#lanius and keiko i dont think i ever even talked about on here but Oh Well

[space-ninja-fashion-show]

Okay!! Big ramble copied straight from notepad here we go

Spoilers for TNW and random things before it + Entrati rank 5

I am slowly (bc i am v v sleepy for no reason) rotating in my brain about Giving North A Frame

Bc like

They suck at void magic by default and it takes a lot of learning for them to be able to reliably do the most basic stuff like void mode/void sling during an actual mission, and they highly prefer sticking to the sirocco/rumblejack/nataruk instead of trying to use an amp

So ofc they don't excel at transference either

It's actually so much worse than the other void magic powers too bc transference is Collaborative and you can't just be bad at it In Private and possibly practice until you're No Longer That Bad At It. Also it is a wholeass Ordeal

And their first attempts at transference were Not a fun experience

With Umbra, even Kohlrabi doesn't use transference all that much, the two of them prefer to work side by side rather than as one, so while he allowed North to try so that they could learn, it's overall v clear that Umbra Would Prefer Not To. He also immediately got hit with all of North's doubts/anxiety/etc about not being innately good at void magic bc North doesn't know how to put a filter over the connection when using transference (doesn't even know that's a thing you can and should do at first) so it was overall v unpleasant for Umbra while also putting his Dad Instincts on high alert, and North was just having a bad time in general, so y'know. No One Liked That

With Alden it went worse

And by worse i mean the moment North transferred into Alden they were violently thrown right back out

It was not on purpose and Alden did and still does feel so fuckin bad about it. It was all instinct, like blinking when someone waves near your face even if you Know they aren't going to poke you in the eye. A consciousness other than Kohlrabi's connecting to Alden just felt so viscerally wrong to him and it got That reaction. While he allows North to try again and the two of them Can work together via transference if needed, the whole thing is forever marked by that first failure and is overall generally stilted. Alden and North get along swimmingly otherwise, just. not when transference is involved bc it puts a damper on their teamwork when they both know that between Alden and Kohlrabi it's always seamless

With Lanius they never even try for a million different reasons, which is actually part of the reason North gets along most comfortably with Lanius out of the three frames that are around when they arrive. There is no awkwardness from knowing how wrong it goes if they try to share a body, and they just. vibe. Not a single day in Duviri did North guess they'd someday be spending afternoons entranced by the most infested warframe in the world telling them about convergent evolution, but they're not complaining

But the issue remains: North doesn't have a warframe

And that's fine to them, honestly, they prefer it that way, and for a while i was gonna leave it as that too. But both for ease of working with canon quests and bc some stuff grabbed ahold of my brain and refuses to let go, I think instead it goes something like this:

North gets hurt

This is not unusual seeing as they continue to fight the way they did during TNW, with just their squishy human body and stubbornness and their new void powers they're slowly growing into actually using in tense situations. There's always various levels of disapproval from the ppl around them when they get hurt, but so what? All part of the job. It's not like they Died. They can just get patched up, don't bother waiting to heal up all the way, and get back out there. It's fine

(Gestures vaguely at what we understand of Duviri so far. It is, in fact, Not Fine)

Anyway

North gets hurt

And this time it's…notably worse than usual. No clue what happens exactly, but they're a fair distance away from Kohlrabi and Alden wreaking havoc in some other corner of whatever base they're running a mission in, and it's something North knows a frame would just shake themself off and move on about, but North isn't a frame, and they don't use void mode or transference on instinct to protect from harm, and they don't have a frame that might yank them back into transference at the last moment like Alden had learned to do for Kohlrabi, all they have is flesh and bad ideas and pain

For a moment there's the urge to not radio to Kohlrabi, the thought that "if you got hurt, they could too, and that's not a price that's worth it to pay"

In the end they do call in and they get rescued and they make it, but the worry from around them grows, bc it was Too Close this time. For a while they're just Not Allowed to go on higher intensity missions and they know that if Kohlrabi doesn't drop it soon and doesn't stop siccing Ordis on them, they'll need to start sneaking out to Get Shit Done alone this time

There is stuff to do while they recover ofc. They spend time helping out on Cetus, Hako (bc by this point they're friends) takes them on a few void runs, but most importantly to this story: they wander around on the Cambion Drift with Lanius and Keiko sometimes. Keiko doesn't much care about digging around for bio samples and a million different fucked up Entrati basements all that much, but Lanius never stopped being an infested scientist even after getting warframe-ified, so sometimes they go down to deimos and help out and Lanius gets to be really excited about things. And bc the void grants immunity from the infestation, they start bringing North along while they recover, to give them something to do, and also bc Lanius likes them (Keiko also likes them but she isn't the kinda person to admit it and also she finds it hilarious that North is oddly intimidated by her rude 14-year-old ass)

At some point they end up cracking open yet another isolation vault. They end up with a whole lot of the usual - bio samples, data for maps that need to be updated, some resources to bring home. Lanius and North use scintillant as target practice

They also find

A cryopod

Weirdly old-school even in orokin terms, gilded and decked out with the same gold-coin-plated look as a lot of other Entrati related things, and damaged. The infestation doesn't exactly rust things but it does chip away even at what's inorganic, and this cryopod is running on borrowed time

They open it up, and inside

They find a warframe

Gilded and only as tall as maybe North themself, and completely inanimate. Logically North knows that that's what warframes are meant to be, but between all three frames they know being autonomous and the knowledge that Lanius had come out of their own cryopod swinging when found anew, it feels uncanny

It's also generally uncanny to just. find a warframe somewhere

Keiko's general opinion is "we'll go tell Gomaitru or Vilcor about it and they'll probably send those grineer boys down here to haul it up if they want it bc Lan and I sure as hell aren't carrying that thing all the way up and you straight up Can't"

Which is entirely untrue bc Keiko may be a rude lil shit but she's also a kid and feeling about as unnerved by the random frame as North and Lanius are, and it feels wrong to just walk away and let someone else deal with this. But long, long before she could actually break about it and decide to drive the strange frame topside via transference, North speaks, not taking their eyes off the frame:

"I could try to, you know. walk them up. Just this small distance, so we don't have to carry them."

And, well

They do

Bc they know how to use transference even if they hardly ever do, and it works shockingly easily this time despite how fast their heart is beating, and

It sucks

It fuckin sucks

If seeing an inanimate frame was uncanny, this is downright horrifying, to jump into a body without anyone there to greet you. Even getting thrown right back out of Alden was better than this bc at least there was Someone There

This?

This is empty

North manages to walk the frame up and all the way back to the Necralisk, feeling five inches beside their own body the whole time. It feels like standing alone in a room meant for a crowd. They bring the frame to Vilcor and when North transfers back out of them, they're hit with the smallest spike of anxiety that isn't all theirs, but they don't realise that until much, much later. Once they're gone, unlike how it happens in the game, the frame just…collapses

(Being back in their own body hardly makes them feel better. It's the knowledge getting driven home, that most frames don't walk around, that they don't get to be people anymore. That Umbra and Alden and Lanius having identity and personhood and autonomy instead of being empty shells is something rare and special)

Vilcor is pleasantly surprised at seeing the frame

He tells them it was never actually used by Tenno, never had its somatic link accessed before North transferred into it, never got bonded to anyone. It was a project that succeeded enough to not be considered a failure but which was never a resounding success enough to be worth to put into use. Something about coming too late into the collection of groundbreaking frames and not part of the growing ranks of primes, and not garnering interest from the right officials

So off to an isolation vault it went for a later date, and that later date didn't come until centuries later

Its name was Lavos, Vilcor tells them, entirely unlike introducing a person. Something about a mastery of elements and revolutionising the energy consumption of frames and heralding a new level of power and destruction one shotgun blast at a time. It mostly just sounds like he's reminiscing about a business pitch

They end up bringing the lavos back to the Orbiter in the Camp just bc it doesn't Feel Right to do anything else. All three of them are shaken in the aftermath. Lanius and Keiko stay the night instead of taking off in the Bandit to go back to doing their own thing. North eventually ends up pouring their heart out to Kohlrabi about the whole situation and in return Kohlrabi tells them about what it had felt like to pilot Alden before he started becoming more of a person again

I'm not sure how exactly things go after this and it's getting late and i've run out of steam but: lavos ends up as North's frame partly as homage to the fact that i played TNW with my lavos, and North gets to build a relationship via transference instead of it just being a v anxiety-inducing skill to them, and they end up with more of a friendship of being on the same level instead of the parent-child relationships the other frames in the group have going on with their tenno. Idk anything about lavos in detail yet besides that he has Big Anxiety. I need a name and a canon look for him and everything