Discovery

Amelia watches the black pod that's holding her daughter in a space ship that's docked on the moon. She so desperately wants to open the pod and hug her little girl but Harry and Luna both showed them what void energy can do to robots while The Lotus, or Natah when she's not working, explained what's happening.

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"Those figures over there are called Warframes, they're a bioengineered construct designed to fight my species by the Orokin. Most of them were designed from scratch, however a few were experiments that the Orokin performed on their own people. Until the Tenno came along we were winning quite handily, as we are better at using technology than they were."

Danjell says with a yelp, "It's Clark tech."

"What's that?"

"An author and researcher named Arthur C Clark wrote 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. That's what you've got here. All of this, to us it might as well be magic. Please explain it like it was."

"Very well, Warframes are bodies that the Tenno inhabit while they are asleep in their pods. The reason they're able to do this without going insane is due to the void energy that they contain. However, controlling void energy is, difficult and it's not something that can be easily trained. They tried that before they developed the Transference system. The helmet I wear was created by my predecessor after they accidentally blinded her in a way that they couldn't heal. She was a lucky one, other guardians and researchers died to random, uncontrolled expressions of void energies. They even tried wiping their memories under the assumption that it was the trauma from the circumstances they gained their void powers under was the cause of the outbursts. It wasn't true. Control comes from acceptance and realisation, part of that is being able to wake up from what we call the Second Dream. The same will be true of Hermione, don't take Luna as an example of how quickly it will happen, she's a special case. It's more likely that it will take more than 100 years for her to wake up. Once she's done it learning how to separate herself from her warframe will be fairly quick. Probably only a couple of years."

Amelia sags, "So we'll be dead and buried by the time it's safe for her to hug us in person."

"I can turn you into a Sentient like myself. You'll then have plenty of time."

Danjell leaps in, "Done, sold, when can we do it?"

Amelia turns to her husband, "Dan, Dan! Danjell Michael Granger, you will calm down right this moment."

"But it's Hermione."

"Time also passes faster here than it does back home. It's not something that we need to decide right now, and it's not something we should decide before finding out more about it."

"You're right Mia, and I'm sorry."

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The Lotus approaches the other side of the pod, "Would you like to help me change Hermione?"

Amelia nods tears in her eyes, "Yes please."

With a touch the lid of the pod opens and her daughter is lying there looking so small and fragile. Amelia gasps when she sees the damage to Hermione's clothing, encompassing most of her abdomen on the right hand side. Hesitantly she takes her hand in her own, and smiles when it twitches. Together they remove her clothes and clean her skin. Then The Lotus removes the hair on Hermione's head with a sweep of her hand. Then they dress her in a black isolation suit with built in blindfold and ear muffs.

"Amelia, may I ask. Why do you and your husband use Dan and Emma sometimes?"

She sighs, "Bigotry. Dan's family came over from Armenia in the second world war, and my name is old fashioned. So because we got insults and racial slurs thrown at us at university, we chose to go by shortened versions of our names when we opened our practice. And, well, when you use a name enough you get used to it."

"Does your daughter not have the same problem?"

"She does, but Dan's a Shakespeare buff, and he registered her while I was still recovering."

As The Lotus picks Hermione up in a princess carry, Amelia asks, "Is the blindfold really necessary?"

"Sadly, yes. I check each of the pods occasionally, and sometimes they stir if they feel the difference as it bleeds through to them in their Warframe. The results can be quite dangerous. Until she stops growing, I'm going to need to check Hermione quite often to ensure that the suit isn't causing any damage."

As they both exit the Railjack, she can see Danjell standing to one side, and he starts crying when he sees the small body in the arms of The Lotus. She goes over to stand beside him and pulls him into a hug as she starts to cry too. Harry and Luna come to stand beside them, Harry in a similar Warframe to the one that will be Hermione's first, and Luna in her black and white one. They both focus on the Warframe kneeling beside the pod, waiting for any sign of life as The Lotus puts their daughter in her home for the foreseeable future.

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Hermione wakes up from the weirdest dream where she'd been looking at herself and been lectured about something. She'd been hurt, and then she'd woken up in a spaceship, but everything felt wrong. Then she met Luna who can speak English, and she explained stuff. Opening her eyes she looks up and sees her saviour and Luna in her black and white Warframe. Then she sees her parents and she lurches to her feet and runs over to give them both a hug, "Mum! Dad!"

As she's running over, Luna and the other, Harry, the other one is Harry, they jump forward and tackle her to the floor.

"Hermione, Hermione, calm down they're fragile and you'll hurt them. You don't want to hurt your parents do you?" Harry's voice catches her attention. No she doesn't want to hurt her parents. She just wants to give them a hug.

"I just want a hug."

"Hermione, I need you to sit up and let them come to you. When they hug them, treat them like a baby Kavat."

Confused, she does as they ask and her parents come over and hug her. When did they get so small? She stretches out her hand and looks at it, it's her hand but didn't it used to be different?

Crying her mother looks up to the lady in the blue clothes, "Damn it Lotus, we'll do it. If it will let us hug our baby without needing to worry about her killing us accidentally, we'll go through your process and become Sentients."

Happy that her mother still wants her, she squeezes her closer, "Ack, a little more gently please. I'm getting fragile in my old age."

"You're not old mum."

"No, you're just stronger than you think you are."

Off to one side Minerva bites her lip and mutters, "I think I may need to take Natah up on that offer too. Someone needs to be robust enough to handle the three of them.

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The next few weeks are wonderful as she's able to spend lots of time with her parents, and even gets some personal tutoring with Professor McGonagall as her wand feels too small. She keeps hurting them accidentally, which makes her sad. But they assure her that they're getting better at giving her hugs. There's also so much to read and learn here, and there's no bullies either. Absolute paradise. The only fly in the ointment is having to do PE and meditation under The Lotus' supervision. Harry's there too occasionally, but he has his own things he's learning. Whatever it is, he's finding it difficult.

They also have a better internet here, no more looking at bbs' and newsgroups trying to find out which server has the information you want. She's also been introduced to a messaging system for Tenno only, where she's going by TheFairyQueen. Eventually her parents have to go back home, but they've taken a computer with them so that when she gets back to school they can talk to each other.

Oh, yeah, she has to go back there. But at least she gets the same sleeping arrangements as Harry now.

Sobbing, she heads to the unofficial sitting room where her mum and dad are leaving from. There she embraces them both in a gentle hug.

Her mum reaches up and places a kiss on her forehead, "Don't worry my little fairy, I'll be back as soon as we've rearranged our appointments. Your professor and Fawkes have kindly agreed to bring one of us here every evening so that we can spend the next day, our earth time, with you. All it's going to cost us is a selection of exotic fruit. We've just got to talk to Anne and juggle the schedule. You'll also have us for the entire weekends."

"I'm going to miss you mum."

"I know, but you've got Aunts Natah and Pandora, and your uncle Xeno."

Stepping back out of the hug, her mother and father touch Fawkes' tail and are engulfed in fire.

"Right, now they're gone it's time to introduce you to the less palatable part of being a Tenno." Luna's voice from behind her makes her jump, "Follow me, we're heading to earth."

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"Ok, Hermione I need you to pay attention to me. You currently have a very poor synchronisation with your Warframe. You know how you're always overshooting your aim when you're practicing with your wand, or you hug your parents a little too hard? That's why. It's also why we've been putting you through the obstacle course time and time again. We've also shown you how to activate the simple interface that your implants give you. I've linked you into Ordis' systems, though you are still locked out of navigation. So I want you to open that menu and select the Arsenal option. Can you see that your Titania Prime currently says Rank 0?"

Hermione nods distractedly, as she tries to work out why there is a primary, secondary and melee option.

"Ok, I want you to close the interface and follow me into the Orbiter."

She follows her and ends up looking at a pillar against an internal wall with a disk at the top and bottom. As she approaches one of those computer panels appears and says Arsenal. Confused she reaches out and touches it. Suddenly she's having an out of body experience.

"Ok, overachiever. I was going to say that this will feel a little weird. What's happened is that you're tapped into a tiny drone that is showing you what your Warframe looks like. If you activate your primary section you should see a Mk 1 Braton." She tries to nod or say something but the drone seems to be fixed in position, "When you can see it I want you to equip it. That will bring it out of the digital storage and place it in your hands. Now, you'll see that this also says Rank 0. That's because you're unfamiliar with this weapon and the implants can measure that. I need you to do the same thing with the weapons in the Secondary and Melee slots. Well done, if you exit the interface I'll show you what's going to happen next in the Lander compartment."

Hermione follows Luna back into the lander, the weapons feeling odd where they're attached and throwing off her gait.

"What have you learnt about the Grineer?"

Back on more familiar ground, Hermione rattles off, "The Grineer are a faction populated exclusively by cloned people. Each one will only be expected to live for a few years before their bodies start to fail. As a result they are always trying to expand their manufacturing bases in order to produce more clones and grow their numbers. This brings them into conflict with the human settlements and the other major faction in the Solar System, the Corpus."

"That's almost word for word from the text book, well done." As she says that the lander separates from the orbiter and a panel on the floor slides to one side to reveal a person shaped hole.

"Now I want you to lie down in there and hold onto the two grips for your hands."

Confused, she does so, once she's lying down the panel covers her and Luna appears in a communication window.

"Now, the trick with synchronisation is that the only way it gets better is when you're under stress. For Tenno there is really only one way to feel the sort of stress we need to improve our synchronisation with our Warframes. That is by being in moral danger. It's why we're always running missions all over the Solar System. Now the Grineer have a strangle hold on Earth as you've probably seen by the massive fleet they have in orbit. This means that they only really ever post their green recruits here to get experience. Which is good for you, as it means that you're going to get a good chance to put everything you learnt on the obstacle course into practice."

"Wait, Luna, what do you mean?"

The lotus appears in another window at the side of her vision, "Tenno, this is an extermination mission. The grineer are trying to reactivate an old factory and resume cutting down the forest for miles around. They can't be allowed to do this, so you need to wipe them all out."

"Wait, what do you mean? I'm only 11."

Luna smiles reassuringly at her, "I was only 9 the first time I did this. I died 4 times before I got over my fear enough to finish the mission and get pickup. I would recommend you try to avoid that, as it really hurts. Whatever you do, avoid dying 5 times as that will activate the emergency beacon and you will be digitised right back to where you are at the moment, and we'll have to send you in again through a different entrance."

Suddenly Hermione feels herself turning over and Oh God, the ground is a long way away. Why is it so far away? She screams as she feels the hand grips retract into the housing and then she's falling. She desperately tries to remember what they said about landing and manages to get her feet under her, but she still goes sprawling.

"Hermione, you did well. There's no enemies around at the moment, so take a moment to breathe. Your combat systems have been activated so you should now have a few things visible at the edges of your vision. In the top left is a map that your onboard computer is generating from the scans it's taking. If you concentrate on it the map will be displayed in the centre of your vision. In the top right is the status of your shields and Warframe systems. The shields are in blue and your system status is in red. If that red bar reaches 0 the nanites that are keeping your systems running will have run out and you die. You can ignore the white line underneath that, as you'll be able to feel the difference. But if you're interested it shows your synchronisation progress before the next milestone when the onboard systems unlock another feature. Now I want you to take hold of one of your weapons."

"No, I just want to get out of here. I don't want to die, I don't want to fight. I just want to go home."

"Hermione," Luna says softly, "we want you to be able to go home too. To be able to eat at your favourite restaurant, and lie on your bed reading a book. The only way to do that is to wake up from the Second Dream and learn how to be both your Warframe and yourself at the same time. The only way to do that is to know what many different Warframes feel like and how to use them to their best ability. The only way you can do that is by pushing yourself past your current limits. The orbiter scanners are showing a Grineer patrol coming your way, and they will probably find you in less than a minute. So you can either listen to me while I tell you what everything is, or find out the hard way when they're shooting at you."

"But I'm only 11."

"I know, and I wish there was any other way. I did it because it was either this or get lost in the fae blessing that my family has. You're in this position because of a stupid accident. If you'd been a few seconds later Harry would have been in his Warframe and it would have been a bullet wound. A few minutes earlier and the safety on his amp would have been on. Now can you take out the weapon before they arrive please?"

Grasping behind her she blindly grabs the gun and holds it in her hands nervously.

"Can you see that white dot that has appeared? No? Try waving the gun around a bit."

"I see it."

"That white dot is where your gun is pointing. Most of us keep the gun pointing where we're looking, but some are better than that. When you're pointing at an enemy the white dot will turn red."

A vaguely German accent calls out making Hermione look up, there she can see a brute of a man pointing at her and shouting to someone. She barely has time to react before he raises his gun and fires at her. There's a brief flash of blue and then she screams in pain as the bullets dig into her body. Reflexively squeezing the trigger of her gun bullets spray everywhere and some of them hit the Grineer somewhere vital and he collapses. Then another two come around the corner and start shooting at her as she scrambles for cover as her gun runs dry. Luna's calm voice cuts through her panic, "Hermione, you've done this before. Just open the breach so that the spent charges can fall out and then hold your hand over the breach to load in a new set of charges. They're going to reload in a moment, when they do I want you to look round the barrel and shoot one of them. Can you do that for me?"

Shuddering Hermione nods before leaning out from behind her barrel and shakily pointing her gun at one of the two people standing there only to see that they've taken cover behind the doorway.

"I can't see them."

"Bring the gun up to your shoulder and you should see a couple of sights on top of it. If you look down those your Warframe will zoom in on where the gun is pointing. This will be disorientating, but you'll get used to it."

Doing as she's told, she brings the gun up and that part of her vision expands and she can see the edge of their armour. When the spot turns red she pulls the trigger desperately, clipping him on the shoulder and causing him to stagger out of cover just enough to get a chest full of bullets. The gun runs empty again, as she pulls back. A weird cartoony grey block with a blue strip falls away from him as he dies and lands on the ground. She only has a moment to notice it before the other one has finished reloading and is shooting at her head. With a scream as the bullets leave blue ripples in her vision she ducks back behind the barrel and reloads the gun again. A third time she leans out and fires at a barely visible patch of armour and that trooper dies. Another few cartoony looking things fall out.

"Well done, you did well for only a few weeks doing simulations. How are you feeling?"

"Scared. My chest hurts, and, and, I killed them."

"You did, and if you didn't they'd have killed you."

"But I'll get back up again."

"So will they. Though they probably won't remember today."

"What do you mean?"

"You need to get moving before another patrol turns up, but I'll explain it while you're walking. Before we do, if you look down in the bottom right hand corner of your vision you'll see the name of the gun and two numbers. The first is how many shots you've got before you run try, the second is how many shots you can still load into the gun."

"I've only got 20 shots left?"

"Yeah, you only need one or two shots to kill these Grineer. They're not exactly well equipped, you've just been emptying entire clips at them. Below that you've got a bluish bar that's partially filled in with white, and a couple of numbers beneath it. That shows your void energy reserves, by which I mean the void energy you have in excess of what you need for running your Warframe. Above that there are 4 pictures, these are the abilities that the Orokin built into your Warframe. They're well documented if you want to read about them later, but for now I'm going to activate the only one you have access to. I need you to pay