Borderlands: The Hunt for Friendship
By Indiana
Characters: Sir Hammerlock, Claptrap
Synopsis: Sir Hammerlock expected his reluctant hunting trip with Claptrap to end in disaster and, true to form, it almost did…
If he'd thought for a single moment that Claptrap would have been able to fulfill the condition, he never would have agreed to do it.
Claptrap had been pestering him for quite some time about wishing to partake in one of his expeditions, and it went without saying that he had immediately refused the little ankle-biter every single time. Except, unfortunately, the last time, at which he had for some reason relented his resolve. He had made Claptrap a deal: if he located an outdoor wheel to use, Hammerlock would allow him to tag along on the next trip.
And, by God, he had actually managed it. He had actually returned the following week with a fresh wheel in quite excellent condition, considering there had been no wheels manufactured for his model in years.
"Where in the world did you acquire that from?" Hammerlock had asked in bafflement. Claptrap had waggled his hand in front of his eye.
"If I told everyone where I get my stuff from, where would I get it from? So, are we goin' on this trip or what?"
Well. Hammerlock was a man of his word. So now he was stuck with the insufferable robot for the weekend.
"Hey, you were totally right," Claptrap was saying, holding out his arms as he rolled overtop of a minorly obstructive rock across his path, "my other wheel could not do any of this. What was that word you said about it? Somethin' about… cake? Nah, couldn't've been cake. Was it quiche? Is quiche good? I mean, I can't eat it, but eggs kinda weird me out. How does all that goop magically become a person? Do you feel bad about eating eggs? I'd feel bad. Maybe. I guess it'd depend on whether I liked 'em or not –"
"Piebald," Hammerlock interrupted, solely to get him to cease that increasingly idiotic line of thought. "The word was piebald."
"What? Really? You're kidding me. That couldn't be it. My wheel wasn't bald and it definitely wasn't made of pie. I ran over a pie once. No, a few times. On purpose! They're so squishy. It's like running over a bug! but without the crushing guilt and existential crisis that comes along with doing that. D'you ever wonder if bugs have families? Like, if you kill one do you just leave this giant bug family waitin' and waitin' for their beloved second cousin three times removed to – what did I just say? Second cousin three times removed? What does that even mean? Hey, Hammerlock, so y'know when all the other CL4P-TPs weren't dead and I wasn't the only one left to roam Pandora alone and lonely forever, were they like… all my brothers? Or was I like, a dad to the newer models? A cool uncle, maybe? I used to be cool. No, I really was! I know, I know, sounds crazy, but – oh. Oh, no. That might've been my fanfiction. But you know what they say: write what you know! So maybe, just maybe, I'm not remembering things totally wrong and I actually was like the coolest CL4P-TP ever made – "
"Claptrap," Hammerlock said, as calmly as one could when being barraged with an endless torrent of verbal diarrhoea, "shut up."
"What? Am I talking again?"
"No. Not at all."
"Then why'd you tell me to shut up?"
"It was pre-emptive," Hammerlock answered, looking up at the sky and wondering how much effort it would be to convince Claptrap that the entire trip had, in fact, already occurred and it was now time to take their leave.
"What's that mean?"
"It means that I predicted you would soon begin to talk excessively and so, in anticipation of that, I expressed the desire that you keep quiet ahead of time."
"Sooooo… you don't want me to talk, like, at all?"
"I would greatly prefer that."
"Oh," the little robot said, sounding quite put out. "But if we don't talk, how're we gonna bond, huh? I was kinda hopin' we'd be besties at the end of this. I mean, if you were down for that. I'm not tryna be pushy or anything, but –"
"Claptrap," Hammerlock interrupted, "hush."
"Oookay. You were serious about the not talking thing."
"Quite serious."
"Well… okay. I'll try. Just gonna warn you, though, that I'm not sure how that's gonna work! 'Cause there's so much we could talk about! Like - oh my gosh! Look at that leaf! Doesn't it look just like a cloud? Or do clouds look like leafs, d'you think? Oh… wait. Is 'leafs' a word? I feel like it's not, but I can't remember…"
Hammerlock, thankfully, managed to tune him out the rest of the way to the cave he often used as a base camp when he went out on his expeditions on this part of Pandora. After that, Claptrap seemed inordinately fascinated with the cave itself, so much so he thankfully began talking to himself rather than Hammerlock. About what, Hammerlock neither knew nor cared. In the interest of looking as busy as possible so that Claptrap would not talk to him, he unpacked several essential items he had brought such as sleeping bag, lantern, and his as-yet unfinished field journal, and once that was done he placed his elephant gun on the ground in front of him and set to disassembling it. He did, of course, keep it extremely clean and well-cared for, but he was of the firm belief you could never prepare your weapon too thoroughly.
"Oh my gosh," Claptrap said, in something that astoundingly approached a whisper, "are you gonna shoot stuff? And kill it?"
"I wasn't aware you had difficulty with the concept," said Hammerlock, frowning over the parts laid out in front of him. If he did, this whole thing was truly –
"Oh, I don't," Claptrap said. "I've just never done it myself! Well, not since I was a Vault Hunter, anyway."
… Vault Hunter?
"… is that so," Hammerlock answered. He couldn't possibly have been a Vault Hunter. He vaguely remembered hiring a group of persons to acquire him a thresher from Elpis, and one of them may have been a robot, but they simply could not have been this robot… could they?
"Mmhm." Claptrap swatted a fly away from his arm. "Wanna hear about it?"
He almost answered yes, until he remembered who he was talking to.
"Oh, that story's too long to tell right now!" he continued without stopping. "It's a really great story, but if I started we'd be here all day and you'd never get to shoot anything with that! Which I am totally ready to watch you do. Or help with, even! You're probably gonna get twice the hunting done with me here to help you out!"
"I don't suppose you sleep at all," ventured Hammerlock, wondering if he were to be given any respite from the insufferable chatterbox.
"Yeah," said Claptrap, to Hammerlock's immense surprise. "Well, I'm s'posed to, for, like, automated maintenance and stuff. But I try not to, 'cause you never know when your friends are gonna plan to do somethin' fun and not invite you 'cause they're tryin' to be nice by not wakin' you up even though you told them it's totally fine! But it's okay because they probably just forgot and all you gotta do is remind 'em again."
"Well," said Hammerlock, wondering how someone managed to proceed through life in so wilfully obtuse a manner, "no need to worry. I shan't be doing anything terribly exciting you need concern yourself about missing. Any maintenance you currently require is of immensely higher import than my future several hours of tossing and turning."
"You know what? You're right! After all! Why would you lie?"
"Why indeed," said Hammerlock.
"Have a good night, friend!" announced Claptrap, and with that he retracted into his chassis and… hm. If Hammerlock hadn't known any better, he could have easily mistaken a dormant Claptrap for some sort of useless antique. Something on which to place a decorative item or some such tchotchke.
Quite enough of that. He had real things to accomplish, now that he had rid himself of a rather bothersome, unwanted accessory. Onwards to the hunt!
Hammerlock had successfully hunted a myriad of creatures over his lengthy and illustrious career, both for mere sport and for what were colloquially referred to as 'bragging rights'. A man did not gain prestige through setting eyes upon some rare beast and jotting down a set of observations; at least, not as much as he did whilst leading a selection of similarly storied persons down a hallway neatly lined with unique trophies. The jottings and musings of his almanac were, of course, quite important and notable all on their own, but one always preferred to have a bit of the real thing around for a touch of tangibility.
After giving Claptrap's chassis a solid whack with the butt of his elephant gun to ensure he actually was incapacitated, Hammerlock set off. One of the great inconveniences of the creatures upon Pandora was that they tended to keep all hours. So you could never quite sneak up on one nor truly have any idea where one was going to be. They could be sleeping or they could be engaging in their own brand of hunting. And yet this was one of the reasons Hammerlock was so partial to the place. It was very nearly artistic in its clumsy brutality.
His quarry this night was, as it had been in the past, a bullymong. Pandora's rarer fauna tended to be several degrees more vicious and bloodthirsty than the general population, and that was no simple feat. Even the youngest creatures were willing to make a spirited attempt at destroying anything within reach, which made the largest and oldest quite deadly indeed. This bullymong had not developed the ability to spew acid or set itself aflame, as other so-called 'badass' creatures had been known to do, but it did apparently have incredibly large feet. Thus was why Hammerlock had temporarily bequeathed it 'Old Stompy'.
One might postulate that such quarry was beneath such an esteemed hunter, due to the simplicity of it, but Hammerlock was getting along in years. He could not quite commit to the same sort of enthusiastic routine he had easily undertaken in his youth. On most occasions he simply found some person or other to do the killing for him, for which he then took the credit, but lately he had felt a bit of a yearning for old times. And so he had chosen a beast he should easily be able to best, but dangerous enough it required some significant amount of skill.
It did not require any great amount of effort to track the beast down; even if the gargantuan footprints hadn't been a rather obvious hint, this bullymong had been so kind as to be especially bold. There was a not-insignificant amount of damage to the scattered bandit camps. So much so, in fact, that the bandits themselves appeared to have taken their leave entirely. Hammerlock frowned at one especially large boulder currently lodged in the splintered roof of the shoddy construction he was passing. It seemed this creature had become… desperate. Usually they were as averse to bandit bullets as the bandits were to bullymong brutality. But this one had not only crossed that invisible line, they had moved it such that even the bloodthirsty denizens of this place had left.
Or perhaps it had simply slain the lot of them.
Hammerlock continued to walk for quite some time with only the carnage and the footprints with which to guide him, and though he was not a very sentimental man he did feel a bit of nostalgia come over him after a while. Ah, to have one more day of his youth with which to chase the most unattainable quarry of this treacherous and yet intriguing wasteland! But that time was over, and so he would not put much more thought to it.
Ahead of him lay both the termination of the footprints and the boundary of the land: a short swath of dust and dirt which culminated in a decline of about thirty degrees or so which led over the edge of the hill. Parked there with flat rear tires wedged by crumbling bricks as though the owners had seriously intended to return was a heavily rusted Outrunner, about a foot or so from the thin air ahead of it. If not for the bricks, Hammerlock would have thought the owners had hopped out the front of it, having forgotten how close to the edge they had parked, and leapt headlong into the deadly drop. The presence of them, though, puzzled him severely. He mustn't lose sight of what he sought, however. He was on a search for a wily beast, not a derelict car that had no hope of even being scrapped for whatever dilapidated parts were still tentatively clinging to its chassis. Upon the sound of a rock freed to the whims of gravity, Hammerlock looked over his shoulder at the low cliff to his right. Aha! There the great beast was, clinging precariously to the side of one of the nearby cliff walls! Hammerlock lifted his elephant gun and squinted through the scope, only to find that it was no longer where he expected it to be. Well, that was of no issue. It wouldn't have gone far.
It had somehow managed to vanish, however, for his naked eye found no sign of the bullymong at all. Nary a footprint nor a hair to be found. Hammerlock, frowning, set his rifle down alongside his leg and used his free hand to readjust his glasses. That was… strange. How had it managed to simply disappear? Bullymongs neither had that much intelligence nor that much grace. There were no dens here, no high rock walls with caverns dug deep into the resistant stone, and the only other thing in sight was a long-abandoned car, rusting near the edge of the cliff. Either it had galloped off into the distance beyond Hammerlock's usually impeccable notice, or it had plunged headlong over the precipice. In the interest of exhausting every possibility, Hammerlock stepped near to the edge of the ground and peered into the abyss.
… and the abyss heaved itself up from the rocky wall it had been clinging to the side of, blasting him with hot and rancid air from a cavernous mouth lined with saliva-slinging teeth, and slammed its forward pair of arms upon the ground in front of him so hard he was knocked, face-down, into the kicked-up dust. He scarcely had enough time to fling his gun up the incline and jam his metal hand into the ground before Ol' Stompy took a firm hold of Hammerlock's metal leg with his admittedly strong jaws, braced all six of his limbs against the side of the cliff, and pulled.
Sometimes Hammerlock wished he had still his flesh-and-blood arm and leg. Now was not one of them. His artificial fingers were all that kept him from perishing at the whim of a bullymong with very large feet. Not the most dignified way to go. He very nearly wanted his other hand to be of metal as well, for as hard as he tried to find purchase against the slope he clung to, his fingers merely scratched uselessly against the churned-up pebbles. In simpler terms: he was trapped.
Well. This was a bit of a pickle, wasn't it.
His robotic arm was the stronger, and so he attempted to use it to pull himself back up the slope, but the beast so insistently attached to his leg disallowed any potential progress. Kicking it in the face with his free leg, although incredibly satisfying, did not seem to be having any significant effect. He looked down to see if there was any visual indication the strikes of his heel were helping. No. No, it didn't appear so. Luckily, it seemed the bullymong was too simple to understand it merely needed to let go of the cliffside and its weight alone would procure it the prey it desired. He did have to wonder, however, why it seemed perfectly content to clench his prosthetic between its rancid jaws. Could it not tell the difference between meat and metal or, if it could, did it simply prefer the taste of cold steel? This incredibly fascinating line of thought somewhat distracted him from his peril, and after a particularly inspired wrench from below Hammerlock found his grip to be substantially less effective. Well. It seemed this was the end. And all without ever having finished his almanac…
There was the unmistakable sound of his elephant gun going off, followed by an extremely gratuitous explosion of blood and grey matter from a cavity which had formerly housed one of the bullymong's eyes. The great beast roared and, in doing so, released Hammerlock's leg from the vise of its jaw. Unfortunately, that action produced a rather jarring jolt that saw Hammerlock sliding down the hill towards the drop below. Damn. This had somehow managed to progress from bad to worse.
He looked upwards, searching out his would-be rescuer, and to his astonishment the only one there was Claptrap, who whipped the rifle out of firing position and thrust it in Hammerlock's direction, hollering, "Grab on!"
He did not need advised a second time. Before he had made much leeway upwards, however, Claptrap's wheel slipped on some loose dirt and he fell onto his back, somehow managing to jam his arm into the sunken remains of the car's long-since deflated front tire while at the same time not letting go of the gun's grip. That was all very well, except for the fact that Hammerlock was now faced with the barrel of his own gun, the trigger of which was below the mono-finger of a robot that had a ninety-nine percent chance of inciting disaster at any given moment. "Okay," said robot was imparting to himself, "I'm okay. Everything's fine. I still got this. I'm totally not gonna plunge over a cliff to my doom after doing something that epic."
Honestly, Hammerlock would have preferred to have had the bullymong drag him over the cliff than die due to the actions of a consistently malfunctioning robot. Well. Perhaps not. He was trying, after all. "You've got a good position!" he said as encouragingly as possible.
"I've got a good position, but some baaad news!" Claptrap shouted back. "Look, man, I don't got enough torque in my arm to keep myself and a grown man from plummeting over this cliff forever. And I definitely don't got enough to get us outta here." As he spoke, Hammerlock could hear the high-pitched whine of a wheel motor in desperate need of friction. This proceeded to do nothing at all, save for spray an incredible amount of dirt into Hammerlock's face.
"Might you stop that," Hammerlock said, ducking his face into his shoulder in an attempt to mitigate the unpleasantness.
"Well, sorrrryyyyy for not having legs!" Claptrap yelled, not sounding at all sorry in the slightest. "Oh my God, I'm gonna die! Like this! Nobody's gonna make a movie about this! And who's gonna play me if I'm dead!? They're gonna be like 'So he just stayed there for the rest of his life with this old guy hanging down below him? Man, that Claptrap must've been a realllllly good friend! Too bad he wasn't still alive to tell the rest of his amazing story!'" He ceased the transmission of power to his wheel for approximately thirty seconds, at which time he seemed to return to that useless endeavour with even more gusto.
"Claptrap," Hammerlock said with great insistence, "calm yourself. There is most certainly a way out of this situation. We merely haven't happened upon it yet."
"Really?" Claptrap asked, in a way that sounded suspiciously teary. "Do you have any friends to come rescue us?"
"Well… no. No, not really."
"Me neither," the robot said sadly. "Lemme know when you come up with that plan B."
They remained there in silence for quite some time. Strangely, Hammerlock found that he wasn't relishing it quite as much as he'd anticipated he would. He attempted a few times to pull himself back up by using the rifle as sort of a climbing rope, but unfortunately he did not have the strength with which to do so. On the last go of it, while he still had both hands upon the barrel, Claptrap slipped a handful of inches which left Hammerlock swaying precariously over the precipice. "Oh, s***," Claptrap shouted. "I am so sorry. If I don't actively think about what I'm doing stuff just resets to default and for one second I –"
"Not to worry," said Hammerlock, though the reality was quite the opposite. Usually he would have responded with some clever witticism that went right over the robot's head, but unfortunately any blows to Claptrap's quite delicate ego would surely entrench their current moral peril into something quite permanent. So polite encouragement it would have to be.
"If I gotta die," Claptrap sobbed, "at least it's holding the hand of somebody I love and respect! It's not quite the beautiful woman I was hoping for, but it's better than nothin'!"
"We aren't holding hands," Hammerlock felt the need to clarify.
"Oh, come on! Can I just have it? Nobody's ever even gonna know about it!"
"I doubt you will even sustain significant enough damage to be killed if you were to fall from this height," Hammerlock said, as it simultaneously occurred to him that, if he somehow managed to survive the precipitous plunge, Claptrap would surely land on top of him and his career would then be ended not in a blaze of courageous glory, but as a rather embarrassing blemish upon the timeline of an otherwise illustrious life. There was a high possibility Claptrap would not even notice he was dead for some time, and… well, Hammerlock didn't even want to know what he would do after he had. It could be anything from returning him home for the glorious burial of a hero to a disturbing, obsessive effigy of the friendship that had never really been.
… oh dear.
Well, it seemed to ensure avoidance of anything… untoward stemming from the tragic loss of his life, he would have to provide an alternative. That was, a solution to this mess. Hm.
Neither of them had the strength in their arms to simply pull their way out, so that option was forfeit. The only real hope they had was to somehow utilise Claptrap's wheel to their advantage. The thing was surprisingly mobile, given it seemed to have the ability to extend, compress, and swivel in a myriad of directions. Even with the outdoor tread, he did not have the traction to simply roll himself back up the hill, but he should be able to sort of brace himself with it and sort of… scoot. He only needed bring himself high enough that Hammerlock could also reach the abandoned vehicle. A handful of metres, nothing more.
He took a breath to relate this plan to the little robot, but found reason to pause. "Are you crying?" he asked incredulously.
"No!" sobbed Claptrap unconvincingly.
Oh, for heaven's - "Claptrap," Hammerlock said, loud and firm, "I've devised a method to remove us to this predicament, but you must take extreme care. We haven't much margin for error."
"I'll try so hard not to let you down!" Claptrap cried out. "I know I always say that but this time I really, really mean it! I'll do exactly what you say! Even if I have a really great suggestion that would totally make your plan better, I won't say it! I'll just follow your instructions to the letter! I -"
"Claptrap," interrupted Hammerlock, closing his eyes for a moment in exasperation, "listen carefully."
"Okay," said Claptrap, in the smallest voice Hammerlock had ever heard out of him.
"Retract your wheel into your chassis as far as you can."
Surprisingly, he remained silent after the sound of the pertinent mechanism had faded.
"Now drive your wheel with as much force as possible into the ground and carefully push your chassis upwards. Take your time. There's no need to rush." There was a need to rush, and quite an urgent one at that, but mitigating Claptrap's panic was the first and most important order of business currently.
"Okay," Claptrap said again, his voice still astonishingly low. Hammerlock listened for the sound of progress, but what little of it there was came very slowly and without much determination. He watched the dislodged dust trickle down the slope next to him and hoped fervently that Claptrap would put a little more haste into his actions.
Unfortunately, the opposite happened: he slipped a second time.
Not far, thankfully; only to about the place they had begun. His negligible progress had not resulted in a net loss of ground. He was about to articulate a second attempt at encouragement when Claptrap said, so quietly Hammerlock astoundingly almost didn't hear him, "I'm sorry. I can't do it."
"Of course you can," Hammerlock told him with immense firmness. "You were doing it. You need only go far enough I can reach the tire currently in your grip myself and relieve some of the tension on your arm. You had nearly gotten there."
"Yeah, but… every time I get close to succeedin' at somethin' I just mess it up. This ain't gonna be any different. If we gotta die here I'd rather it was gravity that did it insteada me. Even though it's kinda my fault anyways."
There was some modicum of merit to his thinking, destructive as it was. If you had historically failed at ninety-nine of your undertakings, what drive could possibly remain for you to try for the hundredth attempt?
"You don't gotta worry," Claptrap was saying. "I know you think I'm gonna do something weird with your dead body, but I won't. I'll just bury ya. Or… or if I can't I'll just… I dunno. Go somewhere else so when people find ya they won't think you were hanging out with me. I guess that depends on what parts I still have after I go plunging over this cliff. Nobody'll be looking for me, so… they won't know you were here with anybody."
That was… a surprisingly thought-out plan. With a level of consideration Hammerlock hadn't known Claptrap possessed. He was beginning to think that, perhaps, Claptrap was not the worst person he could have brought on this trip after all.
"Claptrap," Hammerlock said, returning his thoughts to the matter at hand, "as much appreciation as I have for the effort you have put in towards the circumstance of my untimely demise, you need not dwell on it any further. You do have the ability to remove us from this predicament. All you need to do is concentrate."
"I suck at concentrating!" yelled Claptrap. "I suck at concentrating, and I suck at helping people, and I suck at shooting - "
"Shooting?" Hammerlock interrupted in genuine confusion.
"Yes!"
"My dear lad," Hammerlock said, suspecting this was the key to Claptrap's current issue, "if you were remiss at shooting then how did you hit that bullymong at precisely the place required?"
"Uh… well…"
"In fact," Hammerlock continued, determined not to let him get a hold on a refuting argument, "how did you know where to make the shot at all?"
"You always gotta shoot the eye," Claptrap answered, confusion in his voice. "That's why they call that target thing a bulls-eye. 'Cause they named it after where you gotta shoot bullymongs. Right?"
"Erm… yes," said Hammerlock, deciding now was not the time for a proper explanation. "Yes, of course."
"Or are you talkin' about how I hit a target that small that fast? 'Cause I dunno if you forgot, but I'm a robot. I got perfect aim every time. It's just that a lot of stuff happens in between the aiming and the shooting part. I start thinkin' about what they mighta had for breakfast and what their, I dunno, cave looks like, and maybe they've got some friends and they're gonna have a sleepover and tell each other stories about incredibly handsome robots and their friends, and then I start to feel really bad about what'll happen if I shoot 'em, and then I kinda have a problem with the trigger part, and then - "
"Then why did you want so badly to accompany me on one of these trips?" Hammerlock asked in bafflement. "Surely it didn't escape you at any time exactly what they pertained."
Claptrap was silent for a moment. The pitched whining of his arm, the only thing keeping them from sudden doom, was suddenly quite loud.
"Hammerlock, I just asked 'cause I thought you'd have to hang out with me. It wouldn't be like Sanctuary or the Wastes where you can just disappear when I ain't lookin'. Well, you did. I was just hopin' it woulda been harder."
"What was it you hoped to achieve, then?"
The robot sighed.
"I know you said that thing about… about bein' true to yourself. But the thing is, that only works if your true self is a person people like! Otherwise you just go around lookin' like a jackass 'cause you're makin' everyone else put up with you! I was just hopin' if I was able to, y'know, spend some time around you, maybe some of your awesome would rub off on me!"
"Claptrap, you know that isn't how it works."
"Well, we aren't all created classy motherf******, you know!" Claptrap shouted. "Some of us're sent off into the world a hot mess and then eeeeeeeverybody just keeps complainin' about it like it's not their fault to start with. 'Cause - well I know a lot of stuff's my fault, but it also isn't, at the same time, but nobody really cares so -"
"Claptrap," Hammerlock interrupted calmly, "what are you talking about?"
"You know what version my OS is?"
"I'm afraid not."
"One point two. They dumped about a billion robots at version one point two out into the universe and then blamed us when it turned out there was problems. 'Why does this product line suck so much?' 'Who knows? Surely it's not the code that's the problem! They're just screwin' everything up for the hell of it!' 'Oh, that makes total sense!'"
Hammerlock had never particularly wished to be in the position of Claptrap's therapist, but if his insight meant that much to the little robot, then perhaps it was only polite to make an effort. Usually one couldn't tell if Claptrap was actually listening, but they were both in a position of compromise at the moment.
"You might be interested to hear, Claptrap, that all of us have a touch of programming within us."
"You do?"
Hammerlock nodded, even though Claptrap's eye was currently forcibly directed skyward. "It comes from an organic place, rather than a keyboard, but the foundation remains similar. We all have unbidden thoughts and impulses and intuitions. Sometimes we act on them when we should refrain and vice versa. And what this means for you, Claptrap, is that your software does indeed hold some dominion over your behaviour, as it does for us all. That is of course true. But it need not hold sway over all that you do. Each of us has the ability to rise above what we were told to be."
"Even me?"
"Perhaps there are no official updates forthcoming. But you do not need them. You have the power to improve yourself.
Claptrap sighed. Not in the dramatic, melancholy way he often did for the sake of sympathy and theatrics, but as though he were deeply, achingly exhausted and had just realised he still had an entire day to live through before he could rest. "I can't," he said, uncharacteristically void of emotion. "And trust me, I've tried it all. Self-help seminars, mindfulness exercises, hell, I even had a therapist once until he cancelled all my sessions and told me I was a hopeless case. Even a therapist gave up on me. I know you're tryin', Hammerlock, but I already heard all this before. It doesn't work because I don't work. And I'm never going to so what's the point?"
Oh dear. Hammerlock really was not cut out for this sort of thing, and especially not with someone like Claptrap. But… perhaps there was one more angle he could try.
"You don't recall the day I found you."
"Nope," Claptrap said morosely. "Sure wish I did. That was the nicest thing anybody ever did for me and I didn't even get to see it."
"The sole reason I even had knowledge of your existence," Hammerlock told him, "was because of your true self."
"Really? What was I doing?"
"You were fighting."
"I… I was?"
"You were," confirmed Hammerlock, hoping the sharp pain in his shoulder was not indicative of impending dislocation. "And you always have. As bumbling as your attempts at… everything… are, you persevere. You unfailingly irritate the living daylights out of everyone while you're doing it, but, by jove, you keep doing it anyway!"
"You're right! I do!"
"Tell me, my boy: are you going to make this the first time in your life that you gave up?"
"No!" said Claptrap, with sudden urgency. "And you know what else?"
"What?"
"It's gonna be the first time in my life I don't let somebody down! Hang in there, friend. I got this."
The difference between the discouraged, disheartened Claptrap of before and the confident, enthusiastic one of the present was both stark and immense. He pushed himself upwards with so much vigour that he completed his task in all of thirty seconds. It was a little terrifying, Hammerlock found himself privately admitting, to think of what Claptrap might have been able to accomplish without the myriad of obstacles that had been laid in his path. A Claptrap who had been updated - or patched - so much as a single time could have been a completely different machine. A completely different person.
A robot that had been built to fail and was then held responsible for his own failure… the idea was a bit sobering. Claptrap was terribly annoying, and that was an undeniable fact, but now with this new information brought to light… perhaps Hammerlock had been a tad hard on him. The fact that his best rarely amounted to very much was no justification for discounting it altogether.
Hammerlock released the barrel of the rifle once Claptrap's last dedicated pull had gotten him far enough up the incline that he could also grab hold of the dilapidated vehicle alongside them. Claptrap immediately hopped up onto his wheel and proceeded to brush the back of his chassis off with quite unnecessary vigour. Hammerlock, despite his incredibly undignified position, discovered himself not quite able to rise from his position on the ground and opted to take a few more moments to allow his exasperated body to contract into a more natural configuration. A few metres in front of him, Claptrap stood motionless looking out over the flat plain they had traversed to reach this point. From this angle Hammerlock could not tell if he were contemplating something in particular or if he had merely begun daydreaming as he often did. This minor mystery was solved about a minute later when he finally spoke for the first time in several minutes, which Hammerlock found strangely relieving for some reason he was unable to identify.
"What I really wanna do right now," Claptrap said, "is start tellin' everyone about how I totally just saved your life. 'cause I did. If you'd'a asked someone if I could do that, you'd've laughed and said I couldn't. But I did! Well, okay, you helped a little, but I still did it. So what I really wanna do is tell everybody about it. I mean, I could write a week's worth of blog posts about this! My three followers would totally dig that! And if I went back and told all the others about how I rescued you… man! Nobody'd believe me at first, but they'd have to eventually! Since you'd be still alive and all."
Hammerlock sat up, already exhausted by the mere suggestion that he would have to field inquiries about Claptrap fending off his certain doom. Good God, he was never going to hear the end of it…
"… but that wouldn't be very gentlemanly, would it," Claptrap said.
Hammerlock looked up at him slowly. Well. Perhaps the little rustbucket wasn't as much of a hopelessly lost cause as they had all feared. "No," he answered. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be."
Claptrap sighed. "Okay," he said, with a heavy measure of dejection. "I guess no one'll ever know what an amazing hero I am." And he held out one of his hands. It took Hammerlock a moment to guess he meant to help him to his feet, which he had to admit was quite thoughtful. After he'd taken a moment to briskly dislodge some of the dirt and grass from his person, Hammerlock said,
"It isn't the recognition you must take satisfaction in, but the deed itself."
Claptrap folded his arms across the front of his chassis. "I mean… that's all deep and stuff, but… I dunno. I think it'd be cool to get recognised for something. Other than…" Abruptly, he turned away, waving one hand in elaborate dismissal. "Nah. You're right."
"Astonishingly, you are also right," Hammerlock said. "I have neglected to acknowledge your actions. And so, Claptrap, you have my utmost thanks. If not for you, I fear this may have been my final trek into the wilds of this most dangerous of locales."
Claptrap froze in place. "… really?" he said, hesitant and hushed. "Did you really just say that?"
He hoped to high heaven he wouldn't regret it. "I did."
"So, like," Claptrap continued, pressing the tips of his hands together, "since we had this near-death bonding experience, that totally makes us friends now, doesn't… doesn't it?"
This he really was going to regret. He was becoming far too sentimental. "I suppose it does."
All of a sudden Claptrap was indelibly wrapped around his legs, blathering on about how delighted he was by this development, but Hammerlock was too involved in attempting to remove him to pay much attention to the actual words. Claptrap spontaneously jumped back of his own accord, chassis lifting in a panic.
"Oh, you're not a hugger, are you. What's that other thing guys like to do… it's uh… oh yeah!" And he held his hand out for Hammerlock to shake. After a moment of hesitancy, he did.
"Here," said Claptrap, retrieving the now quite filthy elephant gun and offering it up to Hammerlock. "I know I was super badass back there, but we're probably both safer with it in your hands."
"It didn't occur to you to release me so that you might save yourself, did it," Hammerlock asked as they made their way back to camp. Claptrap's chassis tensed in hesitation.
"Well… it did," he confessed. "But I didn't know if I'd be able to live with being such a major douche. I'm already gonna have nightmares about killin' that bullymong."
"I'm moderately surprised you managed to avoid shooting myself in the head."
"Like I said! Aiming's easy," Claptrap told him, waving one hand in dismissal. "It's pullin' the trigger that's hard."
It seemed there was a great deal about this robot he had taken for granted. Incredibly annoying personality aside.
"Hey, Hammerlock," Claptrap said after a moment, "you think you could teach me to pick up girls next?"
"That wouldn't be my area of expertise," Hammerlock answered, neatly sidestepping a sizeable rock Claptrap's wheel sent nearly into his face.
"How different from picking up guys can it be?"
This really was the absolute last subject he wanted to discuss with Claptrap, of all people. "I'm of the knowledge the two are very different beasts."
"Well, that sucks." He found it essential for some reason to jump into a crater ahead of them and proceed to hop his way out of it. "Guess I'll have to keep trying the old 'be yourself' BS. Hasn't worked out for me so far, but hey, it's only gotta work once, right?"
Hammerlock supposed there was one bit of counsel he might impart. "One day you will find someone as willing to put up with you as you are with them. But perhaps you might try easing them into it. Your personality is, shall we say… overwhelming."
"That's not a bad idea!" Claptrap declared. "I can definitely try that next time! Which there's totally gonna be one."
"Now," said Hammerlock, pleased to see the little cavern remained as he had left it, "what say we get ourselves cleaned up and set to ensuring that beast has truly been bested, hm?"
"You're inviting me to come along?" Claptrap asked, hushed. "Did that bullymong clock you one before I got there?"
"I am of quite sound mind, I assure you," Hammerlock told him. "But if you would prefer to await my return instead, you may -"
"No!" Claptrap interrupted, waving his hands in a panic. "Nonono! I'll come! I'm coming! Don't go without me! You will not regret this."
It was strange indeed to be rather confident that he honestly wouldn't.
"Were you truly a Vault Hunter at some point?" he asked as he retrieved his gun-cleaning equipment, his damnable curiosity finally getting the best of him. Claptrap paused in his apparently very interesting goal of jamming his hand in a crack far too narrow for it.
"Yeah," he answered. "I try not to think about it. I did a lot of bad stuff and it makes me really depressed."
Hammerlock laid the rifle across his knees and picked up the appropriate cloth. "I ask because I once contracted some Vault Hunters to retrieve a specimen from the moon for me," he said. "I believe one of them may have been a robot. You never can be too sure when dealing with long-distance communications."
Claptrap folded up his arms in a thoughtful gesture. "Hm," he said. "Lemme take a look and see if I can find it! What was it you hired 'em to do?"
"What do you recall about threshers?"
Claptrap immediately shrank into himself, which was a reaction Hammerlock had not expected. "... tentacles," he actually whispered.
"Yes," said Hammerlock, frowning a little. "They have got quite a few of those."
"This might take a while," Claptrap warned him. "I've got an uh… complicated relationship with tentacles."
"You have until sunrise," Hammerlock said. "At which time we will need to resume our search for Old Stompy before our wounded quarry is bested by someone else."
"All right!" said Claptrap, throwing himself backwards at the small ledge behind him, presumably so he could sit on it. He, for the most part, missed the outcropping and crashed down upon the floor. He promptly bounced back up again into his intended position. "Threshers, threshers. Hm. It was before that time I got thrown down a hole… wow. What the heck is - oh, that's definitely not it. Can you give me any hints? Like, who I was with?"
Hammerlock, unfortunately, happened to know one of those persons quite well, and it was this that would confirm for certain whether or not Claptrap had been the robot he had spoken to. "I can. One of them was my sister, Aurelia Hammerlock."
"Oh, yeah, I remember her," Claptrap said immediately. "I distinctly remember her saying, 'I will never experience happiness again thanks to you, Claptrap!' Which made me really sad 'cause we were supposed to be a team!"
"She isn't much for teams, I'm afraid," said Hammerlock. "So it was you, after all."
"Dude, my system started conjuring up so many threshers after that," Claptrap told him. "Unpleasant memory? Thresher! Song I don't want to like? Thresher!
"To be entirely honest," Hammerlock said, inspecting the stock of the rifle, "that little job resulted in my life being completely and irrevocably changed."
"Really?" Claptrap asked, sounding incredibly interested. "How?"
Hammerlock looked up at him. "Did you never wonder how my limbs came to require replacement?"
"Oh, sure," he said, waving a hand in dismissal. "Lots of times! There's all kinds of cool ways to get your arms ripped off! But I don't actually know where yours went."
"Well," Hammerlock said, deciding he may as well considering there were a great many hours before sunrise, "It all begins with an especially savage thresher I dubbed 'Old Slappy'…."
Author's note
You may or may not have played Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt, which has a mission that, at the end, has Claptrap say it's more important to be true to himself than to be jealous of Hammerlock. Hammerlock agrees with this and tells him true strength comes from within, and of course Claptrap immediately wants to be like him again. That's what the true to yourself bit was about.
Borderlands 2 implies that Hammerlock really does not like Claptrap and would be quite happy if he up and died, but that he's too much of a gentleman to not give him help if he asks for it.
There's some sort of running joke in The Pre-Sequel about Claptrap and tentacles where he seems to find them both terrifying and arousing, which they either left unexplained, forgot to explain, or I just missed the origin of entirely.