They see me standing on my gilded podium, draped in the finest silks the Orokin Era left behind, and they think I have it all. “Ah, the Void has been good to you, Baro,” they whisper, eyes wide with greed. They have absolutely no idea. Behind this pristine mask, I am on the verge of a violent, screaming nervous breakdown. My left eye won't stop twitching, and my blood is actively boiling. TennoCon isn't a celebration. It is a localized, 48-hour hate crime against my sanity inflicted by the most obnoxious, brainless parasites in the solar system.
Do you have any concept of what it takes to organize four hundred and fifty-one separate items by hand? One man. I don't have a crew of Moas to help me log this inventory. It is just me, a clipboard, and crates upon crates of volatile, ancient relics stacked to the ceiling of my ship. If I miscount a single Primed Continuity, the entire ledger collapses. I spent fourteen hours yesterday trying to sort twenty-nine different Prisma and Mara weapons, nearly breaking my toe on a crate of Prova Vandals that someone left in the hallway. Then there are the cosmetics. One hundred and fifty-nine distinct capes, armor sets, and ridiculous ship decorations that I have to meticulously polish, count, and catalog. If one single Prisma Yamako Syandana goes missing, a horde of heavily armed teenagers will literally tear my ship apart.
And then, the doors open. That is when the true horror begins. The Tenno do not form an orderly queue. They do not possess a shred of basic dignity or consumer etiquette. They burst through the airlocks like a pack of rabid Kubrows, bullet-jumping off my pristine walls, doing unnecessary backflips over my display cases, and flashing blinding, neon-pink energy colors directly into my retinas. I am trapped on a tiny golden pedestal, a hostage in my own shop, watching child soldiers dance on the counter where I keep the merchandise. I have to stand there, completely motionless, pretending I am a regal merchant of distinction while a giant, infected frame covered in spikes aggressively twerks against my shoulder. I am one minor inconvenience away from opening the airlocks and letting the vacuum of space sort them out.
It infuriates me because these mindless gremlins don’t even deserve the power they wield. They are completely wasted on them. If the Lotus had any actual business sense, she would have hired me to pilot a Warframe. I would be an infinitely better Tenno than any of these twitching, hyperactive toddlers. Give me an Atlas frame. Give me a Rhino. I wouldn't waste time doing stupid handstands or coloring my armor like a radioactive circus tent. I would step into that biomechanical armor, march right down into this Relay, and personally kick the collective asses of every single Tenno demanding my wares. I would grab them by their stupid, expensive Syandanas and hurl them into the Void myself. They wouldn't dare spam their crouching animations at my feet if I had a Valkyr's claws attached to my wrists.
Instead, I am forced to accept their insult of a currency. They do not pay me in Credits. They pay me in Ducats. Do you know what a Ducat actually is? It is a piece of literal garbage that these space ninjas dug out of a golden trash can in a derelict tower. I am trading priceless, irreplaceable Orokin technology for a rusty Fang Prime Blade and a handful of useless Paris Prime blueprints. I am running the universe's most dangerous pawn shop, accepting actual junk metal while my imaginary accountant weeps in the corner. By hour thirty, I am staring at a mountain of digital scrap metal, wondering how my life path led me to becoming a glorified garbage collector for a bunch of hyperactive mercenaries who I could easily out-fight if given the chance.
I am so deeply, profoundly tired. I don't want to see the Void anymore. I look out into the starlight and I don't see wonder; I just see a beautiful, empty expanse where nobody can ask me for a Primed Flow. I want to burn this coat. I want to throw this mask into a star. My ultimate dream is to buy a tiny, quiet hut on the farthest beach of Cetus, sip a warm beverage, and live out my days in a place where the word "Prisma" is legally banned. But tomorrow, the sirens will wail, the airlocks will hiss, and I will force myself to inhale, plaster on my fake merchant smile, and lie to their hideous, masked faces. "Ah, the Void has been good to me." God help me, I need to retire.
This is exactly how I would imagine Baro would think.
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