A/N: I'm back! Again! Wow, I didn't expect it to be this long before I did anything fanfiction related, but whatever. I've been really busy recently with studying for big exams starting in June, so that's been taken up a lot of my precious time. I was also finding it hard to focus and get this story started. Most of the time I didn't have the concentration or energy to write. However, I found an ingenius solution to this: caffeine. :) Seriously, it helps. A lot. So, a few hours and a few litres of Red Bull later, I finally finished this chapter!

Oh, and don't forget to follow/favourite/review, you know, all that good stuff. Reviews can make my day and it's the little things that matter when you spend most of the day doing schoolwork :/

Hope you guys enjoy! :D

"We are each on our own journey. Each of us is on our very own adventure; encountering all kinds of challenges, and the choices we make on that adventure will shape us as we go; these choices will stretch us, test us and push us to our limit; and our adventure will make us stronger than we ever knew we could be."

-Aamnah Akram

A lone Hyperion soldier made his way back towards the barracks on one of the Hyperion launch facilities on Pandora. His name was Geoff Foster, and he was a loyal Hyperion employee. He had been working for Hyperion for five years, and he was way too dedicated to quit. Although, even he had to admit, the company was on its way out. It had been six months since the death of Handsome Jack, and nobody had stepped up to fill in his position, so the company just slowly deteriorated. Hyperion was crumbling, just like the Atlas Corporation had before them. Most Hyperion employees feared ending up just like the bandits, so most of them left the first chance they got.

For those that stayed, of their own free will or not, were pretty much stranded on Pandora. Nobody was coming to help them. All they could do was keep their heads together and live for as long as they could off the supplies they had.

As Geoff made his way back to the barracks where the others were, he thought again about why he had stayed here. It was mainly down to the fact that he had nothing to go back to, no family, no house. His job at Hyperion was pretty much all he had left. Even if there was no way he could contribute to the dying corporation, he felt he should stick with it until the end.

However, Geoff was beginning to worry about the rest of the remaining soldiers. They hadn't been themselves over the last few weeks, the last few days in particular. They had just been acting… strange. Some soldiers would disappear for hours at a time randomly, while others had violent outbursts. Geoff had even witnessed one soldier shoot another down for no reason. These things really made Geoff worry. At this rate, they would be nothing more than insane bandits within a month, and that scared the hell out of him. He considered leaving a few times, but he was probably less likely to survive out in the Pandoran wilderness than he was in a place full of psychopaths.

Geoff didn't even like staying in the barracks for any length of time. He preferred to get away from the others so he could at least maintain his sanity. He usually went out to do something productive. He never went far, just looked around in a mile radius or so for supplies or to kill nearby bandits or whatever the case may be.

He approached the main door to the barracks and stopped. He placed a hand on the door handle and took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself for whatever may lay behind the door. With his other free hand, he reached back and gripped his pistol tightly, just in case. He slowly pushed the door open wide and looked inside. He was shocked at what he saw. He had only been gone a few hours, but it seemed like things at the barracks had gone from bad to total shitstorm.

The facility was in a bad state before he left, but now it was a total wreck. There wasn't an object or wall that wasn't broken in some way. However, that wasn't the only thing that freaked him out. Looking closer, he could see splatters of blood dotted around the place that he could have sworn were not there before.

Pulling his pistol out from its holster and holding it in front of him, he took a few weary steps forward and into the building. He was so preoccupied and confused that he forgot to close the door slowly. The door swung shut behind him, giving off a loud bang and making Geoff wince slightly. After a few tense moments, he began to move further down a short corridor. It seemed the further he went, the more blood there was. He was only a few metres in and already there was blood on the ground, walls and ceiling. Most people would have turned back and ran by now, but he was determined to find out what the hell had happened.

Suddenly, he heard a loud metallic clang come from ahead of him. It sounded like it came from and open door on the right of the corridor barely five metres ahead of him. Taking another deep breath and raising his pistol up, he slowed made his way towards the door, sticking to the right wall. He heard the metallic bang again, but tried to ignore it. Instead, he focused on keeping as quiet as he could. He stopped just in front of the door and stood perfectly still, waiting to see if he would hear the banging again. When it didn't come, he slowly peeked his head around the door.

This room was just as bloody as the corridor, if not worse. What was different about this room was there was lots of writing and symbols all over the walls. Some written in a white paint, some in what could only be blood. Geoff squinted and tried to get a better look at the symbols. Most of them made no sense to him, but there was one he had seen before on Pandora. It was a circle, with an upside-down V inside of it. If he remembered correctly, it symbolized the Vaults. The writing on the walls was even weirder and made less sense. The only two sentences Geoff could make out were 'They are coming' and 'The Vaults will save us'.

At this point, Geoff was almost terrified. He continued looking for another few seconds. It was only after a few seconds did he notice the man standing on the other side of the room. Geoff looked around the room one last time to make sure nobody else was there before walking through the doorway slowly, trying not to make a sound. As Geoff got closer, he could see that the man looked like a mix between a Hyperion worker and a bandit. He wore the bottom half of the Hyperion uniform, except it was torn and filthy. The man also wore no shirt, much like a psycho. The weirdest thing about the man though, was the metal helmet he wore on his head. It was almost a complete metal sphere that surrounded the man's head. It also had long, metal spikes coming out of the top of it. Geoff could see now that the metallic sound he was hearing was coming from the man smacking his head off the metal all every few seconds. Geoff wondered if everyone had gone completely insane while he was gone.

Geoff slowly made his way over towards the man, not even sure what he was going to do when he got there. However, just as Geoff was around half way across the room, he heard what sounded like footsteps coming from behind him. He quickly spun around to see a man dressed almost identical to the first man quickly walking towards him. The man also wore the same metal helmet, a sphere surrounding his head, with spikes on the top and a small gate where the mouth was. Geoff raised a trembling hand and aimed the pistol at the advancing man, but couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Geoff froze as the man pulled out a buzz-axe from behind his back.

"Don't worry, brother, they are coming," the man said in a deep voice, and swung the buzz-axe towards Geoff, who was still frozen in place.

The last thing Geoff saw was the tip of the axe come flying towards his face.

"What the hell was that?" Koen asked Gaige in a worried tone. He was still trying to figure out what he had just heard. He recognised the voice as Axton's, but not much of what he was trying to say made sense to him.

"I-I don't know!" Gaige replied frantically, and began hopelessly pushing all of the buttons on the ECHO device, desperately trying to reconnect to Axton's ECHO device. The more she pushed buttons, the angrier she got. She eventually raised her metal hand and slammed it down on top of the device. Several buttons, along with the whole front of the ECHO device flew off and clattered to the ground. The sudden outburst shocked Koen and he took a step back. He watched as Gaige picked up the rest of the ECHO device and threw it across the room. It smashed into the wall and broke into pieces. She then put her hands over her face and hung her head. Koen's eyes widened and he looked quickly between Gaige and where the ECHO device had landed, staying where he was.

"Uhh… nice throw," Koen muttered, trying to be funny to cheer Gaige up. When she didn't look up or respond, he sighed and walked up to her. He put an arm around her but she still didn't move. "I'm sure they're fine," he assured, "Those guys can literally take anything that's thrown at them. Things are probably not as bad what we thought we just heard."

Gaige took her hands away from her face and turned to face Koen, looking up at him. "We have to go back," she mumbled.

"Woah, woah, let's just relax. We are not going back to Pandora," Koen said.

"Did you not hear Axton?" Gaige replied, "They sound like they're in trouble, they could need our help."

"Wha- do you not remember how much we fought to get off that planet, to get here, and you want to go back?" Koen questioned.

"Koen, we have to go back," Gaige insisted, stamping a foot on the ground.

Koen could hardly believe what he was hearing. It was like everything they had done to get here was for nothing. However, it seemed like there was no convincing Gaige, and there was no way he would let her go by herself. He groaned loudly and looked up at the ceiling. Gaige chewed a fingernail, realising that she had angered him slightly.

Koen turned and headed for the door. Just as he touched the handle, he turned back around to Gaige.

"We'll talk again tomorrow, you're probably just tired," Koen reasoned, "Okay?"

Gaige bent down and picked up a piece of her now broken ECHO device. She moved it around her fingers idly, looking at the piece of metal in her hand.

Koen sighed again and opened the door. "Sorry," he muttered, as he walked out of the room, leaving a sad and confused Gaige standing behind him.

Koen searched through his pockets for his key, as he stood outside the door to his and Marshall's apartment. The room was part of a big apartment complex, a grey, unappealing slab of concrete next to the road. It definitely was not the fanciest place around, but it was still suitable housing. Koen was thankful that it was only a few minutes from Gaige's house.

Koen finally found his key, unlocked the door and pushed it open. He expected Marshall to be home, but he decided to check anyway.

"Hellooo?" Koen called out, as he shut the door behind him.

"Hey!" Marshall called from where Koen guessed was the kitchen.

Just as Koen began to walk towards the kitchen where Marshall was, he stopped and thought for a second. Then, he turned around and walked up to a smaller door that was next to the front door. They used it as a sort of closet to just store all sorts of random crap. However, there was one particular item he was searching for. He pulled a small rope that was hanging from the ceiling and a small lightbulb flickered on above him. He looked around for a few seconds until he found what he was looking for. He saw the familiar, black metal that was the object was made of. He grabbed the object and pulled it out, inspecting it.

His crossbow, his most prized possession. It had been the one thing that had never left his side for the last few years. It was more than just a weapon, it was almost a part of him. Once he'd arrived on Eden-5, he didn't see much use for it, but he held on to it. He'd kept it safe the whole time and now, if Gaige got her way, he'd be needing it again. He smiled at the weapon before setting it down gently leaning against the wall beside the door. He looked in the closet more for anything else that he may have kept. He knew for a fact that his quiver and arrows were in here somewhere, but he wasn't really bothered to go looking for them right now. He looked down to see a few stray bullets strewn across the floor of the closet. He bent down, picked one of them up and looked at it. The world 'Maliwan' was engraved into the side of the bullet. Koen realised this must have been a bullet for Marshall's Maliwan SMG, which must have also been around here. He kept the bullet in his hand and closed the closet door.

He walked through the short and narrow hallway towards the kitchen, where he saw Marshall standing in front of the fridge, holding it open and looking inside. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Koen enter the room.

"Hey," Marshall greeted again.

Koen pulled out a chair from under the small kitchen table and sat down. He watched as Marshall pulled out a bottle of beer from the fridge and shut the door. He turned around, pulled up a chair for himself and sat down. Marshall pressed the cap of the bottle against the edge of the table and smacked the cap. The cap flew off and landed in the middle of the table. Marshall raised the bottle and took a long gulp before letting out a long sigh.

"So, how are things?" Marshall asked.

Koen wasn't exactly sure if he should tell Marshall about what Gaige wanted to do or not. It didn't directly involve Marshall, but Koen thought that he might as well know, whether they end up going or not.

"Gaige wants to go back to Pandora," Koen said finally.

Marshall was in the middle of taking a sip from his beer as Koen said that. Marshall's eyes widened in disbelief and his beer went down the complete wrong way.

"Why- the hell would she- want to do that," Marshall coughed out.

Koen guessed this was the kind of reaction he was going to get from Marshall. It was actually a bit better than he expected.

"Well… you see, she managed to establish an ECHO connection with her old Vault Hunter friends back on Pandora. Things didn't sound to be going… uh… quite so well, so now she wants to go back to help them if they're in trouble," Koen explained.

"If they're in trouble?" Marshall questioned, obviously not seeing Gaige's reason to go back at all.

"Well… yeah," Koen shrugged, "Look, if she wants to go back, and there's absolutely no stopping her, I'm gonna have to go with her. There's no way I can let her go on her own."

Marshall didn't like that idea. "After all you went through to get off that planet, and you're going to go back? Jesus, you really are fucking crazy."

Koen raised an eyebrow and shrugged slightly, unfazed by Marshall's comment.

Marshall let out a sigh. "If you go, that means I have to go with you, I won't let you go just like you won't let Gaige go. Simple as," he said.

Koen remained completely silent. All this time he had his hand on the table and was playing with the bullet he had found.

"You know I'd go with you wherever there's something dangerous, that's the way we've always done it. I'd never leave you. But you gotta ask yourself, do you really wanna go back? Do you really wanna put yourself through all of that again?" Marshall continued.

Koen thought about this for a minute. He took in everything Marshall had said, but it had all been overshadowed by the look of sadness on Gaige's face that he could still see so clearly in his mind. Koen stood up and looked down at Marshall.

"For someone I care about, yes," Koen said firmly, and threw the bullet down on the table before walking out of the room.