A/N: Thanks for the advice and reviews. I've made a lot of assumptions about Zer0 here so bare with me as I try to explain his mysterious side and how that plays into this story's plot.

Chapter 2

The rat that had spotted Zer0 was known amongst his brethren as the priest, in charge of upholding the culture and beliefs. Including prophecies and this is where Zer0 gets mixed up in their shenanigans. The priest was one day strolling through the rat tunnels in the Fridge and he spotted something sparkling in the corner of his eye. There was a bit of metal protruding out of a pile of slimy sewage. He assumed the acid dripping from above had slowly eroded away layers of that heap of sewage junk over time. Everyone knows how much they like shiny things, so he yanked it out, not minding the gunk that sprayed on his traditional gas mask.

When he wiped his goggles and his eyes widened in excitement. He didn't know it yet but he had just pulled out the greatest treasure in his life. It was in fact a door handle that he had pulled off, which meant that there was a door leading somewhere under the rest of the slime. After hours of digging he had indeed found a door revealing dark passage.

After trekking through he saw light at the end of the tunnel, it was in fact the red orange hues of the setting Sun. He had just discovered a tunnel that led into what he supposed to be an enclosed room, save for the huge 100 ft windows framing a view of the setting sun on the sea.

Gingerly creeping inside he saw through the windows and noticed that the room was built into a cliff. No wonder no-one had noticed this place before, it must be disguised to look like part of the cliff, he thought. He glanced down through the glass and noticed a sandy beach and a few baby threshers. Turning on the generator switch he found on the floor. He assumed the beach was just a breeding ground- until he saw a few floodlights turn on to reveal a 'natural defense' of what had to be like hundered threshers of twenty varieties. He turned back around and the little lights started to flicker on one by one rising into the ceiling one thousand feet above him and he saw he was inside the remnants of an old building. With worn out walls, these walls had grand detailed drawings on them. Decrepit furnishings and dust surrounded this small rat, so much dust on all the computers- these computers had to be like ten years old he assumed. When he walked closer to the walls and felt his claws on them he saw the pictures weren't just ordinary drawings though, no. They were encrusted with the shiniest metal ever! He screamed in delight and threw himself at them. Upon his closer inspection he noticed all the drawings were of the same thing- a tall skinny, helmet wearing figure in various poses and even the detail of the drawings were like blueprints. The figure looked somewhat like a rat too he thought, except that he was more of a deformed rat, like he was missing the claws and such. The figure was sometimes carrying a gun with pearl handles or depicted with blades in his hands. A title was given to some of them too: 'Specimen zero'.

He quickly summarised that this must be a prophecy left by his ancestors. Who else would leave such a grand sign in their home ground? The zero must meant he was the beginning and a zero is like a circle symbolic of never ending. The number represented the start of everything and the end of everything. With his skills as a priest he predicted that there will come a King one day to bring back leadership and the pride of his people, and that King was this 'zero' figure in the drawings.

So when he saw wanted posters of Zer0 the Assassin he immediately put two and two together and made him King. He sent scouts out to scour Pandora for him and to his delight Zer0 just happened to be in the highlands. Perfect.

Whilst Zer0 felt left in a somewhat vulnerable state, you could forgive him for being just a little bit of a 'huge dartboard'. Just ten seconds after Gaige had left this happened:

5 R.O.U.S were already in a circle around him, 7 Mole Rats that were buried underground formed a circle within them and 5 formerly cloaked rats had somehow appeared right by his feet.

A '!' appeared on Zer0's visor followed by a '?'. He cursed himself for being so lost in thought that he couldn't even sense their presence. Well he didn't feel like he was in danger until one rat jabbed his back with a needle. How a needle could pierce his armor was alarming but nonetheless Zer0 immediately counterattacked with his digistructed blade, Thrusting his sword backwards relishing that feeling of his blade running through that rat's mid torso.

"Not on an empty stomach…" The dying creature said in his last moments.

"Your mistake" growled the assassin as he pointed his blood dripping blade at the next one.

All the other enemies just awed in amazement and a few were bowing to him on their hands and knees.

"Oh our savior! Our King! How wonderful it must be to have our lives ended by your mighty power. But please do not be alarmed! We humbly took the liberty in injecting you with our mutant serum so that you would not be in misery due to your current form. Of course that form must feel limiting to you oh King."

Zer0 glared at the so called Priest he could tell the guy was speaking but he heard his speech in broken tones. The creature was talking again but now Zer0 was having blurred vision. His visor was malfunctioning. He had no idea what this stupid rat was saying… WTF BRO, 3MTa3, PA1N, 00110000, _, LOL and \0/all projected one after the other. He realised, with great worry, that he couldn't go into Decepti0n. What had they put in him? He thought.

"Wha-what did- you, do to me..," The hunter grunted, before doubling over and hitting the floor. There was a sudden shooting pain coming from his back where he was injected.

"It..it is all what you assked of usss my King. It is." Replied the rat priest nodding profusely whilst helping Zer0 into a more relaxed position. Not that it helped, he was still having trouble since some of his body functions weren't operating as normal. A quick self diagnosis revealed that the algorithms were messed up and 1+1 didn't = 2 anymore and his visor had missing pixels. Finally, as a safety mechanism the engineered side of his body went into 'safe mode', which meant he couldn't use his good arm let alone Decepti0n. The toxins from 'who knows what kind of' pathogens in the injection were having free reign in his flesh and he could feel the pain way more than before. His chest heaved as he found it painful to breathe.

"A virus!" gasped Zer0 in a final state of awareness before his head drooped to the side and he lost consciousness and faded into darkness. There was silence for a good two minutes.

A rat shouted out, "another morsssel for the fridge!" before being whacked over the head by his friend who clearly stated that Kings weren't food!

One of the other rats spoke out, "That- wasn't meant to happen …wasss it?"

The priest replied swiftly in the negative that it was expected since our King was just morphing to his superior state.

"Quickly now we must take our King to his rightful palace and his throne!" The Priest ordered to his underlings.

Who thought the rats could be so well organised as to take down a vault hunter- or were they just lucky?

Meanwhile in Sanctuary some of the vault hunters were gathered around a table in Moxxi's lively bar playing card games.

"Hang on aren't we missing someone?" Maya asked as she dealt the cards. She looked around the table. There was Salvador, Lilith, Brick, Modercai and Axton, the usual for games night, right?

"Oh I think we're missing the ninja dude." Axton said.

"You mean the invisible one?" Salvador replied.

"You mean the masked one that looks like that DJ, you know the one with the helmet, Daf-?" Mordecai added.

"I don't think you are allowed to make references like that," Lilith piped up quickly. Mordecai nodded defeatedly.

"He so does not look like him," Axton said in annoyance, it was just one mask out of many the guy had.

"Zer0! His name is Zer0. I swear you guys do this on purpose." Maya said as she rolled her eyes.

"So where is the then? I need to make my money back from the last game and the more the merrier." Lilith asked with a sly grin.