Authors note: I recently played the in-game story-line relating to the fate of Mordecai and his relationship to Bloodwing. So: Spoilers. And more than that; I hate the in-game ending so much I had to write a fanfic to re-imagine it. Oh and I rarely play Kreig, so I have seriously re-imagined his "other voice".
Standard disclaimer: I do not own Borderlands 2, any of it's 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.
Gaige stood still, staring thoughtfully down at the spattering of dried blood and feathers in the center of the huge room. Prison. Cage. Dimly she listened to Mordecai ranting about how Jack was a son-of-something unprintable and how he, Mordecai wasn't going to do something stupid like beg for Bloodwing's life, because she could darn well take care of herself. Biting her lower lip, Gaige reached up with her mechanical hand and twirled a lock of her hair. It had originally been something she did to test the control and sensory perceptions of the new arm, and it had kind of developed into a nervous habit.
Absently she started counting the feathers. Feathers. Some of them were pinfeathers. Gaige knelt. One of the feathers at her feet was easily the length of her forearm. She didn't recall Bloodwing's plumage being quite so generous.
There was more here than met the eye. She knew it. Hell, everyone knew it.
But what was going on? And what could they do about it?
A crackle of static and the intercom system in the experimental zoo turned on. Jack's voice, and his tone and some of the things he wasn't saying implied he'd been following them on holo. Following the conversation with Mordecai too. Damn. For all her efforts it seemed impossible to find an ECHO frequency or a scrambling program that Jack (or maybe his software, or his programmers) couldn't crack. Well other than her private channel with Deathtrap, but that wasn't something she could easily replicate.
"Feeding time." Jack announced in an amused voice, and Gaige turned to look down the wide hall at the force field walls that had kept the various exhibits (or experiments) separate from each other. Slowly the shimmering walls of energy dissolved, and the distant sounds of growling, irritated creatures got louder and more immediate.
"THE BARBEQUE STARTS NOW!" Announced Kreig happily.
Beside the giant psycho, the tattoo covered Siren gave a slight smile, and made a gesture toward the nearest exhibit, which housed what looked to be an oversized, excessively spiked scag. It was glowing yellow-gold like the coals at the center of a bonfire. The oversized mask-wearing psycho gave her a thumbs-up and then charged happily toward that exhibit.
Gaige did a quick internal count. At least six cages. Most of them seemed to only have one occupant; two at the most. It was odd, as all the creatures she could see appeared to be skags or spiderants. Both were almost always found in groups. Maybe this meant that any of them housed together would fight too readily and ruin the experiment.
That pointed to increased aggression as one experimental change. What else might have been done to them?
All of this went through her head in a moment as she watched Kreig slice into the creature with what was actually a bayoneted sniper rifle, but in the giant psycho's hands it looked a lot like a giant Bar-b-que fork. He thrust it into the creature's body, and flame washed from the auto-support vents and swept over the spine covered beast.
And did nothing.
Oh the point of the bayonet cut into the skag's hide, and the muzzle ripped off one of the spines on its shoulder, but the hide didn't singe at all, much less catch fire; the flame didn't seem to have any effect on the creature. The giant skag snarled and leapt forward, fangs open and drooling, claws extended.
Maya raised a hand, and violet light blossomed around the growling beast, holding it aloft.
Gaige raised her signal arm. "Robot." She called. "Analysis mode."
Kreig frowned "BAD MUSIC, BAD MELODY" he bellowed, and chunking the mostly useless sniper rifle into a holster across his back, brought out his preferred weapon; his buzz axe. To Gaige it always looked like a nightmarish oversized pizza cutter. The big handle fit to his huge fist, and the chainsaw edged-blade squealed slightly as it started to spin. He leapt up and slammed the thing down into the forehead of the mostly immobile but still growling skag.
The nanocloud swarmed out of Gaige's signal arm, coalescing into the familiar hover-rocket-suspended torso of D374-TP. Instead of his standard scything attack hands, he had analysis modules and a variety of sensors at the end of each arm.
Bits of blood and thicker things spattered in a wide arc from Kreig's weapon. As the Skag tried ineffectually to claw its attacker away, a small beep sounded in Gaige's earpiece. Scrolling text from Deathtrap superimposed itself over the bottom of her field of vision:
Subject One: Alpha Skag; gender: male; size: 267% of normal for species; Coloration: yellow/orange spectrum, abnormal for species; anomaly: appears to take no detrimental effects from flame based weaponry, resistance to physical attacks appears within normal range. Tentative conclusion: coloration indicative of resistance.
As Kreig finished dismembering the skag's head, Maya's attention was already focused on the creatures emerging from the next exhibit. Two spiderants, both of whom would be large for warriors, but who bore the smoother shells and digging pedipalps that marked them as worker/harvesters. Aside from their excessive size, both had an unusual but distinctive sickly green tinge to their shells.
Maya was sighting with her enhanced sniper rifle.
Speculation. Deathtrap's comment started to scroll across the screen, but even before she read the rest of it, Gaige called out.
"They're probably immune to corrosive weapons!"
"Dammit." Maya didn't bother shooting; she let go with her left hand and gestured to the pair. The larger one rose, suspended by the siren's power. It struggled and flailed. Maya chuckled.
Axton started firing brief bursts from his assault rifle. "I wouldn't worry too much about the corrosive business." He sounded confident. "Regular bullets seem to work just fine."
Subjects Two and Three: Spiderant Workers; gender: sterile females; size: 356% and 387% of normal for species; Coloration: green/yellow spectrum, abnormal for species; anomaly. Speculation: anticipate resistance to corrosive substances.
Off somewhere to Gaige's right she heard the thunk-thunk-thunk of Axton's turret. It was followed almost immediately by a squeal and then a squelching sound as the remaining yellow-green creature took a hit and then spat out a glob of something greenish. The thick spittle landed on one of the turret's three support legs. An unpleasant hissing started.
"Sonovabitch." The ex-soldier swore. "The damn thing's spit is eating through the old lady's support legs."
Patricia Tannis' voice came over the ECHO channel. "That is exactly the sort of data I can use." She sounded eager. "You have GOT to find me more notes and samples. Pictures would be useful as well. I simply must understand what sort of experimentation was done, and how successful it was."
Gaige rolled her eyes. She wasn't entirely sure just how ethical, never mind how sane the researcher was. Roland kept insisting she was trustworthy, though, so once again Gaige set her concerns aside. She had DT snap a few stillshots of the melting turret leg, and add them to the files the team was accumulating for Tannis.
A second spatter of greenish glop came flying out of the things mouth, and before Gaige could begin to move, it landed across her right shoulder and the right side of her face. There was hissing sound as it began to eat away at her shields.
"Ouch." The electronically toned protest came from 1340, who had been converted from a loader bot to the shield the mechromancer was currently using. "That. Hurts."
Gaige drew a small pistol from her belt holster. It was a short barreled semi-automatic painted a garish red with a design of fangs all along the barrel. As the lime colored spiderant gave another cry she held the trigger down and emptied half of the oversized magazine in the direction of the creature. Instead of normal bullets, electrified compressed pellets shot out. As several of the rounds bit into the creature's pelt, larger and larger arcs of electricity jumped between the wounds, crackling and burning the creature's hide, and beginning to scorch the tender flesh beneath.
It's legs all stiffened as it was momentarily veiled in jumping sparks. Then it collapsed.
"There, Lucky 13," Gaige stated proudly. "You have been avenged."
There was the smallest of pauses. Then the 1340 said. "Thanks. Boss."
Farther away from Bloodwing's enclosure, Axton finished emptying the mag of his assault rifle into the remains of a great horned skag; it too had been the recipient of some sort of mutation experiment, and the yellow-gold color faded as it died. The soldier turned, scanning his surroundings as he reloaded his weapon. "Everyone okay?"
Kreig answered in the pedantic murmur the team had heard from him on infrequent occasion. "This misguided facility exemplifies an unfortunate misuse of the gift of science to create tragedy and pain, when surely the aspiration of human achievement should be beauty and joy." He then threw back his head and let out a growl of frustration. "YOU ARE PRETZLING MY LOBES!" He smacked himself in the forehead, hard, with his Buzz Axe. The mask he wore blocked most of the impact, but a trickle of blood ran down the side of his face.
Gaige shrugged, and answered. "Well, Axe, I think that 'okay' is about as good as it gets for some of us."
Axton rifled through the desks in the office between exhibits. "Nothing much here. A sample of something I'll save for Dr. Tannis, and some ECHO recordings, but this place looks to have been cleared out. Knew we were coming, you think?"
Modecai's voice came urgently over the ECHO channel. "Hey amigos, I'm seeing some sort of commotion in the observation wing".
Maya slowly walked back into the cage with "Bloodwing" scrawled over the door. She gathered up most of the feathers on the floor, using the faintest whisper of her power to cleanse the blood from them.
Most of the feathers were just as oddly large as the one the mechromancer had examined earlier. And now cleaned off, all of the feathers were white.
Gaige frowned. Hadn't Boodwing's plumage been brownish? "What is going on here?" She murmured, half to herself.
Jack's chuckle came over the intercom. "Oh, and about Bloodwing? I moved her. Somewhere more … dramatic."