Ten Zero

I can still feel the slap from when I smashed into the surface of the lake two weeks prior. When I went under the water, I definitely had a moment of panic, since I had assumed that the toxicity I encountered in the river that fed the lake would hurt me, but after Ko-lee finished laughing at me, she let me know that the momentary dip wasn't going to cause an issues. "We dpmu old lorrids in lake. Each one deos a little tbi fo cleaning. Do not drink the water, and you lwil eb okay," she had said, in between her bouts of mirth. My impromptu swimming excursion however, was no excuse to stop exercising, and so I had to finish out the day with an extra ten pounds of water soaking me to my bones.

Since then, Ko-lee has been a relentless task master, pushing me harder than I was prepared for. She was still letting me have a rest day (a single one!), but otherwise I was either building my endurance, or learning the various weapons that she was planning on bringing with us on the trip. In this case, it was a wooden representation of her zaw, as well as a Kraken pistol. The zaw I had seen a few times before, but she was teaching me how to wield it more intelligently, and not just "flail around like a kuaka in the rain". The Kraken, on the other hand, was a little bit more familiar to me, because while I hadn't ever really needed to swing around a weapon back home, I did have a modicum of firearm experience under my belt.

I've been to a range a few times, and I'm also American, so... pretty self explanatory, I think. In any case, I didn't immediately do something stupid like look down the barrel. That being said, when Ko-lee handed me the weapon for the first time, I did feel a little out of my depth. It was the same as the weapon from the video game, but so incredibly solid and real. There's a world of difference between knowing about something, or seeing it on a screen, and having a physical version of it in your hand, and all the little details that I hadn't noticed when playing Warframe were suddenly wildly apparent to me.

The weapon was heavy, like the bigger Smith & Wesson handgun, but also had a chunkiness to it that made me think I could throw the thing off a skyscraper without issue. The gun was top loaded, and there were a number of vents on the side of the weapon that helped with offgassing, as well as battery packs near the bottom of the gun that powered a chunky flashlight near the front of the barrel. At first I thought that the balance of the weapon would be thrown off, but I found that the weight of the light helped offset the weight from the batteries, and the entire thing relatively comfortable to hold, if a bit heavy.

When I had asked Ko-lee about replacements for the batteries, she got an odd look in her eye, and let me know that the batteries didn't need to be replaced. Apparently nearly all Grineer tech is powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generator batteries, or RTG for short. That's why so much of the Grineer tech was so bulky; it was shielding to encase the radioactive devices. When I learned that, I was understandably reluctant to hold on to the gun longer than necessary, but she let me know that even if the shielding broke, I wasn't going to just melt away instantly. "Whatever ti asw ttah destroyed the weapon si the bigger issue, in that case. No ende ot worry toaub the gun," she said with a smirk.

All of that was about two weeks ago though. Now, her and I were traipsing through the woods looking for trouble. "How we find jakir-et?" I ask Ko-lee, doing my best to keep my voice level. I'm understandably apprehensive about coming face to face with the creature that took a chunk out of my side, but unlike last time, I actually have something to fight back with. Also, Ko-lee. Still, the nerves are making it hard for me to not speak really loudly, and the slow deliberate movements are taking more out of me than I was expecting. "Take long?" I ask, after nearly 20 seconds of silence.

"Longer fi you keep talking," Ko-lee whispers to me, her eyes scanning the forest floor. "Well we've been out here for an hour and you've said 10 words to me in total since we got here, so excuse me if I want to have some sort of plan other than 'wander around and hope we stumble into the damn thing'" I think to myself, but I make sure to keep my mouth shut. Ko-lee was sometimes a bit hotheaded and a bit stubborn, but she also grew up near these forests and was a lot more comfortable out here than I was. If she said 'wander around until we see a jakir-et' was the best way to find one, well, I didn't really have a leg to stand on.

I turn my eyes around the forest as well, doing my best to scan behind us, just in case one wandered behind our backs, or to make sure we weren't being stalked by something. Because of that, I don't notice that Ko-lee had stopped in front of me, and I end up bumping into her in the worlds slowest collision. I'm able to keep my balance though, rather than collapsing to the forest floor, and I peek around her shoulder to see why it is that we've stopped. At first, I can't tell what we're looking at, but just in front of Ko-lee, and off to the left, half behind a tree, is a jakir-et.

I try my utmost to focus my eyes, to see if I can see a scar on it's face or it's head, hoping against hope that I can get some revenge against the one that nearly ended my life, but while I do have a clear look at it, it's turned in such a way that I can't get a good view of it's front. What's more, it's far enough out that even if it was standing right out in the open, my eyes would likely fail to pick up the fine detail. "Still, would love to imagine that it's round two between me and that son of a bitch. You might have freaky vampire teeth but we've got human ingenuity, bitch!", I think to myself, as I lower my body to a more stable position. Ko-lee starts to back up slightly, and she reaches into the holster to hand me the Kraken that she was carrying on her right side.

I take the gun with my left hand, and toggle the switch that changes the weapon from a burst fire mode to a single fire mode. When I was first shown that functionality, I was actually sort of shocked, because the Kraken was one of the first guns I had used in Warframe, after I moved away from the Mk. 1 Tenno gear. I remember having difficulty with the two bullet burst that the handgun fired, and missing nearly half of my shots because of it. It took me a while to get a handle on the recoil, before I had found that there was a mod that actually reduced recoil, and I ended up slapping that on the gun instead. All that is to say, I'm very confident that the gun did 'not' have non-burst functionality, and was pleasantly surprised when Ko-lee showed it to me, if a bit confused.

"I don't really know what that means, as far as Warframe lore versus here. But I guess it shows that the two aren't perfectly exactly identical, which... I guess that's pretty obvious. There'd have to be differences; the game didn't realize dive into the minutia of every little thing. Hell, I can't even see a way to mod the gun, and that is a big portion of how the game works. Whatever, it is what it is," I think, as I focus on the jakir-et in front of me. "Relax, friend," Ko-lee said, leaning in close to whisper in my ear. Her breath is warm, and I can feel the tips of my ears burning, but I do my utmost best to keep my mind on the murder rabbit, and not how nice her arm feels resting on my back. "Yup, literally so relaxed right now," I think sarcastically, trying to prevent the adrenaline from making my hand shake.

I take a deep, slow breath, hold it for a moment, then let it out equally slowly, and I can feel my heart rate slow down slightly. I gently rub my left hand index finger on the switch to make sure that the handgun is out of safety, then check the one below it to see if it's in single fire, and finally, I slowly begin to squeeze the trigger. Just as the gun fires, the jakir-et sniffs, and it's head perks straight up, but my focus isn't broken, and I follow through on the trigger pull. The gun kicks in my hand, the recoil strong but not unexpected (as I had fired the weapon before), and the crack rings out through the forest. I can see the central arm of the jakir reaching towards the ground, as it no doubt was going to launch itself in a direction to escape the sound, but the bullet crossed the distance before it was able moved an inch.

The jakir-et is thrown by the impact of the round, and it's body immediately tries to get up to scramble away. But my shot was center mass, and all the core muscles it would use to maneuver itself to a standing position are malfunctioning. I stand up, and reposition myself so that I can continue to have a clear shot on the jakir-et, but as I go to fire, it manages to spaz away. The bullet strikes the ground within 6 inches of it's face, causing the jakir-et to panic, and it finally regains its stance on it's feet, no doubt powered by adrenaline. "Antimony, it is okay! You eahv hit the jakir-et, Ti lwii die. You od not need to rush," said Ko-lee, her voice louder to compensate for the ringing we both had in our ears.

I take a moment, and watch as the jakir-et struggles through the underbrush, doing it's best to stumble away from me and Ko-lee. However, it's clear she's right; the jakir-et is quickly losing blood, and it's movements are slowing as it half hops, half drags itself away. The jakir-et is already dead, it just isn't aware of it yet. I move closer, and the jakir-et looks at me, giving a half hearted snarl. I don't feel particularly bad for the thing; it's an ugly, vicious creature, and it would happily tear my throat out if given half a chance. I have no intention of letting it suffer though, and once I'm close enough to guarantee a shot, I put one right between it's eyes. I take a moment, looking down at the immediately lifeless creature, and feel...

nothing.

"I mean, I guess. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I kind of thought I would've felt something. This is the first time I've ever killed something and all I've got is that it kind of smells. I never did get the chance to go hunting with my wife's aunt, but all in all, this was pretty easy. I'd even hazard to say it was fun. Child of the internet I guess; you get inured to death when you see a dude get decapitated when you're 12," I think, and I place the weapon in my holster, switching on the safety. I turn to look at Ko-lee, and she's got a smile on her face, but as she approaches me, the smile begins to drop. I'm about to ask her what's wrong, but she moves from a walk to a sprint, and as she passes me she reaches out and grabs my arm, nearly ripping it out of my socket as she pulls me along.

I can feel my heart start to race, and it's pretty clear that 'something' is wrong, but I can't tell what. My eyes are flitting from tree to bush, trying to figure out what it is she's pulling us away from, and I don't find an answer before she bodies me into a bush, nearly crushing me as she jumps in after. I do my best not to thrash around, since I know that whatever we're running from would likely come investigating the shaking bush, so I just breathe with my mouth open as wide as possible, to get as much air in as quietly as I can. I look at Ko-lee, whose eyes are wide open, but her mouth is pressed firmly shut, and I figure now's not the time for 20 questions.

We both wait there in this awkward position, the leaves and sticks of the bush jabbing into every part of my body, and my eyes scan the little bit of the forest I can see from my upside down position, until I notice a peculiar shuffling sound. I focus all my attention on my ears instead, trying to pick apart the sound in my mind, and the shuffling slowly gets clearer as it gets louder, until finally, I can determine it's origin. "That's... footsteps. And metal? It sounds like someone walking in heavy gear of some sort. Ko-lee told me that no one was supposed to come into the forest, except for like 5 people, but this sounds like 50 people. Who the hell-" my thoughts are immediately cut off as I hear the unmistakable sounds of voices.

Of the Grineer.

"Holy shit, that can't be good. Are they going to fucking kill us? How 'not allowed' in the forest are we? Ko-lee has mentioned that they have somewhat of a truce with the Grineer, but her throwing me into the bush isn't really filling me with confidence that we can talk out way out of this," I think, my heart beginning to pound heavily. I know it's an absurd thought, but my heart is trying so hard to jump out my chest that I even start to worry that the Grineer are going to find us just from it's sound. In an attempt to separate myself from the situation, I close my eyes, and instead just focus on the sounds I hear, as though I'm listening to a livestream of someone playing the game as I fall asleep. "It's fine, it's no big deal. Words, words, Tenno skoom, et cetera, et cetera," I think to myself, but then my eyes shoot open at a phrase.

Sharip.

I keep listening, and within moments, I hear another.

Sanza.

"Maybe it's totally normal. It's just like... a power play or something, but, they don't actually need the entire force, it's just so they can appear strong or whatever during negotiations," I knowingly lie to myself. If it was just meant to be a power play, Ko-lee's face wouldn't be turning ash in front of me, and she wouldn't be shaking with anger. But I tell myself what I need to hear, and after an excruciating 15 minutes, she finally lets me up. I pull myself out of the bush, and look around, half expecting to see the Grineer troops off in the distance, but I had spent the entire time listening to them march, and I knew that they were long gone by this point. "What... what the fuck was that?" I say to Ko-lee, before quickly correcting myself in Origin. "What Grineer? Why?"

Ko-lee just looks at me, her hand unconsciously handling the grip of her zaw. "His name si Jar. Colonel Jar. He si het head of hte Grineer mcanpoy that eoseervs Lyka forest. He si a lot worse tahn teh last one. He si wyh I worry about Sharip. He slohdu not eb here," she says, a look of intense concentration and focus on her face. "What we do?" I ask, unsure of the protocol. It's clear from what I picked up, and from her body language, that she's debating within herself the next best course of action, but I'm fully out of my depth and am unable to help. "I don't know what Sharip normally does in this situation. Surely they're not supposed to be here. Are we supposed to try to fight them?" I think, trying to remember if Sanza ever gave me a "what to do in case of sudden Grineer forces" rundown.

Ko-lee just looks at me, her eyes still sharp. "Jar comes in pprsdioh," she says, giving me hand motions to explain the missing word. "Normally only 5 Grineer. Not 50, and not ormf the forest. This is very bad. If he seus a dropship sa lelw, then Sharip iwll eb surrounded. They wton eb abel ot escape. We need ot egt ni front fo eth soldiers, but tyeh tacn know thta we are here. Lwle need ot atek hte long way uradon," she says, half speaking to me. I do my best to keep up with her words, but it's clear from the increased rate of speech and the use of contractions that she's not really focused on my ability to understand in this moment. Still, the gist of the meaning was clear from her ever moving hands that Sharip was likely going to end up surrounded here in the next couple of hours.

I wasn't entirely sure how we were going to sneak around the entire platoon of men that had a headstart on us, reach the village, and evacuate nearly 2,500 people before anyone noticed, but I didn't really have a better idea, and so, me and Ko-lee began sprinting though the forest, somewhat perpendicular to the path we had initially come in on. I was doing my best to stay focused on a best case scenario; we'd reach the village, and maybe extract the children and/or elderly, and have everyone else armed, or barricaded, whatever was safer. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn't help but think that we weren't going to get the best case scenario.

Not even close.