dormizone and instead has opted to stand guard by leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

“Yeah. And they were probably teenagers. Unless they weren’t put into stasis for whatever reason.” Kyn furrows his brows in barely contained disgust. He closes the drawer he was going through and presses his hands onto the surface of the desk.

“About that… I realised something about the locket I picked up from the cave under the truck where we found warframe Lane’s body.” Kyn turns to face the slacking warframe. “It has an old picture of the cousin in it. Kadden Ria in her Zariman getup.”

Luke blinks. “Oh… Nurse Ria of the Temerarious clan. That’s… less than ideal. So both of them were turned into warframes. And both died in the same war.”

Both go quiet for a moment. Then suddenly they get up and straighten themselves out as if their minds got linked. Both have the same question in mind.

“Are there records of the tenno who slept on Lua?”

—

There are. And they found no mention of Ria nor Lane in them. So the two were either taken in as volunteers in the warframe infestation manipulation project shortly before the time the tenno were placed in their pods. Or maybe turning Lane and Ria was some kind of a last ditch effort during or after the fact. If only Luke was able to remember his life before he was turned. They may be investigating Lane right now but taking his chances with Melica brought forth information confirming that he had a hand in what he himself has become. Director… How many souls has he tormented?

Struck by another dead end Kyn and Luke are now contemplating making leaflets of the warframe Lane to ask around if anyone knows him. They’re sitting in the camp outside the orbiter when Lane catches them in the act and tells them to quit it. After all, his body is not his mind and no matter what contacts he may or may not have had in the timeline of the body he now possesses is of no consequence to his being as a whole.

“It’s fine. I will… figure it out. But if there is no way back, then I’m ready to live with this steel flesh.” Lane sits down by the fire between Kyn and Luke. The two put away their unfinished leaflets.

“Do you have any plans of your own yet?” Luke asks.

“I don’t know how to make plans.'' The drifter mumbles in response as he picks up a stick and begins drawing spirals in the ashy sand before the fire pit. “With survival necessities like food out of the way. I suppose I could work on things I’ve always wanted. I would still like to have a home of my own. Maybe join a crafts club or something. But that doesn’t exist in this timeline anymore. Who even has the time to knit when you have enemies to fight off all the damn time?”

The taller Limbo Prime observes the shorter one with renewed interest. Was he meant to stay this small or did he really not get the chance to grow up? The human body of the drifter was equally short, but it’s not known how the other timeline worked with all the looping going on.

“We received a dormizone from the Holdfasts who take care of the Zariman Ten Zero. We’re not utilising it, so if you’d like a place away from us, we could give it to you.” Luke proposes.

The operator immediately butts in. “That’s not a great idea… But.. ugh, if anything, know that you have a place here. Since you’ve already cleared out our dusty storage room and made it liveable.”

Drifter remains quiet. It may be haunted but it’s a different Zariman, right? Nothing of his past is there. At least that’s what he’d like to believe. He is undeniably curious though and could use more time away from this haywire couple. One moment they’re bickering, the other they’re scheming, and the third their hands are suddenly all over each other. Yeah, Zariman sounds fine. It’d be an adventure to explore and shape the dormizone into a cosy little place.

“You’re going to have to drop me off though.” Lane’s response is short and straight to the point.

—

The warm shower has got to be the new best thing Lane has ever experienced. To think he said the same thing about chilly river water just 5 weeks ago when he fell from the sky. Of course, Kyn and Luke’s place also had its perks, but he had to let the two guys know when he needed the bath so it could be prepared in advance. And that caused some level of discomfort and lack of personal autonomy.

Lane spends the next night on the Zariman. He wakes up hungry, with hair in his eyes, and a major need to have a leak. He’s back in his human body without a clue as to how that may have happened.

He flushes water down the toilet and looks at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looks the same as he did before the merge. The seaweed smell on his clothes is still ripe. So this body went into some kind of stasis while he was a warframe.

Speaking of personal autonomy.

While cooking up a meal for himself Lane thinks about how convenient the warframe body was regarding basic human inconveniences. No hunger or thirst, no sweat, no getting numb cheeks from sitting too long in a dumb pose.

Quickly he looks down at his legs to make sure he’s still in his shorts. All is as it should be. It’s just the arms that have shifted. “Huh…”

“Fuck!” he shouts as he steps away from the stove with oil bubbling in the pan. Some of the hot oil has landed on his exposed hands. Immediately he thinks about how this would be inconsequential if he had warframe hands.

The drifter snatches a towel to wipe the oil off. When he puts the cloth back he notices his arms have changed to steel flesh out of nowhere.

Instead of panicking Lane decides to make use of the situation by cracking a condroc egg and tossing the contents of it on the pan without any fear of receiving more oil burns. He does the thinking about the hows and whys while scrambling his egg on the pan with a fork. The change can’t be random so now Lane is backtracking his thoughts that might have triggered the event.

With a sigh of disappointment he tosses some salt onto his lazy scrambled egg, stirs it some more and then plops it onto a clean dish. The drifter brings his breakfast to the table and sits down. He picks up the fork but now his hands feel inconvenient to eat with.

“I wish I had the hat.” he attempts to summon the hat that his alternate body has. Nothing happens.

“Hat, please.” Still nothing. Lane even touches the top of his head to make sure, just in case the hat ends up being somehow weightless.

“It’d be useful to have the human hands now…” Lane thinks to himself as he shoves a piece of egg into his mouth. Just then his arms briefly lose feeling, and visibly shift to a human form. The fork falls to the ground with a clatter. 

The drifter swallows his food and gets up from his seat. “I got it! I think I got it?”

The fork will now do its part in being a willing test subject. Lane looks down at the metal utensil and steps on it. In his mind he is focusing on the requirement of protection and as a result the fork ends up being flattened by a metal sole rather than a fleshy pink foot.

Suffice to say drifter Lane hardly gets anything done this day as he spends most of it by coming up with reasons to shapeshift. It’s a useful skill he feels he should hone to perfection.

The drifter shouts an enthusiastic “WHOO!!”

“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what I need.” he comments and bends down to touch his metal knees, as well as to pick up the poor fork. When he gets back up, his legs then quickly shapeshift back into human ones. In his mind he justifies it as needing comfort.

Other than that he manages to get rid of all the dust in the dormizone and unpack some belongings that Kyn and Luke have so kindly provided him with, including the locket with Ria’s portrait. He’s not sure how or why Kyn thought it’d mean something to him but he’s thankful nonetheless. His mother’s shawl and now the locket are all that’s left of his family.

He may be alone now, but he feels like things aren’t impossible to wrangle into place anymore. And that’s worth something.

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