Chapter Text
Ivara broke free of the forest and landed on the asphalt highway in a crouch. Her main optic flicked left, zooming in—a couple miles up the road, blue and red lights strobed across the horizon. The PRT was already closing in. She pivoted, scanning the other direction until she spotted the van exactly where she’d left it under the effects of a sleep arrow.
So either the suspected Nine operative was still inside or had slipped away.
Ivara cloaked again, moving low and silent with Burston Prime raised. She approached the driver’s side, finger poised on the trigger but the Operator could tell the seat was empty before they reached it.
“Sleep arrow must’ve worn off,” the operator muttered in annoyance as he decloaked, seeing no point in wasting energy trying to sneak up on someone already gone. “Ordis, the suspect is gone. Scan the area for anyone running around in the forest.”
Through the window and on the other side of the vehicle, Ivara’s sensors spotted disrupted foliage and shoe prints leading into the treeline.
“Belay that Ordis, I think I have a lead.”
Then through that same window he had spotted something appear behind Ivara, without a sound or visible disruption of space. A naked woman, skin white as bleached bone and striped black like a tiger, already mid-swing. Her arm blurred forward at high speed, claws angled for the back of Ivara’s head.
The Operator twisted and rolled out the way, making the strike miss and punch through the van’s window instead of her head. The Siberian didn’t pause. She kept attacking in a feral rush, her claw like nails flashing in wide arcs. Ivara wove between them, footwork tight, body rotating in minimal movements, allowing each dodge to flow into another burst of fire. She aimed for joints, eyes, feet, anywhere that might reveal a weakness but none had any more effect than the other.
A clawed hand slashed sideways. Ivara ducked under it, returning fire even as she pivoted, but one of the Siberians' fingers grazed her shields. The barrier flared once and collapsed without resistance.
The Operator vaulted backward in slight alarm, momentum carrying him into a bullet jump. Burston vanished into storage with a flicker of light as he summoned the Artemis Bow.
The Siberian didn’t hesitate to chase, glowing yellow eyes looking at him like prey before she leapt after him like a human arrow.
“They weren’t kidding about her invulnerability and her strength… it’s absurd,” the Operator thought, nocking a sleep arrow. “But let’s see how she handles this.”
He loosed the arrow and it struck her dead center between the eyes before popping in a burst of energy meant to lull the naked woman into slumber. The Siberian didn’t even blink.
She crashed toward him, arms wide for the tackle, and at the last instant, Ivara double-jumped over her, activating her Shroud. The warframe landed without a sound.
Surprisingly, the brute landed just as gently. Her head turned immediately, searching the area where she’d last seen him but found nothing. The striped woman's head turned left and right, searching for her opponent in silent anger but it was futile.
The Siberian didn’t stay still though. She crouched, clawed her fingers into the asphalt, and ripped out a jagged section of roadway the size of a car. Then without a sound of strain, she hurled it at the patch of tarmac where she suspected Ivara was hiding.
It was surprisingly accurate even if off. Ivara sidestepped casually, the chunk of road slamming into the road behind him in a spray of asphalt and shattered stone.
She ripped up another piece and hurled it again but this time it went wide. He didn’t even need to dodge it.
“Thankfully she’s not pulling the ability to see through invisibility out her ass,” the Operator thought dryly, watching his shields recharge.
With space to breathe and time to think, the Operator’s mind replayed his brief engagement with the Siberian. The more he examined each moment, the less she made sense.
First was her sudden appearance. She had seemed to materialize out of nowhere, yet in all the years she’d been active, there had never been a single documented case of the Siberian teleporting. Her abrupt arrival didn’t fit the established pattern.
Then there was the way she’d instantly popped Ivara’s shields with nothing more than a finger. If the Siberian truly had the raw strength to tear through a warframe’s defenses so casually, then her earlier swipes should have been producing shockwaves or at the very least knocking Ivara off her feet from sheer impact with the finger alone. Yet there had been none of that.
And finally, the sleep arrow. It had no effect for even a fraction of a second despite its proven ability to disable anything more sophisticated than a rock. Even the Simurgh, a being supposedly beyond parahuman limits, had been susceptible to its influence. Yet the Siberian wasn’t touched by it.
The only other entities the Operator had ever encountered that were completely immune to the sleep arrow’s effects—and to similar warframe abilities—were Corrupted Vor, Thrax enemies, and the Eidolons. All of them shared one thing in common, they were energy given form.
That single connection snapped the rest of the puzzle into place. The Siberian was an energy being. That realization alone didn’t explain all her abilities but it explained enough.
And if her sudden disappearance, timed exactly with the Nine operative going under, was more than coincidence—as the Operator was now certain it was—then she had to be a projection. Something akin to Sevagoth’s Shadow. And considering Sevagoth had to be nearby when he sent his shadow out and the operative had been trailing the Nine relatively close, that host couldn’t be far.
Which meant finding them would be easy, if he moved now. The problem was leaving the Siberian active while the PRT was just minutes out—doing that would turn the highway into a massacre. Blowing the forest to hell would work, but that would start a wildfire, and he wasn’t interested in causing an ecological disaster to kill one person when this assasination mission was supposed to be a way of amassing a good public reputation.
Actually… why was he thinking this hard about it? There was a far simpler solution.
“Ordis?”
“He’s already been found, Operator. Marking him now.”
A red enemy indicator winked into existence on his HUD. Not even thirty feet away. The Operator exhaled slowly, almost annoyed at himself for overcomplicating things.
He let the Shroud fall away. Instantly, the Siberian’s sight locked on Ivara, the chunk of road in her hand dropped in favor of charging her prey in a blur of striped white and black. Her body folded into a predatory sprint as her fingers splayed and shoulders lowered like a wild Kavat breaking from cover to chase prey.
The Operator didn’t flinch, having Ivara’s main optic look at the projection as he angled Lex Prime toward the forest, barrel perfectly tracing her creator.
The Siberian, still unaware that the secret to her immortality had been discovered, launched herself into a lunge that ate the last of the distance in less than a second, lips stretching into a wide smile for the kill. Her glowing eyes locked directly on Ivara’s main optic through the jelly fish like veil—mere inches now, her claw tips breaking past the shield instantly and nearly brushing the edge of his helmet.
Lex Prime barked.
And then she was gone.
No sound. No fade. No distortion of air. Just there one heartbeat, gone the next.
“Target eliminated, Operator,” Ordis reported.
The Operator lowered the Lex, eyes flicking to the target marker now vanishing from his HUD. “How embarrassing, I can’t believe it took me so long to figure out her gimmick.
“Operator, for what it’s worth… no one else has ever figured out the Siberian was a projection.”
The Tenno snorted. “No one else on this planet is a Tenno, Ordis. That’s not exactly a win.”
“Oh?” Ordis asked in an innocent tone that meant he was setting up for something. “Is that why you dropped Ivara’s Shroud early? Because you were trying to look cool to cover up your embarrassment?”
The Operator’s mouth opened, then closed as he cringed in even more embarrassment within his transference chair. After trying to think of various excuses only to come up with nothing, he settled on, “Shut up.”
“As you command, Operator,” Ordis replied, but the digital lilt in his voice was unmistakable. Even when he wasn’t laughing, the Tenno could hear him do so.
Ivara moved into the treeline, tracing the now dead master of the Siberian tracks to his body soundless step. Barely a minute later, the Operator came out with the body, the limp form of it slung over one shoulder. The head had a neat, coin-sized hole punched clean through it because the bullet had traveled through several trees before reaching the projector, so it didn't create the gaping holes it normally would have.
In other words the face was intact enough to find out who this mystery member was.
"Ordis, ID him for me."
The cephalon processed the scan in an instant.
“William Manton. Former parahuman researcher, most famously the namesake for the Manton Effect—the inability of most parahumans to affect living matter. Missing for over a decade. Thought dead.”
The Operator blinked in confusion. “Why would a famous researcher throw in with the Nine? To help Bonesaw?”
Before Ordis could reply, movement flickered on Ivara’s optic feed. Blue and red strobes now painted the highway a few hundred meters away, and a cluster of figures emerged from the direction of the lights— six PRT troopers in heavy armor, flanked by a masked man in silver and blue tights the Operator guessed was a parahuman.
The troopers raised their weapons instantly.
“Unknown parahuman!” the lead trooper barked, voice booming through an external speaker. “Drop the civilian and surrender for containment!”
“He’s not—” the Operator started, only for the trooper to cut him off.
“Now!”
“I’m trying to tell you, this man isn’t a civilian. He’s a member of the Slaughter House Nine.” He lifted Manton’s body just enough for them to see. “Hes the Siberian, specifically the master responsible for her. My team and I tracked them to this highway and have eliminated most of them, only Crawler remains now.”
The cape folded his arms. “The Protectorate knows who all the current members of the Nine are and he's not one of them. Master powers don't even work on—.”
“No, you don’t understand,” the Operator interrupted, voice sharpening. “The Siberian wasn't a parahuman, she was a projection. This man is the source.”
The cape scoffed. "A likely story, we'll get it all sorted out back at base. Just surrender to PRT custody and this doesn't have to get ugly."
The Operator cursed and dropped Manton's body, he was going to try and stall until Trinity got here with the bodies. But before he could, the PRT trooper with the hose opened fire. Rolling aside before it could hit, the Operator watched as the foam splattered and hardened on the corpse.
His annoyance with these troopers was short lived though, his HUD pinged an alert. Helios had sustained critical damage and had put itself into storage to begin self repairs.
“Ordis, what happened to Helios?” he asked while sidestepping a blue laser beam from the cape.
“It's Crawler Operator." Ordis responded immediately. "Rhino and Excalibur reported he had been completely neutralized. But a moment later, his biomass detonated. Helios was too close when it happened.”
The cape controlling the blue beam yanked his arm back toward him. Realizing what that could mean, Ivara vaulted into the air. That quick thinking allowed her to avoid one of the larger chunks of road the Siberian had dug up smashing into her back. The cape held it over his head, ready to use it again.
"Okay, so he blew up, mission complete," the Operator surmised as he watched for the PRT’s next move.
"Mission not complete,” Ordis denied. “My sensors detect that his biomass is continuing to expand and shape itself rapidly. I believe Crawler is evolving."
Following Ordis's words, the tree line ahead erupted.
Rhino Prime came hurtling out like a meteor, moving so fast that he was a blur. He impacted Manton's van, turning the vehicle into a fireball that sent heat washing across the road.
The PRT and the cape that had been preparing to attack Ivara stopped to focus on the fiery wreck that Rhino's specter had started walking himself out of and the trail of destruction his impromptu flight had made through the forest.
And then a roar shook the land.
"MOOOOORRRRRRREEEEEEE!"
Deep and bestial. The sound that made birds for miles scatter and turned nearly every living thing nearby into prey that knew it was prey.
Then from the same direction but far over the trees, a streak of black and gold blurred overhead, landing somewhere beyond with a loud boom.
Heavy footfalls followed after, the trees hiding the source for a few seconds but no more.
Crawler emerged but not as he was before. Almost twenty feet tall, covered in thick plates of bone and chitin layered across him like natural armor, ridged and fitted together so tightly they looked forged rather than grown. His face—or what passed for one—was a smooth, angular mask of carapace with no eyes, only a thin vertical split where his mouth should have been. When he opened his mouth to huff steam, that seam tore open to reveal rows of different kinds of teeth.
His armor flexed as he moved, covering most of his bulk but leaving gaps in the joints and other areas where raw muscle swelled beneath. His arms ended in blades grown straight from his forearms. They were jagged sharp things long enough to skewer a truck. More growths jutted from his back, tentacles tipped with hooks and spear-like bone growth writhing restlessly as though eager to strike.
One look at the PRT troopers and the cape, faces pale and eyes wide, and the Operator knew they were not equipped for this.
Burston Prime shimmered into Ivara's hands, its form shifting, grey-blue void tendrils curling around the weapon as it morphed into its incarnon state. It wouldn't last long given the Tenno barely met the prerequisites to activate it but it would be enough firepower to bring Crawler down.
He sighted down the barrel at the monster and yelled at the troopers. "Retreat back to a safe distance, me and my team will handle this. Rhino, stay back.”
The gun thundered, each round a miniature sun exploding, stitching a trail of detonations across Crawler’s armored chest and head until the beast stumbled back and fell over.
Ivara kept firing, maintaining the pressure and out of the corner of her vision, the Operator watched the the troopers piling into their vehicle and speeding away while calling for backup. Only the cape remained. Shielding his eyes from the blazing detonation by using his power to hold the ruined street as cover until he closed the distance with Ivara.
The Operator allowed it.
“Sorry about earlier!” the cape shouted over the gunfire. “What’s the plan to deal with this guy?”
He didn’t need to shout for long. The void-tendrils already began retreating, the Burston’s Incarnon form unraveling back into its standard shape. The firepower was spent.
Crawler lay still in the smoke, but the Operator didn’t trust it. Anything short of complete disintegration wasn’t enough to convince him the beast was dead.
“First priority is getting you out of here,” the Operator said tightly. “I understand you’re a hero, but you’ll only get in the—”
The ground exploded with movement. From the dust around Crawler, black tentacles lashed out with lightning speed.
Ivara reacted instantly—gun snapping up and firing down the writhing limbs. But the magazine ran dry quickly, the chamber clicking empty with tentacles still closing fast.
One tore through the cape’s stone shield, missing his torso by inches and slamming into the asphalt between them.
Seeing that, the Operator abandoned reloading. The Burston vanished back into storage in the same heartbeat Hate appeared. Ivara lunged, severing the tentacle in a single sweep. Another three whipped toward them—she stepped in front of the cape, blade flashing, parrying one, slicing through the next, deflecting the third.
The Operator planted his stance, Hate poised for the follow-up.
The street went deathly still, dust and smoke hanging in the air where the tentacles had withdrawn. Then Crawler made his move.
The monster erupted from the haze with impossible speed for its mass, practically a living avalanche. The Operator could see in near slow motion that his armored face and chest had regenerated somewhat, but was still burning with massive gaping holes exposing brain, bones, and fangs.
Rhino crashed in from the side, throwing himself bodily into Crawler mid-charge. The sound was like mountains colliding and despite his size being pitifully small in comparison, Rhino’s momentum and armor cracked through Crawler’s outer plating like paper.
The two titans tumbled down the ruined street, ripping up asphalt and shattering trees as they rolled. Crawler recovered first. His clawed hand shot out, catching Rhino from his side mid-roll, and with a guttural roar he slammed the warframe into the pavement so hard the road cratered. The Operator felt the shockwave through Ivara’s boots.
Pinned, Rhino struggled as Crawler held him down with one massive arm. Then the monster turned his attention back to Ivara. His free hand clenching into a fist, the organic blade on it trembling as he aimed it at her. Then with a sickening pulse of muscle, he launched it like a missile straight toward them.
The Operator had just slapped a fresh magazine into the Burston when the projectile screamed across the street. But he wasn't worried.
Excalibur was here.
He dropped from the trees like an answer to a prayer, Exalted Blade already in motion. One stroke of it and the monstrous projectile split in two. Both halves whistled past Ivara and the cape, detonating downrange in twin eruptions of dirt, trees, and rock.
Excalibur's cut didn’t stop there though. A crescent of light ripped free from the edge of his sword and carved through the arm pinning Rhino. Crawler’s limb split to the bone, ichor spraying as the energy wave dissipated into the street..
Freed, Rhino threw the severed arm off him and surged up from the crater. He roared as he drove upward, fist extended in an uppercut. The blow connected under Crawler’s jaw with enough power to lift the monster bodily off the ground. His head snapped back, plating cracking, flesh tearing. And a heartbeat later, his entire head exploded in a burst of blackened ichor.
Rhino wasn't done yet.
From high above, he roared yet again but this time it was different. After all, the second ability was already active when he punched Crawlers head off.
Defying reason and logic, Rhino’s body accelerated downwards at speed that could not be caused by just gravity alone. His legs went right through Crawler's titanic new form. The monstrous capes upper and lower body separating in a bloody burst of guts and blood.
Then it happened. Time stuttered and slowed. From the blood spraying, to the rocks flying, everything within range of Rhino’s ability experienced stopped time.
"What... what is this?" the Protectorate hero asked in awe and horror.
The operator didn't waste time answering, Ivara summoned the Artemis Bow and drew it.
“Excalibur,” he commanded out loud for the Protectorate hero to hear. “Cut Crawler up fine. I want to make sure nothing is big enough to survive this.”
The specter obeyed, his sword flashed through the air dozens of times in seconds. And with each strike, light flew off its edge and carved up the villain's body. Within seconds, Crawler had gone from a beheaded armored titan to large chunks of flesh and scattered armor.
“Perfect,” the Operator breathed, loosening his grip on the bowstrings.
Six elemental arrows multiplied into dozens as they flew into the stasis field and pierced the chunks of Crawler’s body. Each impact detonated in a colorful flash of elemental energy, frozen in time alongside the suspended debris.
Rhino took his time and walked out the blast radius. When he reached the edge, time resumed and the explosion erupted in a controlled, violent boom.
The Operator had to admit, Rhino looked really badass walking away from the explosion like that. It’d definitely look cinematic to the media when Ordis edited and released the footage of the nines assasination.
And the smoke cleared and the debris settled, it was clear the plan had worked. Crawler’s body had been completely destroyed and thanks to Rhino’s time stomp, any trees high enough to be set ablaze by the last blast had been toppled before it went off.
“Good job, everyone. We’ve officially put an end to the Slaughterhouse Nine.” The Operator’s voice carried warmly through Ivara.
Rhino and Excalibur exchanged a solid fist bump at a mental cue from the Operator.
“Trinity,” the Operator continued, “you can come out now.”
The one specter who hadn’t seen much action, tasked instead with guarding their physical evidence of elimination, stepped from the treeline at a distance from where Crawler had appeared. In her hands, she carried the Nine’s battered RV overhead. With no effort, she walked onto the destroyed highway and dropped it like discarded scrap. The vehicle slammed into the asphalt with a crash, somehow landing upright but a couple of bodies tumbled out onto the road.
“Holy shit,” the Protectorate cape blurted, eyes wide. “You weren’t lying about getting all of them.That’s Jack Slash. You actually killed Jack fucking Slash.” His gaze darted, catching sight of another body. “And Mannequin too?!”
Ivara turned her optic toward the man as he strode forward, disbelief melting into a savage grin. He stopped in front of Jack’s corpse, staring for a long moment before his expression twisted. He spat hard, the glob landing across the corpse’s ruined face.
“Rest in piss, you worthless bastard. I hope hell’s worse than just a pit of fire for you.”
The Operator felt the urge to respond but stayed quiet. These weren’t enemies who deserved honor or respect—not in life, not in death.
The cape exhaled and straightened, realizing how raw his outburst had been. He glanced back at Ivara, awkward but sincere. “Sorry about that. Those monsters wiped out the town my grandparents retired to. Seeing them gone… it means more than I can put into words. Thank you and for this and for saving my life multiple times.”
He extended his hand. “Name’s Blue-Ray. A pleasure to meet you.”
The tenno extended Ivara's arms, clasped Blue-Ray’s hand and shook.
Ivara reached forward and clasped Blue-Ray’s hand firmly. “I’m Ivara,” the Operator said through her. She motioned to the others in turn. “That’s Rhino, Excalibur, and Trinity. We’re part of a new organization—Ten-Zero. Or Tenno, if you like it shorter.”
Blue-Ray blinked in confusion while taking that in. “How new are you? I haven’t heard of you before and your group is definitely front page worthy from your sci-fi aesthetic alone.”
Ivara chuckled lightly. “Not surprised. We’re brand new. Our first fight was with the Simurgh… let’s just say it didn’t exactly go the way we hoped. So we figured we’d start with smaller fish.” She gestured casually at the wreckage of the Nine’s RV and the scattered corpses of North America's most infamous killers.
Blue-Ray’s jaw dropped. “Wait wait wait. You’re not talking about the fight that went viral earlier today right?!” His voice cracked with disbelief. “I—I saw the reports not even a hour ago! That was you guys?” His excitement seemed to surge. “Holy shit. Where’s your space ship?”
The sudden rising wail of sirens cut him off. Red and blue lights crested the highway’s horizon, joined by the thunder of approaching engines. From above, several flying capes streaked in, and at their center a bulky figure descended—gleaming in articulated plates of dragon-styled power armor.
Ivara turned her head slightly, looking above her shoulder. “Our ship? It’s right here.”
At her words, Ordis dropped the veil, and with a ripple of distorted light the Liset uncloaked into full view.
Blue-Ray could only stare, mouth hanging open.
“I’d love to stay and chat with the PRT but we’ve got business to take care of,” Ivara said. Her tone was calm and professional. “But we’ll be back soon to explain everything."
She didn’t wait for a response. With a smooth leap, she landed on the Liset’s ramp. Rhino, Excalibur, and Trinity followed in silence. The ramp sealed shut, and the ship angled skyward.
In a burst of impossible speed, the Liset tore through the clouds and was gone, leaving only the echo of its passing—and a stunned crowd of heroes and soldiers staring at the empty sky.