song: M.I.A. - Boyz

The sun was burning mercilessly and it was getting more difficult to breathe the closer we got towards the Eridium mines. Roland had sent us out to get some information from Hyperion, so we made our way towards the Info Stockade in the Arid Nexus, as they called it now. Mordecai seemed fairly upset about how they had kept Fyrestone, but to be honest, I never had much of a connection to it.

"So? Any ideas on how to get in there without getting killed by a bunch of loaders?" I asked, looking at the Info Stockade that was overlooking the badlands. It was so far inside Hyperion territory, it was insane to just wander in.

"Let me check the map again. I've checked up on this area a few times, but it looks like they've been busy building since then." he mumbled. I let him do his thing and shot at a few skags. Maybe we would have some time to take one or two back, so we'd have some nice food again. We probably wouldn't have time, though. Shame.

"Okay, you ready to get dirty?" he asked, a smug grin on his face.

"What, here? Now? I don't know, man, doesn't really seem like the time to..."

"The Eridium pipeline, silly."

"Sorry, you lost me. I'm not catching your drift. What about the pipeline?" I wanted to know. I really had no clue what he was getting at.

"This is the main Eridium pipeline. It should technically lead us right to the Info Stockade. And if I'm not wrong then there's a ladder right there." he explained.

"Oh, so we'll get there on top of the pipeline! What's that got to do with getting dirty, though?" I replied. I was still kind of dumbfounded, as I was looking through the scope of my rifle to find the ladder.

"Are you being like that on purpose?"

"Uh... no?"

"We're going inside the pipeline. It'll be really messy, but it'll do the job, I suppose." Mordecai said, as he pointed my rifle towards the ladder. I looked through the scope again and saw what he meant - the ladder didn't reach far enough to get on top of the pipeline, but there was a maintenance hatch that would allow us to get inside the pipeline relatively easily. I put down my rifle.

"Let's go then. Get it over with. I kinda doubt it's gonna be a pleasant experience, being bathed in Eridium basically." I answered and got up from our hiding spot.

"Alright. Looks like everything's clear now anyways." Mordecai said and got up as well. We walked down towards the maintenance hatch, one hand always on our guns. You never knew when there would be some Hyperion engineers coming to the pipeline for repairs. They always just came out of nowhere.

"Nervous?" he asked after we walked silently for a while.

"A little." I admitted. I was hoping the panic wouldn't return. I had been dealing well with them lately, but this was a whole different kind of thing. There was much more risk involved and way more at stake.

"It'll be alright. Don't worry too much, okay? I need you to focus on this."

"Yeah, I know, but... shit, how do you know we won't... you know... die?"

"They wouldn't kill us. They'd use us to get to Roland, I'd assume."

"Huh. Well. I'm not sure if that's any better or not, but let's roll with it." I said. We had almost made it to the maintenance hatch. From down here it looked way higher up than from our little rock hideout.

"Do you wanna go first?" I asked Mordecai. He grimaced.

"Can't say I want to, but I guess I'll go first. This is gonna be terrible." he replied and started climbing the ladder with a sigh. I was waiting down below until he had opened the maintenance hatch. It seemed way too easy, no engineers or loaders in sight. A big load of liquid Eridium came flowing out of the pipeline.

"You were right about the messy part." I said and started climbing the ladder as well. Mordecai stuck his head inside the pipeline and waved for me to follow him inside. I climbed up the ladder a little quicker as he climbed inside the pipeline as if he had been doing nothing else his entire life.

Once I had reached the top of the ladder I looked inside. It was dark and gloomy, the pipeline was fairly narrow, but big enough to stand in it at least. Mordecai was kneeling in the pipeline and grinned at me.

"Come on in, it's cozy in here."

I shook my head and climbed inside the pipeline, probably not looking even half as elegant as Mordecai had looked. I swear, sometimes I suspected that man was some sort of cat with the way he was moving around.

I had finally made it inside and was trying to get rid of some Eridium that got on my clothes, but I probably could give up on that. Mordecai was closing the hatch again. It was incredibly dark inside the pipeline, as it was only lit by the purple glow of the Eridium. It felt incredibly eerie, especially since it was so silent inside and every noise echoed through the pipeline and sounded creepy.

"You okay?" Mordecai asked.

"Yeah. It's pretty dark. You know where we have to go?" I asked. He seemed to be looking at his ECHO and then nodded. I was kind of surprised that the ECHOs would still work inside the pipeline, but at least we wouldn't miss it, if something happened with the new Vault Hunters. I had the frequency saved and set to record anything that was said.

And of course, there was a quiet beep from my ECHO device just as I thought that. Mordecai and I looked at each other.

"It's one of my saved frequencies. You wanna listen to it now?" I asked.

"Might as well. We're gonna have a good bit of walking ahead of us." Mordecai said and shrugged. We started walking while I tried to get the message in the dark, while also focussing on not slipping in the Eridium.

"Sometimes I envy you bandits. You're so... unburdened with things like intelligence, culture, morality, honor, ambition, good looks... I could go on but I won't. But I could."

That was Jack. I don't know why, but every single time I heard him talk, he made me more angry. At this stage, I just hated the guy.

"Ah, dignity! Almost forgot to mention dignity."

There were some noises from a horse in the background.

"Easy Butt Stallion! Easy!"

The ECHO went quiet after that. I looked at Mordecai who was just shaking his head with a bitter expression on his face.

"I don't know how often I have to say it, but what an asshole." he mumbled. I was about to agree with him, when the ECHO made some noise again.

"Ah, so you're the one I've been hearin' all this radio chatter about. Name's Roland. I used to be a Vault Hunter like you, until I formed the Crimson Raiders. We'll catch up when I get back to Sanctuary - for now, I need your help. My men tell me Corporal Reiss hasn't returned the power core we need to keep the city's shields running. Bring Reiss back to Sanctuary, and you'll have earned your place in the Raiders."

"Reiss is in trouble? Shit." Mordecai mumbled.

"Well, at least we know the Vault Hunters actually made it somewhere near Sanctuary. If they'll manage to get in, that would be good for us. Maybe we'd actually have a chance to take down Jack then." I replied.

"Yeah, I suppose so. Let's hurry up and get this job done, so we'll be done and can get some info on those new Vault Hunters. Plus, I kinda feel like Jack is distracted with the new guys for now, so maybe we'll have it a little easier here."

"Sounds like a plan."

Mordecai checked his ECHO again and looked around for something. He found another ladder soon enough and we climbed out into some sort of maintenance shaft. From there we got to some sort of station.

"Where are we?" I asked as we walked outside.

"Fyrestone. We gotta take an elevator up to the Stockade over there, if I'm not wrong." Mordecai replied and got his gun ready. I did the same, even though I was basically blinded by the sudden light. I followed Mordecai quietly, while my eyes were slowly getting used to the bright light. I was surprised how easy things were until now.

"Any loaders?" I asked quietly.

"None that can see us right now. If we're lucky we can sneak inside without drawing their attention. If not... well, is your rifle corrosive?" he replied. I nodded.

"Good, that'll melt right through them."

"How many... how many loaders have you killed yet?" I asked. He seemed to know way too much about those little robot death machines.

"I don't know. A lot. They're not that terrible, fairly slow and it usually only takes a few hits to kill one. The dangerous bit is that there's usually a whole lot of them and there are a few exploding ones as well and those ones are really fast and not fun.", Mordecai explained.

"Damn. Shit, man. Let's just... get this over with, okay?" I replied.