Author's Note/Disclaimer: This is a bit of a departure from what I'm used, being purely comical in form. The Borderlands universe and its characters do not belong to me, the OC of focus belongs to Gravatea over at Archive of Our Own, and the twins are mine. Fair warning for any of you sensitive souls out there, there's plenty of strong language and vulgarity to be had, with the threat of all-caps, given who this is focused on. Oh, and there's explosions, too. Lots and lots of explosions.
Assault on Fort Kaplowie
"KA-BOOOOOM!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A woman's voice screeched over the intercom, making explosion noises as rocket launching turrets released their loads all around the frantically dodging group of five people currently storming the fortress's hallways. In addition to the near-constant explosions trailing their every step, the four men and one woman desperately fought against waves of men near-crazed with fear, aided by the helping metal hands of junk-robots armed with all manner of weaponry. Bullets, explosives, lasers; if it existed and could kill, it was there, harrying the heroes' every move.
"Brick, do something, dammit!" screamed Mordecai as he focused down the sight of his sniper rifle. A loud crack carried over the cramped battlefield of a hallway, and a man's head exploded like a watermelon. The bearded sharpshooter could see his precious hawk, Bloodwing, make short work of another crony. "Get 'em, Blood," he mumbled, his goggles glinting underneath the weak fluorescent lighting overhead.
"You got it, Mordecai," shouted back the huge slab of muscle simply known as Brick, the berserker charging through the onslaught of men to punch one of the turrets to pieces, laughing all the while.
The sniper turned his head to the left to address the male and female duo cowering behind cover. The two had the look of twins, both of them blue-eyed and brown of hair, and armed with matching submachine guns. "Hey, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, get off your asses and do your fuckin' jobs!"
"That's not our fuckin' names, asshole," complained the brother of the two.
"And for the last time, I don't give a fuck. Now shoot!"
As the twins followed his demand, raising their guns to shoot into the onslaught of men, robots, and turrets, Mordecai turned to his right, where he saw a man armed with a rocket launcher, the eyes of his mask glowing green and splattered in blood.
"Steve!"
"Heyo?"
"Keep doin' what you're doin'."
"Heyoooo," said Steve, pumping an arm in the air. He continued shooting his launcher into the crowd.
That woman's screeching voice from before squawked over the intercom, giving her own set of orders to her men. "Any o' you fuckers run and I push the button that explodes all your dicks in one go, got it?! BOOM, DICKSPLOSION!" A mad cackle followed suit.
A groan escaped from the sniper's lips, and he asked himself, "Why the hell did I take this job from that crazy fucker?"
He thought back to that moment when he should of just said "No" and run to the edges of Pandora.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
After the death of Commandant Steele and the opening of the Vault, Roland and Lilith had left for some vacation, aka "lover's retreat", on Pandora's moon, Elpis, leaving the other two Vault Hunters behind in New Haven. There, they would languish in boredom and a surprising lack of violence, given where they were, until Mordecai had finally gotten fed up. His trigger finger was getting itchy, so he dragged Brick with him for a much needed dose of wasteland violence. Along the way they had encountered the mysterious masked man known as Steve, in addition to a brother-sister duo seeking glory as future Vault Hunters. Mordecai had said "Fuck it" and let the two join up on a temporary, trial-by-fire basis.
That was when they encountered Mr. Torgue.
The sniper's ECHO communicator had received a signal over the ECHOnet, so he keyed it to the rest of the party's devices. The image that had popped up was a distressingly familiar picture of a large and mustachioed, muscle-bound man wearing shades over his eyes and a red bandana over his head, his brown mullet falling over his jacked-up shoulders.
"Oh god no."
What followed suit was one of the most obnoxiously loud voices he had ever heard, but he knew it would only get worse with time.
"Hello Vault Hunters and other no-name characters of little importance!"
"Hey," said the masked man, sounding dejected.
"Sorry, Steve!" the man quickly, and loudly, apologized.
"Heyooo," said Steve, giving a thumbs-up.
"My name is Mister Torgue High-Five Flexington, CEO and spokesperson for the Torgue corporation and I need your f*ckin' help!"
"Wait, don't we already know each oth–"
"IGNORING THAT FOR EXPOSITORY PURPOSES AND SH*T! I have a mission of the utmost f*ckin' importance!"
"Did he just say his first name was Mr. Torgue?" asked the only woman of the group.
Her brother turned to Brick, whispering, "Hey, uh, Brick? What's this guy's fuckin' deal?"
"Guy's super loud," he said, not bothering to keep his voice down. "Like all the time."
Mordecai sighed, rubbing his forehead, already regretting this decision. He remembered the last job he had taken from this guy and the absolute chaos that had followed after. Of course, that part hadn't been the issue. It had been the continuous assault on his poor abused ears. It was why he had stopped taking jobs from him. But then again...
He was really, really bored.
"What do you want, Torgue?"
"I need you to stop my crazy, vindictive, b*tch of an ex!"
Snrk.
The snort of laughter had come from the still nameless twin sister. "What's her name?" she asked, her tone sarcastic, "Mrs. Boom-Boom?"
"Close!" shouted the muscle-bound man, ignorant of her sarcasm. "She calls herself Miss Bang-Bang, and she's been hassling my wares and destroying the Torgue company's weapons facilities all over Pandora! Currently, she's holed up in a place she calls Fort Kaplowie! I'd take care of her myself but I suffer from a massive case of NPC syndrome! She needs to be stopped before she blows this whole f*ckin' planet up into a big beautiful ball of motherf*ckin' explosions, NO MATTER HOW F*CKIN' HOT IT MIGHT BE! HOLY F*CK SH*T! MY D*CK IS SO ROCK HARD RIGHT NOW, YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE!"
"Alright, alright," she coughed, quickly interrupting him before he could go into any further detail. "But why is she doing this? Besides the whole 'ex' thing? Seems like there's more to this than you just dumping her."
"B*TCH PLEASE, she's the one who dumped me! Also, she used to work at my company as the head engineer until she was f*ckin' canned!"
"Ah, office relationships," stated the brunette, nodding her head, "Never works out."
"Heyo," agreed Steve, nodding his head with her.
"Okay, is anyone going to ask about the bleeps?" asked the other twin, his face expressing how thoroughly weirded out he was by all of this. "What the fuck is wrong with his cursing?"
"Uhhh..." uhhed Brick, "I think he once said somethin' 'bout a...voicebox modifier thingy? One his company put in him."
"It's a miserable f*ckin' existence, a mockery of my self-image! I consistently lay awake at night contemplating suicide! CRYING TEARS OF SHAME AS I JACK IT TO PICTURES OF EXPLOSIONS WHILE THINKING ABOUT MY EX!"
"Okay dude, you need to fuckin' stop," demanded the brother.
His sister seemed to agree. "Yeah, way too much info I don't need."
"Sorry if I made you uncomfortable," apologized the loud-mouthed man within the video feed, his expression that of earnest repentance. "I have filtering issues! Now go stop that crazy b*tch! END OF MOTHERF*CKIN' FLASHBACK! EXPLOSIONS!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
BOOM! BOOM! KA-BOOM!
"Boom-boom, bitches!" squawked the intercom again, interrupting Mordecai's thoughts. He had a job to do. The sniper released a sigh full of utmost suffering.
The situation the five had found themselves in seemed to be getting worse, the boss lady behind the intercom throwing more and more units at the invading force. Something had to change.
"Brick," shouted out the sharpshooter, pointing towards a section of the hallway that was absent of any immediate threats. That looked to be their best opportunity to escape and regroup their thoughts. "Punch a hole in that wall!"
"Yeaaah baby! You had me at 'punch'. Ahhhahahaa!"
The human bulldozer charged, making train noises as his momentum carried him forth to impact into the wall, creating a hole large enough for all of their party to escape. The men behind them strangely kept their distance, choosing not to follow as the five people and one bird made their escape.
"Oh, that can't be go–"
Mordecai's words were cut short as a thick metal barricade suddenly shut the way back.
"Shit."
Turning back to the cramped room they had found themselves trapped in, dread now weighed heavily on the sharpshooter's mind as he observed the walls covered in countless circular holes. His only comfort were the talons of his closest compadre clutching at his shoulder.
"Anybody up for a game of laser tag?" squawked out the harsh voice that had been harassing them with all manner of onomatopoeia throughout their assault. Laser guns emerged from the countless holes, every one of them just as threatening and capable of perforating just as many holes into their bodies. "I KNOW I AM! AHAHAHAHA! PEW, PEW! PTEW, PTEW!"
The bedraggled sniper could feel his stomach drop as he heard the lasers start to hum. The previous fight had just depleted their shields and they were still on recharge. Pushing through his uncertainty, he switched out to one of his revolvers, one that used explosive bullets. His other hand reached for a grenade. "Explosives out! Focus your fire, everyone," he ordered, pointing to the wall opposite them.
"Whooooo!"
"Heyooooo!"
An onslaught of grenades, rockets and explosive bullets impacted the metal surface, the force of the resulting combination of explosions rocking the ground beneath them. By the time they had ceased their attack, the wall had been thoroughly dented in, but not pierced, still standing. It just needed one more push. The tips of the laser guns began to glow red, glowing brighter and brighter as precious seconds passed by.
"BRIIIIIIICK!" shouted Mordecai.
"On it!"
BAM! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The hulking slab of muscle charged the dented in metal wall with his shoulder, following his charge with punch after punch from his meaty fists. Just as the lasers were about to lay waste to the fivesome, Brick slammed into the wall with one last punch, clearing through to the other side. The rest of them quickly followed after him, entering a wide and open-spaced, arena-like area full of boxes and scrapheap, in addition to the wall of men and robots currently pointing their guns at them.
Heeere we go, thought the sniper.
"Hey," shrieked a woman's voice from above. Looking up, Mordecai could see a strawberry-blonde woman looking down on him from a catwalk. She wore a strap of grenades over her shoulder and a large rocket launcher of her own design strapped to her back. Her long, wild mane of a ponytail seemed to bristle out at their presence, her bright teal eyes bearing down on them as a feral snarl grew on her lips. She was currently pointing a heavy-machine gun at them.
"Don't you fuckin' clam-jam me! Get back in there so my pew-pew guns can fill you full o' holes for my boys to fuck!"
Text inexplicably popped up over her head, unnoticed by everyone but the reader.
Miss Bang-Bang: Crazy, vindictive, bitch of an ex.
"So, what, did Torgue send you to take care o' me? Huh? HUH?!"
Mordecai could immediately tell they were dealing with an insane person. Admittedly, most everyone on Pandora had lost their minds in some way, but this woman was way too hopped up on crazy juice for his liking. "Well ye–"
"How much is he payin' you?! I'm gonna' kill that fucker! CASTRATE HIM! Fire my bootylicious ass, will he?!"
"Hey listen, can we ju–"
"No, when I'm done with him, he's gonna wish for a castration, like my boys know'll happen if they even think about runnin' away." A high-pitched giggle fueled by insanity drifted out of her mouth as she pulled out a remote with a big red button on it.
"See this? Just the threat o' this button is enough to keep these savages in line. One press and BOOM, my hand-made 'chastity belts' explode and these asshats'll be sans babymakers!"
"Uh...why are you telling us this?" asked one of the twins, the male of the two.
"I dunno', cuz it encourages teamwork? Mind your own fuckin' business, get outta' my head!" she snapped at the man. One of her fingers twitched, accidentally pressing the button. She looked down at the remote, her eyes wide.
"Oopsies."
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
A ring of explosions began to spread out among the army of men and junk-robots, all of them centered around the crotchal region.
Just why she put bombs in the robots' crotch paneling, Mordecai would never know.
"Aw, nuts," lamented the unhinged woman. She then proceeded to shake her finger at the other finger responsible.
"Bad itchy finger, bad. Shame on you. We weren't gonna' do that 'til after."
Looking at the walls now painted with chunky, bloody debris, the air filled with the dying groans of the genitally impaired, Miss Bang-Bang heaved a sigh at her surroundings.
"Well, all my men are either dead or bleeding out. COME AT ME, BROS~!"
"I'm a lady," corrected the one woman of the group, her hand in the air.
"WHATEVER!"
The madwoman jumped down from the catwalk and the true battle began.
Their shields now recharged, Mordecai still didn't want to risk it with the ominous revolving barrels of her heavy-machine gun revving up.
Bratatatatatata!
"Ahahahaha! Bang-Bang, motherfuckers!"
"Run for cover!" ordered the sharpshooter. So saying, he ran for one of the heaps of scrap, the hail of bullets just whizzing past him. Once he was behind cover, he had his hawk get off his shoulder. "Stay out of sight, Blood," he softly urged, "Just wait for the right moment."
He wildly shot his revolver from behind cover and he could hear the sounds of his allies' gunfire joining his own. Whatever shield she used must have an immense amount of power. Not surprising coming from what Torgue said was once his head engineer.
"Come on out so I can blow your asses to smithereens, ya' fuckin' cowards!"
Mordecai peeked over his cover just in time to see her taking out that immense rocket launcher of hers. She was aiming it in his direction.
"OH SHI–"
KA-BOOOOOM!
The sharpshooter dodged out of cover, his ears ringing from the blast, a burning heat at the back of his neck. He blacked out.
When he opened his eyes again, he could see that all of the cover available to them had been destroyed. Thankfully, he and his fellow gunmen still seemed to be in one piece. Rubbing the back of his neck, he could feel the hairs there had been singed. Woozy, he shook his head, clearing it, then looked back at their target. She was doing something with her belt. Fiddling with some sort of small control panel.
"What now?" he mumbled in dismay.
A series of wall-turrets popped out of the walls all around them, while electrified floor-traps popped up from the ground.
"..."
This job was getting worse and worse.
And so Mordecai, Brick, Steve, and the twins frantically dodged the turrets, the steadily growing amount of floor-traps restricting their movements as the fight went on. All the while, the insane she-devil in human skin kept shouting expletives and gun noises at them, patiently waiting them out before she jumped back in to finish the job. The fight progressed in this manner, the team of Vault Hunters slowly whittling down the woman's turrets as they made one death-defying leap after another. Eventually they had cleared out all of the turrets and the group gave a collective sigh of relief.
"What?! You managed to destroy all my bang-bang toys? Guess I'm gonna' have to handle this myself."
She pulled out both her heavy-machine gun and her rocket launcher, hefting up both weapons one-handed.
"You know what they say, if you want somethin' done right, BLOW IT THE FUCK UP!"
And it was with that utterance that she began to fire madly into their midst, rockets and explosive bullets raining down on them as the still active floor-traps restricted any thought of retreat. Thankfully, this move had been counter-intuitive, in that her salvo had ended up damaging most of the floor-traps, freeing up their movement. She seemed not to care, so caught up in dishing out pain, yelling and laughing in a manic frenzy that was further accentuated by the sounds of explosions. The woman had just started throwing grenades into the mix, in-between reloads, when...
CRASH!
A nearby wall had broken apart in an explosion of rubble.
"The fuck was that?!" she screamed, turning her head towards the noise. It would seem that whatever that was had not been by her design.
Looking where the sound had come from, Mordecai could see a massive red monster truck with a tacky fire decal spread along its dented-in hood sticking out of the wall, it's engine smoking and on the brink of destruction. That's not going anywhere, he idly thought. The door to the driver's seat opened and out popped Mr. Torgue himself, in all his roided up glory.
"What?"
Now that Mordecai thought about it, he had noticed that Torgue's typical ECHO transmissions had been oddly silent throughout this entire mission. He had counted that as a blessing. Now...not so much. If his voice was loud over a transmission, how bad was it in person?
Miss Bang-Bang seemed to be equally surprised as everyone else, her eyes bugging out. "Torgue?"
Then she remembered why she was doing all of this in the first place.
"Torgue! I'm gonna' rip your entrails out o' your asshole and SHOVE 'EM DOWN YOUR FUCKIN' THROAT," she shrieked, her face absolutely rabid as she dropped her weapons and jumped at the man.
Her plan of action was immediately stopped with a small collection of papers blocking her vision, a wall of words now being the only thing she could see.
"...What is this?" she asked, befuddled by this sudden twist in events.
"A new contract!" the mustachioed man answered, his voice as obnoxiously loud as ever. "I thought about it a f*ckin' lot, more than I'm willing to admit, but after sending the Vault Hunters on your tail, I couldn't help but think back on the good ole' days! You and me, together, makin' 'splosions happen, BOTH FIGURATIVELY AND LITERALLY!"
"Just what exactly are you tryin' to pull?" she asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
"I want you back, both as my head engineer and as my sweet, boomin' ladylove!"
"Wait...I thought you didn't want me around no more? I mean, after firing me the way you did, without sayin' anything..."
"That was a clerical error! I thought you knew and took the opportunity to dump my ass!"
"You're telling me..." she began, one of her eyes beginning to twitch and spasm, "...that I was fired due to a fuckin' typo?"
Seconds passed by, the group of hired gunmen looking on with baited breath, waiting for what the explosive ex would do.
"Come over here so that I can kiss the fuck out of you!" she yelled, a bright smile spreading across her face, teal eyes filled with joy as she spread out her arms.
"FOR REALSIES?!" exclaimed Torgue.
"For realsies!"
The two explosives-obsessed freaks embraced, making out in front of the Vault Hunters in what was quickly becoming an obscene display.
"THIS IS SO MOTHERF*CKIN SICK!" cheered Torgue after pulling back from the kiss, a grin on his face. He began to move his hands and fingers about as if he were playing a guitar solo, a cacophonous noise coming out from his mouth in a performance that all but destroyed the eardrums of those nearby.
"Goddammit, Torgue-honey, you know just how to moisten me up."
"OH YEEAAAAAH! LADYBONER ACHIEVED!"
"So now that I got my old job back, what're we gonna' do?" she asked, her hand holding his as they walked towards the hole in the wall, stepping past the incapacitated monster truck and over the rubble.
"I don't f*ckin' know! Wanna' get married and have babies?! BIG, BEAUTIFUL SH*T EXPLODIN' BABIES!"
"Fuck yes! Oh, oh, I vote Pussymagnet if it's a guy and SPLOOSH if it's a girl. In all capitals!"
"P*ssymagnet Mister Broseph Flexington?! WHAT A FINE NAME!"
"You want the middle name to be Mr. Broseph?" she asked, looking at him askance, "What if it's a girl?"
"Doesn't matter! Flexington middle names have always been the first name of the baby's grandfather! IT'S A FAMILY TRADITION!"
"That's so stupidly smart, it's perfect! When we get back, we're gonna' cuddle so fuckin' much. Love you, my big, bombastic, honey bunches n' oats bear."
"WHOOO, CUDDLES! I LOVE YOU, MY BANGIN', BOMBSHELL, BOOPYSCHMOODLE B*TCH!"
And so the two lovebirds skipped into the sunset, leaving the Vault Hunters with none of the pay they had been promised.
Looking back at the oddly sweet and absurd pairing caught up in their very own romantic cliché, the male twin, whose name no one had bothered to know, asked, "What the fuck did I just watch?"
"Don't even think about it, man," said Mordecai, experience telling him to look the other way, lest he lose what was left of his own sanity. "Don't even."
"Sweet," crowed Brick, picking up one of Miss Bang-Bang's dropped weapons, "A legendary rocket launcher!"
Bloodwing, who had been hiding through the entire battle, shrieked out a cry, then flew down to Brick and snatched the rocket out of his hands.
"Hey! That's my loot!"
"Heyoooo!"
Mordecai palmed his face, sighing into his hand.
~Fin~
Hopefully you've enjoyed my drivel. Feel free to review. It would be appreciated.
Edit Note: Site kept screwing with my scene transitions.
Edit Note 2: Had to make a timeline adjustment.