Authors note: so… Angel. At the time of starting this fic, I have not played the original Borderlands. So my assessment of Angel's personality, and her relationship with and reactions to Jack are entirely based on the events of B2.

Standard disclaimer: I do not own Borderlands 2, any of its characters, or any of the other wondrous creations of Gearbox Software, 2K Games or Iron Galaxy Software. However I certainly lay claim to misspellings, mistakes, tweaks, spells and characters of my own creation, and any re-characterization you may notice.

~~Paradigm Shift~~

What kind of password was "I love you?" Gaige wondered, as they AI briefed them on what they would need to do to prevent Handsome Jack from fully charging the Vault Key. While the mechromancer could recall plenty of lurid fiction about lovebots and the like, she couldn't imagine any sort of affectionate relationship between Handsome Jack and his creatively misbehaving AI. And did the group really need a lecture on Jack's motivations right before going in to disable the infamous vault key?

Axton and Maya appeared to listen attentively. Kreig stood, head tilted to one side. There was no telling how much of what he was "listening to" had any basis whatsoever in reality.

Gaige tapped her foot impatiently as the AI droned on about charging the Vault Key and how despite its potency, Eridium was even more effective with a Catalyst. Well of course any chemical reaction was more effective with a catalyst which was the basis of some of the acidic-based ordinance that Hyperion had designed, and Gaige had improved. She contemplated some of her recent upgrades for DeathTrap.

Only a small part of her was still registering the AI's report that Jack had apparently "acquired" a Siren. Which had to be polite-speak for capturing one. Which raised the question of how in the Seven Hells any Siren could actually be captured? After all, if Lilith and Maya were reasonable examples; they both had the power to char the person making any such attempts to a fried crisp. Although to be sure, their powers were quite different. Lilith did some sort of dimensional travel type thing. She could survive it. The entities she inflicted it on, not so much. Or at least not without horrible injuries. If anyone threatened her, she could just phase away. Or melt the person. Or both. Given her temper, probably both.

Maya's powers seemed to be more about distorting a specific section of reality. Often a section focused on a living entity. And often said entity was not among the living when her phaselock released it. She was apparently capable of several specific types of distortions. Dr. Tannis (privately Gaige thought of her as "Dr-Tannis-the-batshit-crazy") had wanted to get Maya's assistance in more experiments after getting her hot little hands on the ECHO logs they'd found in the Hyperion Game Preserve. Apparently one of the possible "distortions" Maya was capable of producing was to suffuse the target with slag on what Dr. Batshit theorized was "a pervasive cellular level sufficient to facilitate the mutational process while allowing for the inherent organizational survivability reflex to be sustained". She'd written a paper on it.

Gaige had downloaded and read said paper, and aside from giving her a headache, it had also given her a week's worth of nightmares as to just what Handsome Jack and his cadre of questionably moral'ed Hyperion scientists might be up to. As well as some speculation as to why anyone could be willing to inflict such horrific research.

Angel seemed to be winding down. So… off to the heart of crazy-Jack-ville to de-acquire his Siren.

A rescue mission then.

Angel's voice seemed suddenly more intense, and abruptly the walls around them digistructed. Without conscious thought, Gaige palmed across the digi-storage module on her belt, and her favorite pistol shimmered into being in her hand.

Angel's voice was determined. "You will have to kill. Me."

And abruptly, seeming to hang in space in front of them, there was a young woman. Pale skin, dark eyes, hell of an expensive series of implants along her right temple. They made the custom job Gaige had gotten (which was small enough to be covered by her hair, unlike this gal's) look cheap. But all that was just background. She had wings; glowing white wings of energy, somewhat like the wings that Lilith and Maya manifested when using their Siren powers. And tracing esoteric curves and sigls down her left arm were the unmistakable tattoos of a siren.

Angel was a Siren. Not an AI at all. A fucking siren.

Wait. Gaige thought about Jack's sarcastic comments to the bandits brining him the bodies of allegedly dead sirens. He'd said that there were only ever six, and he knew three of them. Lilith was one. Maya was two. His nasty comment when they were trying to get to Bloodwing; that he'd gotten the Angel back under control, but his throwaway sarcastic reference to "women, am I right?" hadn't made sense at the time. Dammit.

And then there was a flare of light from a fancy electronic collar around Angel's neck. She cried out, but was pulled back into another room.

Maya, Axton and Kreig followed her. Gaige stood in the doorway, brain still trying to process this. What the fucking fuck?

There was a short hall that entered into a roughly circular room, with several enormous datascreens around the circumference. In the center of the room was a small circular area that Angel had been pulled back into. A small chair; a digistruct platform that currently held a small chair, a round table and the remains of a recent meal. To one side, Gaige could make out what looked to be a container of syrup. Set in a tripod holder was an enormous conical … something… made of some kind of stone with shimmering violet tracery woven through it.

The small circular area was enclosed by a barely visible force-field, and Angel hovered in the center of it; wings still extended. The top of the area was a three-cornered device that was obviously the generator for the force-field, but it was also something else. Three huge tubes fed into it, and from the center, three violet streams of energy fed into Angel. As near as Gaige could make out, into the collar she wore. Then out again, and into the … cone-thing? It had to be the key. The key that needed Eridium, and a Siren to charge.

Maya's delicate features were twisted into an expression of fury. "Using her. Just like the Brothers of the Impending Storm."

Axton's expression was worried. "She's barely more than a child."

Kreig stopped abruptly, staring at the syrup. In a soft pedantic voice he murmured. "And so it was recorded that the condemned did eat a hearty breakfast."

"You have to destroy the injectors." Angel gestured up to one corner of the central mechanism above her where the triad of Eridium converters processed what Gaige estimated had to be the greater part of the Eridium mined on the entire damn planet.

Gaige stood in the doorway, still trying to make this whole thing make sense. How the hell had Jack captured her? She was a fucking Siren. And she'd masqueraded as an AI. She had demonstrated an incredible ability to integrate with the software of … hell, of the Moonbase, to "move data around", to program the fake core for Sanctuary. She was a genius programmer.

And she'd had Jack looking over her shoulder the whole damn time. Was it the collar?

How had he collared her? When had he collared her?

Jack's voice came over an intercom. "Consider this your final warning - no, consider this MY final warning."

His tone made it clear that he was going to speech-i-fy as usual.

Krieg didn't wait for it. And unusually for him, he didn't go for his buzz axe first. He trigged his own digistorage belt and as he held his arms in place, a huge gold and black striped rocket launcher crackled into being over his shoulder. As the thing was still solidifying, he started unloading round after round after round directly into the nearest shimmering green injector port that Angel had indicated. Oddly though he did some damage, the rounds didn't seem to make it all the way out the other side.

"NO!" Jack's scream was equal parts fear and fury. "No, damn you, you're not going to hurt my baby girl!"

Baby Girl?! Gaige mouthed the words. Then added, mostly to herself. "Well, shit."

"Shields up!" And the three injector ports were suddenly covered with an overlay of crackling defensive energy.

Unfortunately for Jack, he hadn't entirely realized what Kreig was up to. The launcher rounds that the psycho had sent into the ports were still firmly lodged in place, and only after the shields finished forming did they detonate. Said detonation contained, and probably worsened by the shields in question.

"Thump" the first detonation was a muffled explosion that was magnified by the shielding. Gaige could see stress lines forming in the pump tubing. "Thump" the second went off. Louder this time; slightly audible through the cracks that were forming; there was a hiss and the violet glow starting to shine through the cracks.

One final THUMP and the shielding and the injector port exploded in a kaleidoscopic wash of energies.

Some sort of safety must have kicked in, because the pumps operating that section of tubing shut down instantly.

At the same moment, Angel gave a horrible, tortured shriek, and her whole body shuddered. She hung, pale and panting, wings still sustaining her. The other two streams of Eridium continued to pour into her…. And then out again, into the key.

"I'll try to release the shields on the other two injectors." Angel's voice sounded ragged, and she didn't look up at them. "I'm sorry for all the trouble. Jack won't give up his prized Siren so easily."

A low hum started, and digi-panels set into the floor all around the room began the process of constructing a cadre of Hyperion robots.

"METAL DANCERS" Kreig cried out enthusiastically. "METAL PUPPETS COME TO THE CHOIR OF DEMONS"

Jack's voice was almost a growl of hatred. "So this is how you bandits fight, is that it? You can't come straight for me, you come here to murder an innocent girl?"

Maya's hand sparkled with violet energies.

Axton was already eyeing the ceiling; looking for a good place to anchor his turret.

Gaige stood in the doorway. Normally running in, summoning DeathTrap, wreaking havok, with every weapon she had - normally that's what she would do.

Jack seemed to think that destroying the injectors would kill Angel. Angel seemed to think so too. Angel was a scarily powerful programmer. A scarily powerful Siren. And if she really was Jack's daughter that explained how she'd come under his control. She lived her entire life that way.

And despite having free run of every damn computer system on the planet, she hadn't been able to integrate herself into the Fast Travel system and escape. Gaige eyed the collar that Angel wore. The Fast Travel stations digistructed and then reconstructed everything, down to the molecular level. Which meant that if Angel had tried to travel that way, the collar would have come with her, and it obviously functioned as some type of control. Plus, if Jack had overseen her all these years, he probably had some way of surveilling everything she did or tried.

Oh maybe he didn't catch every little thing right when she did it, but any time that Angel had done something out of line, it had only been a matter of time before he caught up with her. So. The collar had to go. And Angel needed to escape.

Lucky for Angel, Gaige was a genius.

And really good at improvising. She shifted the fingers of her metal hand, and her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.