I. Derailed
This is it, I casually thought to myself, this is how I die. I reached out my hand, trying to grab something, anything that would provide an anchor in this moment of chaos, I began to lose faith, I doubted that I would be so lucky as to survive this, although, I'd already survived through quite an ordeal on this damned planet. I never thought I'd make it out alive, I never expected to, I knew what I was going into when I chose to travel here, but then again, who in their right mind would ever travel here? This place is an absolute s**thole, everyone knows it, in fact it's famous for the variety in which it's many insane residents meet their unique and often grisly ends. So yeah, I'm basically going to die here today, I can just reached out my hand and hope for the best, right?
Suddenly, I feel something, not something that I grabbed, but something that grabbed me. I look up, a surge of joy and hope so radiant that I'm willing to pay whatever price my saviour desires in exchange for them saving my life. The sun blocks my view at first, and when I can see again, as I'm pulled up onto a ledge, I gaze at my guardian angel.
I'm only greeted with the sight of that frickin' Claptrap bot.
"Hey pal, how ya doin'? I was just wondering by when I happened to notice you and your fellow compatriots facing certain doom! So I thought I'd stop by!" the unit said, with the same annoying cheerfulness it carried around like a flag. I sighed, now I owe this piece of junk a cut of the money or something! But then I saw it play out in my minds eye, and a more pressing question came to mind, what does a robot even do with that kind of money, or any money at all, for that matter?
I knew I had to go back down there, dive into the madness and try and find my two friends, Ricardo and Amanda, but I'd nearly died escaping that train wreck and I wasn't about to put my life on the line for either of them, even if they were my two best friends, and by train wreck, I don't mean figuratively, I mean I literally just barrelled out of the window of a train as it was derailed, and was grabbed by that machine. Don't ask me how I got to that point, it just...escalated. One minute, I was nice and comfortable, living on a far off planet known as Salem, living the good life and I mean, I know the name makes it sound bad, but it actually a lovely place to live, lots of parks, fountains, whatever.
But the next thing you know, I was coaxed by my aforementioned duo of friends into stealing- and I am NOT lying to you when I say this- a Hyperion Military Vessel. It was a frickin' warmonger of a ship, packed to the brim with laser-sight missile cannons, and there was just the biggest optic turret I think I've ever- ahem. Sorry I got a bit carried away there, but yeah, we stole this ship, this bonerific ship, and the plan was to fly it to Salem's moon to sell it for big bucks on the smuggling operation that they're running up there. But, dear reader, in our haste to make with the ship, before we were caught by Hyperion guards and made into Skag food, we forgot to, how should I say, examine it properly for any unwanted cargo.
Which is how we met Claptrap, he was our stowaway, well, technically, we were the stowaways since we stole the thing, but he was aboard, unbeknownst to us, he sprung on us like a Bullymong and proceed to steer the ship towards his "home", incidentally, the wild planet of Pandora, so that he could- and at this point I was too busy trying to get him away from the controls to properly hear this- "meet up with the ol' gang and open a Vault" using a "key" that he'd recently acquired off a dead Hyperion goon.
At the time, I didn't know what any of this meant, he could've been talking gibberish for all I knew. But the point was, we- two grown men and our female friend- were basically hijacked, ripped from the controls of a vehicle that we'd just stolen from a million dollar corporation by a small yellow, one-eyed robot who barely had the ability to speak in cohesive sentences without getting sidetracked by small details that usually involved gore.
He set us down on Pandora, his intended destination, and ever since we've become embroiled in numerous plots against rival clans, mad shopkeepers, unruly warlords and even a rather fancy if somewhat self-indulgent dictator, just to name a few.
Long story short, that train was our way home, it would've taken us to Opportunity, a shining city of safety and conformity, that was home to one of the only stations in hundreds of miles that provided off-planet transport, the three of us would've been taken home through legal means, and dropped off back into our normal lives, free of any derailed trains and bumbling robots.
But no, here we are, at the site of a derailed train crash. As I sit next to Claptrap, gasping for breath, adrenaline pumping through my veins, I have a flood of questions racing through my mind. Who derailed the train? Why? How do I save the others? Where are they? Are they even alive? Could there be bandits around here? How are we going to get to Opportunity without transport? Most importantly, however, one question buzzed through my mind, rendering all the others into nothing but white noise.
How the hell do I get rid of this annoying robot?