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Health Conversion, Transient Fortitude- they need more Endo to finish ranking that one- Intensify-
Crash.
The Operator stops with one hand half-raised, holding the data card for Intensify in their hand, standing behind Voruna in their Arsenal.
They listen carefully. Maybe something fell-
Crash- thud-
SHIT!
Distant, from their personal quarters.
The Operator sighs, sets down the mod chip, and walks to their room.
Inside, the Indifference wears their body, as usual, and it looks up from the three Ayatan sculptures on the ground, standing behind them.
A moment of silence. The Indifference fixes its face into a wide smile.
HEY, KIDDO.
The Operator raises an eyebrow. "Really?"
The smile vanishes and it looks back down at the sculptures. Back up at the Operator. YEAH. I CAN DO WHAT I WANT.
Something else crashes in another room of the Orbiter. The Operator can feel the beginnings of a headache coming on.
I DIDN'T MEAN TO KNOCK OVER THREE OF THEM. The Indifference sounds like a scolded child.
The Operator waits, staring at it.
ONLY TWO. They sigh and rub their hand over their face.
YOU HAVE LIKE. It pauses, presumably counting in its head the Operator's actual inventory of Ayatan sculptures. EIGHTEEN TOTAL. AND MULTIPLE OF THESE THREE.
"Those have Stars in them."
YOU HAVE THIRTY AMBER STARS AND SEVENTY ONE CYAN STARS. The Operator stares, unimpressed, at the Indifference and the broken sculptures at its feet. YOU'LL BE FINE, KIDDO.
"I suppose it can't be helped now, anyway. Ordis?"
They turn back to spot the Cephalon behind them. "Yes, Operator?"
"Can you clean these…?"
The Operator turns back around to empty space. No Indifference. Just the broken sculptures scattered on the ground and silence.
"Of course," Ordis says behind them. They frown, staring at the spot where the Indifference had been, but Ordis turns on some protocol in the ship and they decide to leave it. They walk back up to the Arsenal, intending on continuing to mod their…
Voruna, whose limbs jerk upwards as if pulled by puppet strings when they approach, and then she abruptly drops to the ground in a criss-cross sitting position.
A very familiar criss-cross position.
The Operator crosses their arms. They want to scold the Indifference, but all of its titles are so… long. None of them lend well to scolding.
So they stay silent, waiting with an unamused expression, until the Indifference pops out of Voruna, standing next to her in the Operator's form again.
"You can control Warframes?"
NOT LIKE YOU CAN. It crosses its arms, mirroring the Operator's stance, and looks at Voruna. YOU INHABIT THE FRAME. I PULL ON ITS LIMBS LIKE A PUPPET. DIFFERENT THINGS.
They might get it if they deemed to think about it longer. As it is, they're not that interested, and they don't have time anyway. In the moment of silence, the Indifference drops its arms, shifts to bounce on its feet, and plucks the Primed Continuity mod data card from the Operator's Arsenal setup.
It squints at the text. PRIMED CONTINUITY, it reads out loud.
"You know damn well what it says," the Operator snaps. They reach for the card and the Indifference dances away from them, giggling before squinting at the text again a few feet further from the Operator.
"Hey!" They really, really wish they had a solid name for the Indifference that they could say in such a tone right now…
MINE NOW. FINDERS KEEPERS! The Indifference holds up the mod triumphantly, grinning at the Operator in that wide, wide smile, its laughter echoing in their head.
"Come on, I can't farm that. It's only available when Baro arrives and it hasn't been in his shop…"
The Operator trails off at the lack of any sort of sympathy from the Indifference, dropping their hand and resigning themself to losing that mod. For now. They will try to get it back later.
They stick their hands in their pockets, thinking about their desire to properly scold the being right now. "You know, 'the Indifference' is a mouthful."
It tilts its head, sliding the mod into some extra-dimensional pocket. IT IS WHAT I AM, it says, all humor faded for something faintly confused.
And I am a Tenno, they think. As much as some days I don't want to be one.
YOU DON'T HAVE A CHOICE ABOUT THAT ONE, KIDDO.
They decide not to think about it, and direct the conversation away from that without answering.
"Yes, but it's a long title to address someone by. And that's coming from someone who used to live in the Orokin Empire."
VICE REGENT GRAND CARNUS ADMIRAL ROATHE~ the Indifference sing-songs mockingly. The Operator laughs and it continues, quieter. SO IS 'THE OPERATOR.'
"And the Man in the Wall, and the Wall's Other Face, and the Adversary, and the Demon of the Void…" They don't call any more attention to themself.
DOES IT MATTER? THEY ARE WHAT I AM.
"Have you ever considered a name?"
THOSE ARE ALL NAMES.
"Something casual. Not cruel or… or majestic or powerful. Something neutral, that doesn't assign you morality."
It crosses its arms. YOU THINK ANY HUMAN COULD CATEGORIZE ME LIKE THAT WITH TITLES IN YOUR LANGUAGE?
"Come on. We've just called you evil in multiple different ways. Doesn't that get exhausting?"
It huffs quietly, but its gaze flicks away. It doesn't say anything.
The Operator's heart pangs. They hum, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "How about…"
It occurs to them in a snap and they laugh despite themself, short and sudden.
The Indifference squints at them, and that expression is even more comedic with the name the Operator has in their head for it labeling it.
WHAT'S SO FUNNY?
They shake their head, but can't fight the smile. "Wally," they say, watching the Indifference's reaction.
WALLY, it repeats flatly.
"Yeah. The Man in the Wall. Wally."
THAT'S CHILDISH.
"It's informal."
I'M NOT ANSWERING TO THAT.
"You're the child equivalent of a space entity, you know." The Operator punctuates it with a little dramatic wave of their hands, as if to gesture the fantastical. "Childish fits."
WELL. YES, BUT-
They stare knowingly at it. "You can say you don't like it."
Its eyes are darting all around the floor and walls, never at the Operator but everywhere else, as if attempting to figure out what it's feeling. The lights dim once, then brighten, and the Operator glances up briefly before back down at it.
WALLY, it says. WALLY. WALLY. WALLY.
Something is buried in its tone, something fragile. The Operator stays silent and still, unwilling to intrude on whatever it is.
WALL-E. LIKE THE… TRASH ROBOT. Its mimicry of the Operator's face contorts into an expression they can't even hope to name, even if it were able to form it properly. Somewhere in there is bafflement, mixed with pleasure, mixed with irritation. They stop trying to decipher it.
"The trash robot?" they ask instead, frowning.
It waves a dismissive hand. FUTURE STUFF, KIDDO. OR… PAST… STUFF. PAST STUFF… ? WAY PAST STUFF. PAST YOU. WHICH IS WHY YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT. YEAH. THAT'S IT.
It abruptly stops speaking, Void-dark gaze fixed on the floor, clearly not thinking about the chronological timeline of what reference is when. The Operator goes silent again, frozen so as not to break whatever fragile balance they've struck with it, calm and receptive as opposed to mocking and restless.
WALLY. WALLY. WALL-EEEEEE.
That last one is in a sing-song voice that resonates in the Operator's head, as if mimicking someone else that has said it in such a way. It's still looking at the ground when it says,
I LIKE IT.
Quiet, tentative. The Operator watches it slowly glance back up to them. WALLY.
It blinks at them once. I WANT TO GIVE YOU A NAME.
Oh, here we go. "I don't need one."
YES, YOU DO.
"No, I don't."
THIS FEELS VERY ONE-SIDED.
The Operator winces as they tug at a scab on their arm hard enough that it hurts as it comes off. "Yeah, well, it used to be one-sided in your favor when I was afraid an entity was out to get me at any moment of any day," they snap back.
Silence. The Operator looks up and finds the Indiff- Wally staring at them with a blank expression.
Blank. No smile, no anger, no… anything. The Operator's eyes are filled with the usual Void-black of Wally's clone, and they don't blink once as it stares at them, mouth set in a thin line.
Above them, the lights flicker several times before returning to a dimmer shade of what they had been.
"I- sorry," the Operator says quietly. Despite their apology, flickers of anger still spark through them, though it's tempered by faint fear of what Wally might do and guilt over their words.
Friendship or not, they couldn't quite forget that the entity still had a temper and could control any aspect of the Operator's life it wanted.
Including the Operator themself.
In a blink, Wally vanishes. The Operator startles, stares, and says slightly belatedly, "Wait- Wally-"
Silence and empty space. Ordis pops up next to them. "I think I might need to fix the lightbulbs, Operator…" he muses, his entire metallic body turning horizontal to look up at the dimmed lights.
They sigh. If Ordis is here, then Wally is well and truly gone.
They're still missing their Primed Continuity mod.
"Yeah, Ordis. You do that." They close the Arsenal, returning Voruna to it, and walk to their personal quarters. They want to go back to cryosleep, back to when they didn't have responsibility for the entire solar system and then some.
One step into their doorway and they almost trip over the threshold.
YOU ARE, PSYCHOLOGICALLY, A CHILD.
The sentence presses into old bruises, sparking familiar irritation. Wally hasn't created a physical form - now it is entirely in their head and it is not very warm.
They pause and take a deep breath. "I'm-"
YOU ARE. THE BODY THAT WAS PUT TO SLEEP WAS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, KIDDO.
The name feels mocking. The Operator stalks forward, their irritation spiking into real anger, yanking open a drawer in their wardrobe. "So, what, I'm a child when I don't like something and I'm a soldier when I need to save the entire solar system? Is that it?"
NO. THEY DON'T ACKNOWLEDGE YOU ARE BOTH AT ONCE.
They stop, drawer half-open, staring down at their outfits. It hurts something inside them to admit that Wally is right.
CHILD AND SOLDIER. CHILD AND ENTITY. The Operator's breath catches at the sudden vulnerability being offered to them, and they go still. YOU GAVE ME A NAME FIT FOR A FIVE YEAR OLD DESPITE BEING THREATENED BY ME.
A brief pause. YOUR DRIFTER COUNTERPART DEFENDED DUVIRI DESPITE ALL IT HAD DONE TO THEM.
"I'm not the Drifter," they automatically fire back.
NO. YOU ARE A CHILD AND A SOLDIER. A SOLDIER CAN STILL HAVE A NAME. A CHILD HAS A NAME.
This is feeling less and less like the Wally that the Operator had come to know, akin to a Vulpaphyla in its sly, mischievous ways, and more like the primordial entity that had threatened them so, so long ago. A being so much larger than them, almost incomprehensible.
And yet, the conscious manifestation of the Void in this being is still a child by primordial entity standards.
A child, and nearly a god.
It speaks up again, its voice quiet. THE HEX CALLS THE DRIFTER 'MARTY.' LIKE MARTY MCFLEA.
The Operator feels nauseous. Distantly, they think they should be worried that the Indifference is still attacking the Drifter and 1999.
For once, this is a problem not shoved onto their shoulders. With an almost cruel vengeance, they dismiss the worry, refusing to take on responsibility they have not been given on top of all that they have.
"Who's Marty McFlea?" they ask quietly.
MOVIE GUY.
They nod. "I'm not the Drifter," they repeat. Sometimes they wish they were, until they remind themself they were not destined to have a good life in any timeline. Trauma all the way down, they think bitterly. They are familiar enough with gilded prisons that they don't need to imagine how Duviri must have been for the Drifter.
NO.
It doesn't continue. The Operator has the absurd thought that Wally is doing the exact same thing they had done to it - stayed quiet and still so as not to interrupt its private working-through of its feelings.
They take a deep breath. "I had a name. It's irrelevant now, and I don't want it to be relevant. I am Tenno. The Operator of Warframes, in the war for the Origin System. End of story." They shove down the rising nausea and close their clothes drawer, turning away from it with a new outfit in hand.
The silence stretches so long that the Operator thinks Wally may have left. They want to change, but they're afraid that Wally may still be here, and… that's just weird. Ignoring the fact it can watch them from a space outside physical reality, it's the principle of the thing.
So they stand in their empty room, listening, waiting for any confirmation that Wally is gone.
And just as they decide they're alone, it appears in front of them. Mimicking the Operator's form, setting the Primed Continuity mod on top of the stack of clothes held in their hands.
SURE, KIDDO.
It disappears again. This time the Operator gets the certainty that this is for good, and they look down at the mod data card returned to them.
In the quiet, they realize that Wally's agreement with their decision lacked any of the condescending tone the Operator had heard from every adult in their life since before they could remember.