'Ello! First ever Borderlands fic, really this was just a thought in my head and decided to share it. Might turn it into something later. :) Hope you enjoy! Reviews appreciated!
Pandora bore her teeth and savage beauty to the universe every day, turning anyone who couldn't handle her into raving flesh bags of insanity. Those people that had no place in the world turned to banditry and marred Pandora with the blood of their pacts and the screams of their loss of sanity. Bandits as these people were called, lost was their cause for first coming here so they returned to their basic animal instincts and allowed that to rule instead.
Along the well traveled routes it was littered with corpses and other trash. Chaos ruled humanity as well as the drive for better gear in an increasingly diminishing modern world.
Maya continued her drive along the canyons with relatively no excitement. Sure the occasional skag would try to chase her down but for the most part, it was only half an attempt. In the past year that the young Siren had been on the planet she noticed that it was mostly only young skags that chased you or if you drove right through their den area the big ones came out. Nature was often ignored here so when Maya had the time, she took it to appreciate her new home.
At last she found a place to ditch her buggie and continued on foot. Most people just like her at first though Pandora was nothing but bandits, flying bullets, murder and vault hunting which was true for the most part. However there were places that Hyperion and Atlast hadn't touched and these places were pristine... provided they weren't filled with monsters or poisonous flora.
The shadows were still long and dark, the sun just below the horizon casting a brilliant pale blue rim all along the horizon.
Maya followed a trail along the side of a cliff before turning and pulling herself up onto the mountain side. Things were simply getting stale and restless back at Sanctuary, it wasn't odd for Maya to go off on her own. She followed the smell of water once she caught a whiff of it. It led her through a small cave full of glowing shrooms and moss, small amphibians scattered at her presence and went plop into the stream. A few were promptly eaten by some fish Maya couldn't see but wasn't concerned about.
Being social with everyone was a tad exhausting at times since she had come from a Monastery and lacked a regular upbringing. The monks all generally had the same personality give or take a quark. The focus among them before she became of age to be apart of their plots were to basically not sweat the little things. To find peace.
Peace was an exceedingly rare thing here on Pandora, at least where the crowds of humans festered.
The sky was beginning to smolder a brilliant orange and purple as the sun started to rise out of its cradle. Maya felt a layer of sweat bead across her skin as she continued to climb over boulders and through crevices, muscles taught with strength she didn't have when she first showed up. Although trained and exercised, Maya still hadn't felt it hadn't quite prepared her for the brutality of the universe.
At last the Siren greeted the sun just as it rose over the edge of the planet, claiming the sky as its own and scaring the darkness away for one more day. The wind was dry but gentle, coming off of a nearby aired region. She took in a long slow breath and held it in a few seconds. There were still places in Pandora that didn't wreak of corpses or feces. In fact this wind smelled of dirt and something sweet and fragrant. It took a bit of looking around before Maya spotted florescent flowers down in the small valley in front of her. A stray skag was sniffing through the grass along the streams edge, probably looking for those large mouthed frogs.
A smile touched the edge of her lips and her eyes softened; Maya proceeded to unstrap her shotgun, pistol and rifle off her person so they wouldn't be dragging her one way or another. She hadn't bothered with armor this time around as reckless as that might be. The armor was just like the people of Sanctuary: suffocating but safe. Maya needed a bit of freedom right now.
Old habits died hard for Maya but this one she was willing to keep a hold of for now as she didn't see it being a bad thing. She sat cross legged and straightened her posture but did not go rigid.
She took another slow breath of flowers and water, became aware of the water racing over the rocks, the rustling of flora under the fauna's clawed feet, the breeze whistling with the rocks, her heart beating strongly underneath her bones. The Siren closed her eyes, imagining all the energies that made up her body and the world around her. From the top of her head to the tips of her toes.
Thoughts tried to invade this moment, adrenaline fueled images of trauma, blood flying, maniacal laughter, screaming, shots being fired. The noise of battle was deafening more so in silence than it was during the event. Perhaps it was the body's natural way of functioning under stressful circumstances, to cut a lot out only to process it later. Maya had found the transition to becoming a Pandoran a blood fueled bath of fire and rage. Weakness was not tolerated yet it still existed. While in front of her friends Maya laughed off the kills and mocked the bandits and scoundrel they rid of the world. Yet no matter how hard she tried she found them more sad than disgusting. They didn't have to live the way they did but circumstances forced them to.
The Siren began to hum deep and low in her throat. Focusing the energy that was bubbling up into a meditative song.
The animals around her paused to listen to the foreign sound, it wasn't protecting a territory that was for sure. Yet they paused in their early morning scraps for food to listen.
Even though the monks were power hungry sons of bitches, certain teachings still stayed with Maya since she couldn't bring herself to believe all of them had been evil traitors. Her small warm up turned into a wordless ballad of battle. She sang to push all the anguish she had about fighting out, guilt was still strong, occasionally she even felt like a murderer and perhaps she was, but like the bandits turned into monsters, they didn't give her the opportunity to avoid fighting.
Maya did not seek forgiveness because she chose this path and the choices had been made. Pandora was Hell with a painted face and lovely clothes, with the guts of humanity as an ingredient to its make up. Maya sought peace of mind, singing was a physical way to expunge the horrible feelings accompanied with the violence of her new way of life.
Energy began manifesting in her veins as her powers began to react, slowly her tattoos all along her body began to glow; growing in intensity till it rivaled the rising sun. Her powers begged to be released but she withheld the force.
One thing Maya had not realized on several occasions was that Pandora wasn't her only audience.
Zero had cloaked and hopped onto her rig as she'd left that morning. The first time he'd done this was out of curiosity as to where Maya would go without warning. People often forgot he disappeared all the time but it was noticed when she left. The assassin had been caught off guard with what Maya was doing. It had taken him a bit longer than he was comfortable with in figuring out what it was.
After listening for a time though it didn't matter what she was doing. The only mild pleasure Zero had ever found in his patched up memories was on the battlefield, everything else was trivial. Yet the longer he had sat and listened to Maya sing the more he found himself drifting off and getting lost in the notes. It was like all care about fighting, his ultimate target, the vaults, everything didn't matter but that singing.
After the first venture of curiosity Zero avoided following Maya again. The void he'd felt while listening had been unnerving since he didn't know how to handle nothing. He'd always been goal driven, always striving for the better fight, analyzing weaknesses and assessing the situation. Vault hunting was simply a secondary goal to his personal one.
Yet her singing caused him to have a restless itch inside his mind that grew and grew with each passing day. So when Maya eventually left without even telling her best friend Lilith, he followed quietly. She obviously wanted to be alone during this exercise, so he never asked her about it and he made double sure she never knew he was there.
Today he was perched just out of sight down below where Maya was meditating. Her light bathed the valley with warmth, small bits and pieces dragged across the ground oddly but never quite lifted off. Zero learned to respect the Siren's grasp on gravity. He was now curious as to what she was doing to hold his mind here.
Nothing.
Nothing was what he did not like, he had no doubts about who or what he was. He was a killer, an assassin with fragmented memory and more than likely a questionable past but that past no longer mattered anymore. Moving forward was what mattered; to feed that hunger for the perfect fight.
The Siren's song danced on the wind and across Zero's mind, he could almost feel an electric tingle shoot around his cranium all the way through his body. It was... pleasing to put it at best. He twitched a bit, still uncertain about how to deal with this euphoric feeling. Why was this stillness that Maya sought after so disturbing to him?
Zero's racing thoughts were suddenly broken when a pebble fell onto his invisible head. He looked up and realized with a start that Maya had finished her sermon of notes and was packing up to leave. The assassin was glad for the wake up call, it wouldn't have been the first time he'd been left behind.
Quiet as silk he practically flew over the rough terrain, beating the Siren back to the rig by a few minutes. That itch had crept back into his mind on his way back. Perhaps he would find some bounties when they got back home to occupy his thoughts.
Oblivious to Zero sitting in the back seat, Maya jumped right over the ninja into the driver's seat. She settled down and revved the engine. The sun's touch was starting to warm the air causing waves to appear on the road and the night creatures to dive for cover.
The Siren sighed heavily, scratching her nose since it now smelled strongly of oil, gunpowder and gasoline. Meditating was sometimes an exhausting thing, but overall she felt better. Once she got back to Sanctuary her energy would return to her and it would be just another day on Pandora.