Chapter 25

Handsome Jack

Jack leaned back on his chair, swinging his feet up to rest on his desk. It was a good job he had taken the reins of Hyperion when he had, because boy did this company need steering.

Without supervision, Hyperion had been heading to a future of staggering blah. Not top. Not bottom. Just mid-range. Like some crappy Maliwan-alternative. But, with a new brand look, a lick of yellow paint, a sleek new range of higher-calibre guns, and a necessary air-locking of the HR department, Hyperion was soaring.

But man, was it hard work for one guy.

"Hey, honey! Get a coffee brought in for your favourite employer, huh?" Jack called out to the desk communicator.

"Of course, sir."

While he waited, Jack leaned out to his desk, just about reaching his drawer. He dragged out a DigiPad and began blithely watching the latest batch of Vault Hunters getting murdered. He snorted a laugh.

"Eeeh, they're so stupid," he smiled. After the first Vault's opening, a tsunami of would-be Vault Hunters had descended on Pandora. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Most of them died before they could even reach the nearest town. But it wouldn't do if these guys reached Pandora's second Vault before Jack did. His long-promised paradise was in there after all, so he couldn't just have any old Vault Hunter open it.

Sure, if a group impressed him enough, maybe Jack would let them do a bit of legwork for him. But this time, he had no fear of opening the Vault himself. Unlike with the Destroyer, Jack had already seen what was waiting beyond. And if he wanted to control it, he had to be the one to set it loose.

The door to the office opened then, and a short guy in a white shirt shuffled in. He was looking left and right, glancing out over the rim of his glasses. He jumped a little at the sight of Jack, nearly slopping a scalding hot mocha with sprinkles all over himself.

Good job he didn't. Jack had killed men for less.

"Hey! My coffee, what a star," Jack drawled, taking his feet off the desk and standing up. He headed over to the nervous looking guy, who was shaking enough that the cream on top of Jack's drink wobbled. Jack took it off him, but the employee had frozen with his hand still out.

Jack tilted his head to the side, arching an eyebrow. He really hoped this guy wasn't an idiot.

"Ooookay, y'all good there, sport?" Jack prompted. The man started, blinked, and stepped away from him. Jack pinned him as an accountant then and there.

"Oh! Er, yes, er…s-sorry. I er…I was…wondering…if you could…maybe if you would…" the man was babbling, but Jack knew the signs.

"Autograph? You got it, big man!" Jack beamed, moving back to the desk and setting his drink down. "Bring it over, what you got?"

The nervous guy shuffled over to stand next to Jack, pulling a trading card out of his shirt pocket. He handed it to Jack, and the CEO had to admit he was impressed. It was a holographic, limited-edition, promotional-run, misprint trading card from the Handsome Jack Trading Card Game. Even he didn't have a copy, but that was because Jack was a busy man with a life and a career.

"And who am I making it out to?" Jack asked.

"I-I'm…I'm Vaughn…" the man said, auto-piloting then suddenly switching track. "Wait! N-no, not my name, er, c-can you make it out to 'Rhys'? I-it's his card, he er…he asked me to…er…huge fan…"

Jack pursed his lips.

"Isn't everyone?" Jack asked, confused by the implication that being a huge fan of his was a defining trait in anyone rather than a given. Vaugh's face drained of colour, his jaw dropping.

"Oh, well, yeah! Yeah, o-of course!" he stumbled to rectify himself.

"Don't piss ya pants, Vole. You're still learning, right?" Jack beamed, assuming the dude must be new because Jack couldn't recall ever seeing him anywhere on Helios. "What, you guys been here like, coupla weeks?" Jack mused aloud.

"…Six years, sir."

"Wewww, time flies by when we're having fun," Jack said. He signed the card: To Rhys, Ask me yourself next time, coward. From your best pal, Handsome Jack.Then he straightened up and flicked the card at Vaughn, letting it ping off his forehead. Vaugh flinched, then dropped to the floor to retrieve the card as Jack laughed.

"Th-thanks…sir," Vaughn stammered, scampering away.

"Yeah yeah, shoo nerd," Jack hummed, waving him away with the back of his hand. He took one sip of his over sweet coffee, giving Vaughn a few minutes to leave in case his friend was waiting outside for him, then picked up his coffee and turned to make his way out too.

He left the office, making his way to the Fast Travel Station just outside. He had a busy schedule today, so the employee that ran up to him to ask him a question received a polite third degree burn courtesy of Jack dumping his freshly-made mocha over his head. He kicked the wailing man out of the way, then tapped the destination address for the Control Core Angel into the Fast Travel Station and whisked himself away.

Jack walked up to the control doors, unlocking them, stepping through the newly-installed biometric scanner. Finally, the voice sensor demanded the password for a vocal-check.

"I love you," Jack answered, and the doors opened.

Inside, the Control Core central room was practically the family home to Jack. Angel was sitting in her chair, watching with some unease flitting over her features as engineers worked around her. It wasn't until Jack walked into the room that she looked away, hopping up to her feet and dashing to the front of the force-field.

"I swear I didn't let them in," she greeted him, making Jack laugh.

"What? No, I know you couldn't. Nah nah, these guys have special clearance," Jack explained, waving around at the common folk. "I thought I said? Didn't I say? Huh…damn, I'm overworked. But yeah, this is all part of how we open the Vault, princess."

What little colour Angel had drained from her face, and her eyes darted nervously up to the machines the engineers were fixing to the ceiling.

"What…how?" she asked.

"It was all on the mural, sweetheart. Kicked myself when I realised, but y'know…was kinda vague," Jack mused, pacing around the force-field, a finger drumming in his bottom lip. "So, y'know how I said I saw everything in the Elpis Vault? I also saw how to open a Vault. See, it's not enough to just have a key. The key's gotta be charged. They do this naturally over time, but remember the first Vault, we got lucky that it had charged up. The key to the Warrior's Vault? Not so lucky. Covered in blood, yeah, but not charged. The nerds think it's got another 90-odd years of its 200-year cycle left to go. I don't have that kinda time, Angel. Buuut, luckily, the Elpis Vault showed me how to speed things up."

"And…how do you do that?" Angel was still looking wearily at the engineers as they worked.

"It's so simple, honestly, you'll kick yourself," Jack chuckled, rounding back to stand in front of Angel. "So, you know how I told you I saw a Siren absorbing energy and putting it in a machine? That was it sealing the Destroyer away, right? It turned all that energy into Eridium and used that to lock it away. S'why it all spilled out when the Vault opened. Soooo…if Eridium is strong enough to lock a Vault, it's more than strong enough to charge a Vault key. You're gonna channel energy from Eridium into the Key! We're gonna super-charge it!"

Angel stepped back in horror, and Jack had no idea why.

"Wait, no no no, I can't…not Eridium! Remember what happened last time!" Angel protested, eyes wide.

"Sweetheart, honey, darling…please don't throw a strop on this one," Jack said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're meant to be working together. As a team. Look, we'll start small, we'll keep in controlled, and see how it goes."

"Jack, I don't—"

"Goddammit Angel, this is for paradise! To save the fricking world! Could you just get on board with that already?" Jack yelled, his patience running thin. He pointed out to the side, jabbing a finger to emphasis his words: "That mural wasn't the Siren locking a Vault. It was opening it. It wasn't history, Angel. It was the future. That's why paradise isn't here yet. And you're not gonna throw a tantrum and RUIN THIS FOR ME!"

Jack looked up then at the engineers, nodding once.

"…Dad."

Jack froze. It wasn't until Angel said it that he realised how long it had been since he last heard that word. His head jerked down, every nerve on end, sparking but not yet deciding how to react. Angel placed the palm of her hand against the force-field, blue eyes imploring something Jack hadn't thought he needed to give. "Dad, please. Please don't do this to me."

"…What?" Jack frowned, bewilderment setting those nerves to anger. "Are you fricking serious, Angel? Oh, I'm sorry, am I asking too much that you might wanna help me save the world?"

Angel flinched back from the force-field as though burned, bright eyes searing with incredulous disappointment.

"Asking too much? Look what you're doing!" Angel begged, throwing an arm out to the engineers at work. "Look what you're doing to me!"

"What, keeping you safe? Giving you everything you need, everything you could want?" Jack snapped back. It hurt his heart to see his own daughter be so ungrateful for everything he had done to protect her. "You wanna go outside, okay, I get it. You wanna go? I'll letcha out! Go skipping to the nearest town, get upset when you don't get your own way there, and set off every goddamn turret and gun in a five mile radius. Are you outta your mind?!"

Angel's expression dropped like lead, and for a brief moment, she simply stared at Jack. Then, her hands balled into fists at her side, shaking. The markings on her arm began to glow, the light seeping into her eyes and blotting out her blue irises. Jack began to move backwards, eyes darting to the rapidly activating Control Core.

"Am I out of my mind?!" Angel spat. Jack couldn't help but be a little proud of the resemblance that reflected in her face as it twisted with anger, but he wished she would direct that energy towards a real injustice. Like the bandit scourge crippling the planet, rather than Jack trying to save it. "You said we'd work together! That I could leave here someday!"

"Angel, sweetie, you will! We're gonna save the world and—"

"No!" Angel yelled, wings erupting from her back in a stark burst of light. By now, the engineers were tripping over themselves to leave, running away like the cowards Jack knew they were. "No, you always call me that when you're lying!"

The room was vibrating around them, every connection, every wire sparking, every machine forced to life in a heartbeat at Angel's command. The lights grew brighter, flickering madly, but Jack knew the Control Core would hold. Still, the sight of Angel like this broke his heart — to him, it was as if she didn't want to make any effort to control herself.

Jack steeled himself, setting his jaw and fixing a stern look upon his daughter.

"Okay, listen to me—"

He took a step forward but was forced to grind to a halt as someone glimmered between them. Like a reflection on water, the form wavered and distorted, the rest of the room following suit. Jack's heart hammered in his chest as the years appeared to roll back around him. Soon enough, he was standing in their tiny old apartment, that dumb old leather couch that was well-worn before they'd even bought it on his left. He turned to face Angel, intended to demand what the hell she was playing at, but the figure between them had materialised in full.

Glassy blue eyes looked at Jack, slightly through him in truth, enough for a small understanding to flit through his mind that this wasn't real. It was all the comfort he had against the image of Megan staring at him with such pain in her eyes, such disappointment.

"Jack…what have you done?" Megan asked. Jack stepped back, shaking his head.

"Nah, come on Angel. I'm not falling for this," Jack declared, scowling as he looked around the room for any hint of a way to end this illusion. "This really hurts me, you know. I left the VR system in here for you. You could build anything you wanted in these four walls, and you choose to do something as cruel as this?" Jack gestured to the image of his late wife, though he couldn't bring himself to look at her.

"Let her out, Jack!" Megan closed the gap between them, bringing a look of disgust to Jack's features as the copy begged him. "Please! I don't want our daughter to be—"

"Angel," Jack rounded on where he assumed Angel was standing, glaring out from under his brow as he warned her: "You have five seconds to drop this or the Control Core's gonna be made a helluva lot more boring for you!"

He felt his ECHO-device buzz in his pocket, a reminder that the world outside this illusion existed. And it existed with morons trying to message him at really inopportune moments. He had half a mind to grab the damn thing and send it hurtling across the room.

"JACK!" Megan yelled, snapping him from his distraction, eyes brimming with tears. "Listen to me!"

"Oh, shut up!" the man snapped, losing his patience with both the digital illusion and Angel. "If you think for one minute your Mom would let you endanger the planet, you didn't know her at all!"

Jack wasn't sure what he had said to make the walls begin to crumble, but he was satisfied when they did. The lights dimmed, the digital replicas distorting and fading. As the world around him fell away and the Control Core came back into focus, the man became distinctly aware of his ECHO-device vibrating in his pocket.

He didn't need to look at it.

He knew what the alerts were.

Every single alert would be a request to block Angel's access to the digistruct columns in the Control Core. An alert to tell him she had tapped into several weaponised Loader Bot schematics. That those robots would surround him at gunpoint right now if he didn't interfere.

Jack froze, a cold sense of dread rising from his chest as he looked around at the gun barrels all trained on him. In front of him, Angel was staring at him.

Clever, he thought to himself mildly. Of course you are. You're my daughter.

"Angel…" Jack put his hands up in a slow display of surrender, eyes flicking around the room. "Sweetheart…I know you're frustrated. I know you don't believe me anymore. I get that. But look — these bots? You're…seriously gonna kill me with your powers? What would that prove, Angel? I'm the only person who knows what happened that day with your mother. Okay, I know it was an accident. But if you kill me, if you kill me like this? Everyone else is gonna know. They're gonna know you murdered your fatherwith your power. Okay, and then, then they're gonna find out about your mother, and what are they gonna think, hm?"

"I…I don't care," Angel said in the smallest of voices that betrayed her. "I can't…stay here forever…"

"If you kill me, you'll be stuck here," Jack said, a slight twist of bitterness in his tone. "The doors lock, the biometric scanner keeps out anyone without my permission. You hear me? C'mon, sweetheart, think. Killing me will ruin your life. You need me."

The tears spilled from Angel's eyes, falling down her face as she trembled. Around them, the Loader Bots began to quake too.

Then, without a word, the Siren slumped, her shoulders sagging as she turned away from him. The robots powered down, their forms mimicking their commander and dropping down, arms swinging loose at their sides.

Jack let out a breath that had caught somewhere between his chest and his throat, feeling the tension unknot from his body. He moved forward, raising a hand to press the palm flat against the force-field.

"Hey…" he said in a soft, soothing voice. "Don't cry…I forgive you, m'kay darling? You're a little stressed out, it's all real scary, I get it. But this is all gonna work out. You'll see."

The only thing better than getting bad guys to stumble into a trap was to watch said bad guys stumble into a trap.

Handsome Jack was sitting on the edge of his desk, one hand propped up behind him as the other held up a DigiPad display to a bored gaze. A ghost of a smirk danced on his lips, even as the latest group of Vault Hunters crept through the carriage of the Hyperion train they had bundled onto. Jack couldn't believe how astoundingly easy it had been to fire out invitations across the galaxy for Vault Hunters to come to Pandora and work for him. The blind stupidity of these gun-totting sacks of barely-conscious cartilage never ceased to amaze him.

The group uncovered the first trap swiftly enough — a group of Loader bots hidden in the second carriage, waiting to turn the Vault Hunters in Pandora's finest holey-cheese. The man scoffed and let the DigiPad clatter down onto the desk beside him. He pushed himself up to his feet, striding around the desk to go rifling through one of the drawers. Gunfire rattled through the DigiPad's tiny speakers while Jack located a bag of marshmallows from his drawer. Then, the gunfire stopped, but voices continued.

"Oh, cool, finally. Someone's gonna get to phase two!" Jack noted with a glimmer of interest, rounding the desk and returning to his perch. He opened the bag of marshmallows, set them on the desk, then picked up the DigiPad again to keep watching. He had been pretty put out that the Loader Bot tactic had wiped out most of the other Vault Hunters he had lured so far. Honestly, it was just disappointing. But these guys looked set to be a slightly sparklier shade of grey than the average boring Vaultie.

Jack chewed on a marshmallow thoughtfully as the ninja-looking guy took out two of the dispatched Hyperion engineers with his blade. He frowned.

A sword? To a gun fight? Pfft, alright hipster, Jack thought to himself with a dry smile, ignoring the fact he was certainly jealous and absolutely going to send someone down to retrieve that sword for him later once he had killed these idiots.

Swallowing, Jack rapped his fingers against the desk as he waited for the group to open the final carriage. Phase two was the best. Phase two never failed. Phase two was a blast.

As the commando of the group pushed the door open, Jack watched as they paused in shock of the dummy-Jack sitting with its back to them in the middle of the carriage. Handsome Jack flashed a wicked grin, pressing the voice activator on the DigiPad to address the Vault Hunters through the train's speakers:

"It's cute that y'all think you're the heroes of this little adventure — but you're not."

The dummy of himself began to turn in its seat, revealing its explosive choice of carriage companions. Its limp head lolled to the side, offering a painted smile the Vault Hunters as Jack's voice delivered a venomous greeting:

"Welcome to Pandora, kiddos!"