MAYA: —hold her down!

GAIGE: [wordless scream]

SCARLETT: Whoops! I forgot to mention you were carrying around a rather large bomb. Sorry about that! Er...what's all that racket on your end?

GAIGE: GETITOFFGETITOFF—

[cuts off suddenly]

MAYA: Zero, what did you—

ZERO: Vulcan nerve pinch. She'll wake up in a few hours.

SCARLETT: You lot all right over there?

MAYA: Yes, yes, we're...fine. Thank you, Gaige just got some...Herbert on her. And had a reaction.

SCARLETT: Ooh...yes. He has that effect on people. Well, not any more, right? Ha!

MAYA: Whatever. We'll be back with the compass piece soon.

SCARLETT: Excellent! See you soon!

AXTON: Salvador, I think you accidentally turned Gaige's ECHO on when you tackled her.

SALVADOR: Oh, sorry.

MAYA: It's fine. It was better than letting her jump into the chasm. Just turn it off.

[three hours of silence]

GAIGE: Okay, who turned off my ECHO?

AXTON: Me, why?

GAIGE: You did the exact same thing as last time, broadcasting dead air!

AXTON: No, I didn't, I did what you told me to do!

GAIGE: Well, clearly, you didn't!

GAIGE: [sighs] Sorry, subscribers! I hope there weren't too many people just sitting there listening the entire time.

GAIGE: Anyway, I'll get to, you know, what happened with Herbert in a second. The day started with him sending us to Washburne Refinery, to collect some poly-kryten to repair his piece of the compass.

GAIGE: What he didn't tell us that it was a Hyperion refinery, so there were flippin' loaders everywhere! And none of us had corrosive guns anymore! But Salvador still has the shield that makes his punches explode, so that was fun.

AXTON: Would have been more fun if he let someone else use the shield.

MAYA: [sighs] Don't start this again, I'm begging—

AXTON: I'm not starting anything! I'm just saying, it would be nice if he shared.

GAIGE: You got that cool rifle with the giant knife-thing—

ZERO: Bayonet.

GAIGE: —that thing on it, why are you complaining?

AXTON: What do you mean, why? He has a shield that makes his punches explode!

GAIGE: Point.

MAYA: Gaige...

GAIGE: I know, I know, don't start anything, I wasn't gonna! Just lemme get back to my...thing. [coughs] Okay, so Washburne Refinery itself wasn't, you know, a big deal. We just had to find a few good chunks of poly-kryten laying around, which didn't take too long, while dodging the loaders and trying to not to fall into pools of molten...I'm not sure what. Slag, maybe? Yeah, it was kinda fun, but nothing really to write home—oh! I almost forgot! There were loaders built like pirates!

ZERO: Arr.

GAIGE: Yeah, ARR Loaders, they were called! They were the coolest thing ever! Would have been cooler if they had piratey voices too, but I guess whatever bored engineer built them didn't have time to program that bit.

GAIGE: Speaking of bored engineers, there was this one loader that wasn't shooting at us, so we went over to see what was up. It called itself the "C3n50r807." I don't know if it was some abandoned project of Handsome Jack's, or just some engineer playing a prank, but the stupid thing was obsessed with censorship and "moral values" and all that stuff. Sounded just like my mom.

AXTON: Your mom tried to have you killed for having porn?

GAIGE: I'm pretty sure she wouldn't actually have killed me. She was probably joking. Hell, the gun probably wasn't even loaded!

MAYA: Uh...

GAIGE: Anyway, Censorbot sent us to destroy another custom loader, a little guy called P3RV-E, who was imperiling Pandora's youth with all the porn or whatever. After we brought back the porn for its "examination," it sent us to a pirate base in Oasis—we went after we had grabbed all the poly-kryten, of course—to kill a bunch of hackers who were copying ECHO movies or something. I dunno. We probably wouldn't have gone for something like that, but someone just cannot say no to a mission.

SALVADOR: What? We got that cool sniper rifle for Zero!

GAIGE: I'm not sure he's even using the stupid thing. It's a weird gun and—aaand he's disappeared again.

MAYA: He was here a minute ago.

AXTON: This is getting ridiculous. Is he doing this on purpose just to piss us off?

GAIGE: Who knows?

SALVADOR: Ten bucks says he turns out to be evil.

AXTON: Twenty.

MAYA: You can't bet on our teammates.

AXTON: Sure we can. I still got fifty that says you start your own Siren-cult.

MAYA: No thanks. Already went through that once.

AXTON: C'mon, think about it! You can do it right this time, no power-grubbing priests...

SALVADOR: Hey! It doesn't count if you're the one who convinces her to start the cult!

AXTON: We didn't agree to that! She starts a cult, you owe me fifty bucks, that was the deal!

SALVADOR: So if I turn Zero evil, I win?

AXTON: No, we bet that he'd turn out to be evil. Meaning he's evil now. Doesn't count if you turn him later.

SALVADOR: Bah. Abogado.

AXTON: Hey!

GAIGE: [sighs] Anyway, while we were grabbing all the poly-kryten, Herbert kept chipping in over the radio, proving over and over again how much of a crazy stalker he is and why Captain Scarlett was perfectly justified in kicking him off her ship. Blargh.

GAIGE: We finally marched all the way back to Herbert's stupid hut—and I do mean alll the way back, the fricken' jackhole wouldn't send the gondola thing to pick us up, so we had to fight all the way through town again, through eighty-seven bazillion respawned pirates. And why do all the bandits on this stupid planet have their own personal New-U networks!?

MAYA: I'm still not sure they actually do. Have you ever seen a bandit New-U station?

GAIGE: Where else are they all coming from?

MAYA: I don't know...

GAIGE: So we gave Herbert the poly-kryten, and he fixed up the broken compass piece. Then we gave him the package Captain Scarlett asked us to give to him, and it...exploded. As did Herbert. Um...yeah. I was standing kinda close to him at the time, and got...everything...all over me, which [deep breath] kind of reminded me of the Marcy and all that but I'm fine now, and it's fine, and nothing's wrong.

GAIGE: Anyway, we're back at the ship now, and tomorrow we're off to Magnys Lighthouse. Blade's notes said he built that to help people find the treasure—probably that geological survey thing Zero mentioned.

AXTON: Didn't Blade's notes also rant about how society is secretly run by sentient tacos?

SALVADOR: That's what Scarlett said.

GAIGE: Look, I dunno. I guess he went crazy at the end, with all the [sniff] killing his crew and stuff.

GAIGE: I'm going to bed. Mechromancer, out.