Disclaimer: Borderlands and its characters are not owned by me. Just the OCs and plot are mine.
Author note at the bottom
Our story starts in a dusty prison inside a heavily guarded bandit fortress. A rough and tumbled looking woman stares up at the bright Pandora sun through her cell window. She can hear the residents laughing and sharing their latest raid stories. The woman rolls her shoulders and sighs while rubbing her neck.
"Okay, look," she starts. She turns to face the bandit and psycho guarding her cell. The psycho perks up. "You know this whole revive system you have here on Pandora." She waves her hand around the room.
The psycho nods enthusiastically while the bandit continues to stand stoic.
"Sometimes there's this glitch that allows some people to be revived for free, which isn't really supposed to happen," the woman crosses her beefy arms over her chest and leans against the bars of her cage. "You see, the fee you pay is for another opportunity at life. No more money, no more chances. Get what I'm sayin?"
The psycho scratches his head with his razor ax and makes a confused sound.
"When this glitch happens, it creates a debt in the system. That means an I.O.U.," she explains to her audience, "And those big wigs, the guys who manage the whole thing, don't like that. Know what they do to correct it?"
The psycho shakes his head.
The woman smirks and reaches through the bars. She begins to fiddle with the lock and continues to speak in a bored tone, "they send a debt collector. Ever heard of those?"
The psycho nods while the bandit begins to pick his nose.
"Now you see, your boss," she pauses what she's doing to the lock and points to a poster of a buff man posed on top of a mountain of bodies. The sign says, Mister Bender the spine breaker. "Has a very large debt. AND. He's in this very heavily guarded fortress, which is why I let you guys capture me," the woman gives the psycho a cheeky smile and returns her focus to the lock. "And now I'm going to escape."
The lock clicks and the door swings open. Before the psycho or bandit can register what is fully happening, the woman dashes out of the cell and uppercuts the psycho sending his head through the ceiling. The bandit looks up at the dangling legs and then down at the woman just as she pulls his revolver from his holster.
"Don't worry," she says, placing the barrel under the stunned man's chin, "you both have a dollar left," she smiles and pulls the trigger.
The gunshot echoes alerting the rest of the fortress. Within minutes the sirens are blaring and pounding footsteps signal the approach of more men. The woman smiles as she picks up the dropped razor ax. "Hey cuties," she turns to the doorway as two more men appear and fires two shots.
The first bullet strikes one between the eyes, while the other grazes pass the second bandit. The man dips back behind the wall and wildly fires back into the room. The woman ducks and pulls a shield off one of the fallen men. She waits the few seconds it takes for the shield to calibrate to her form before dashing through the door just as three more men arrive.
She drops into a slide and sweeps the second man's legs out from under him with the psycho ax. Her right foot hits the opposite wall, the momentum popping her up into a kneeling position. She shoots the first man who had hid behind the wall.
The first bullet takes out his shield. The corrosive shield explodes and splatters juices everywhere just as the second shot strikes his head, and at the same time, she blocks an attack from another Psycho with her razor ax. The first man drops in a bloody spray of body parts as she shoulders away from the third attacker.
She shoots the psycho in the leg, then the head, and quickly pivots to throw the ax. It strikes the second bandit in the chest just as he stands up. The man stumbles in surprise as the shaft takes out his shield. He looks up to the woman smiling at him right before she pulls the trigger.
The bandit's headless body falls back to reveal the final attacker. The man looks around the hall at the carnage then at her. He shakes his head and holds up a grenade. The woman, who never put her gun down, shoots the bomb to the surprise of the bandit. "Oh," is all he can say before the explosion.
The woman makes her way through the floor, one bloody room at a time until she reaches the central security office. Hundreds of monitors cover one wall displaying different areas of the structure. The cameras pick up the distress calls of the bandits as they search for her. The woman glances over the console for a moment before hitting a button to turn off the sirens, then another to turn on the mike and waits for the static to clear before speaking. "Uh-hmm," she begins and looks over the monitors again for her target. "This is Spat Willison of the Shroud Agency."
A few bandits shout in fear, "it's Cruel Willison!"
Spat sighs, "yeah. That's me." She grins and adjusts one of the cameras finally finding her target. "Mister Bender."
The monitor shows Mister Bender hiding out in a large storage room and teasing a midget by dangling a shotgun over the small guy's head. Spat continues, "you've died over 25 times in the last two months and owe over 2 billion dollars. I'm here to collect."
Mister Bender flips off the camera and then gestures to his crutch, "you can suck my-"
Spat interrupts, "okay. I'm on my way down. Oh and Lil' guy. That shotgun is mine. It's yours if you kill him before I get there." She chuckles at the excited sound of the little person.
There are a few things you should know about Spat "Cruel" Willison. The first, her mother named her Spat because it's what she wished she did instead of having a kid. This has understandably left our debt collector with a few anger management issues.
The second, Spat takes her job very seriously and will chase her prey to the end of the galaxy. Her dedication to her work has made her one of Shroud's favorite collectors.
The third, when a revive system goes haywire, say like allowing a few hundred free revives, Spat is the one dispatched to "fix" the issue by any means necessary. Which brings her to Pandora and her current mission of finding Mister Bender, the third target on a long list of names.
There is notably less resistance as she makes her way towards Mister Bender. The few loyal men she encounters put up a somewhat distant fight. She finishes emptying another clip into a brute and watches with a bored expression as his body drops to the floor in a spray of blood. She looks at the large bay doors that stand between her and her target. The doors open in a dramatic fashion as steam rolls over the floor.
"LET'S GO!" Mister Bender shouts and fires a rocket before the doors are fully open.
Spat leaps out of the way as the rocket explodes in a rain of fire against a pillar and rolls to avoid falling debris. She quickly scrambles around a few crates just as another rocket zips over her head. Its smoky trail burns her lungs. Spat struggles to hold back a cough and dashes out from her cover. She sweeps up a machine gun from one of her earlier opponents and fires while running by Mister Bender.
The bullets bounce off the shield, seemingly doing nothing to his defenses. "You think I wasn't ready for you," Mister Bender laughs, "I had you pegged the moment you stepped in here." Bender drops his rocket launcher and pulls out a repeater pistol. The bullets explode against the ground, taking chunks out of their surrounding.
Spat is blasted off her feet from an aftershock of a bullet exploding. Her borrowed shield breaks. Its beeping signaling to everyone who could hear that she was exposed. Mister Bender's laughter rumbles through the massive hall as he continues to fire.
He stepped around the remains of the pillar Spat had ducked behind. His devilish grin dies on his lips when all he finds is the broken shield. A wild scream from his left is all the warning he has before Spat dashes out of the shadows and swings the razor ax at Mister Bender's midsection.
The final thing to know about Spat, much like the famous vault hunter Brick, she is also a berserker who favors close quarter combat.
For a big man, Mister Bender is surprisingly fast and dodges the slash. Spat uses the momentum of her swing to spin her body away from Bender's return fire. She rolls around another pillar before charging the large man again. Bender's bullets chip away at her secondary shield. As she draws closer, Spat drops and does a sweeping kick to his legs. The man jumps and stumbles away dropping two longbow grenades in the process. Their explosions are enough to take out her new shield and propel her way from Bender.
The two come to a stop. Bender's ammo finally runs dry. His chest is heaving from the exertion of dodging the crazed woman's attacks. Spat chuckles and wobbles to her feet, her berserker rage running out at the same time.
"Fist da cuffs it is," she sways into a boxer stance.
The loud bang startles them both, or maybe it's the sudden gaping hole in Bender's chest catching that surprises them. "What?" the man stutters and turns to look into the storage hanger. The midget Mister Bender had been teasing earlier stands up from where the shotgun blast sent him flying.
"Wait. Wait," Bender says as the midget aims the shotgun again. It clicks once at the pull of the trigger, empty. The little man burst into tears and tries to fire the gun again.
"Something isn't right," Mister Bender says, brushing his hand over the wound as it begins to glow. He looks over at Spat who makes her way over to the crying little person.
The midget looks up at her and holds up the wood with a golden trim shotgun.
Spat smiles and pats the dwarf's head. "A deals a deal," she says.
"No. No," Mister Bender's distraught voice pulls her attention back. Bits of his body begin to crumble way into glowing blue dust. Nothing like the normal revive process.
"It's a special bullet," Spat explains, "it's your final payment."
Mister Bender stumbles toward her as his muscular arms fall off. "I'll pay. I'll pay. Please. Make it stop."
Spat smiles wide and shrugs. "Sorry. Shroud policy. No Refunds."
The debt collector wanders out of the empty fortress toward a New-U station. She pauses and looks back at the midget that's following her. He is hugging her shotgun and caressing the gold inlays. "Hey buddy," Spat greets as she kneels next to a large rock.
She pushes a button on its side, which causes the stone to fold up and reveal her supplies. "Your friends should be coming back soon." She pulls her backpack on and adjusts the straps as she starts to walk over to an empty bandit racer then stops. She clicks her tongue and jogs back to the New-U station. "Wait. Almost forgot."
Spat pulls a small keyboard device from a side pocket on her bag and plugs a USB into the New-U pole. The light on the top flickers on and turns green. "I almost forgot to turn this back on," she says just as revived bandits start to appear in the fortress.
She waves at the stunned bandits as she jogs over to the nearest racer. "Your boss is dead." She yells at them, "good luck on whatever it is you all do."
Spat drops her bag into the racer and pulls out a thick silver bracelet. She puts it on and turns her hand until her wrist is facing up. A holographic list of names appears in the air over the bracelet, which she scrolls through looking for Mister Bender's name as she slides into the driver seat.
She turns on the vehicle once she checks off the list and decides on her next target. Just as she begins to pull away, a loud thump from the machine gunner's seat catches her attention. She turns around in time to see two tiny feet disappear into the hole before the midget with a shotgun pops up. An amused smile slips onto her pale lips, "wanna join?"
The midget nods and grunts affirmatively.
"Got a name?"
The little guy holds up the single bullet shotgun and points to the word Fancy inscribed on the side of the gun.
Spat laughs, "I like it!" she starts the racer again. "Welcome aboard. I gotta warn you. I'm after a lot of people. It's going to get messy." Fancy cheers and points toward the sunset. Spat smiles a wicked smile and floors it.
Author note: It's been such a long time since I've written fanfiction. I'm not gonna lie. I lost my way as a writer. So I decided to return to my roots and rediscover the magic of telling a story. I can't promise I'll update regularly but I will try to make every story entertaining!
Looking forward to showing you all what I got,
Petague
P.S. want to see some of my original work let me know and I'll be happy to point you to some self-published titles.