Izuku knocked on Angel's door, he was slightly covered in sweat as he had just come back from a run, where Roland had vaguely told him to get his roommates and tell them to meet him in the Crimson Raiders headquarters.
Izuku heard panicked shuffling, he assumed it was Angel coming to answer the door but it almost sounded like another person was in there with her.
After about a minute, Angel opened her door just enough for Izuku to see her poke her head out. Her hair was down and slightly ruffled, she was wearing an oversized white button up shirt and her face held a nervous smile.
"Umm, Hey. Roland wants us to meet at the headquarters, Axton's already there," Izuku told her.
"Oh, yeah ok, we— I'LL be right over," Angel's sudden and loud correction scared Izuku and made him jump, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw what he thought was another female figure in her room.
"Alright then, I'll go get Gaige—"
"Wait no!" Angel yelled, stopping Izuku, "I mean, you go on ahead."
"It's no trouble, I can go do it," Izuku said, confusion in his tone.
"Izuku, I got it, you can go," Angel insisted.
Izuku shrugged before leaving their house and joining the rest of the raiders in their base.
Soon after, Angel and Gaige came into the room, their forms were slightly disheveled and they were both blushing lightly.
"Good, everyone's here," Roland said.
"This doesn't have anything to do with that Hyperion invasion does it?" Lilith asked.
"It does. Sanctuary is no longer safe, Hyperion knows where we are. We need to either get a new shield, or evacuate," Roland explained.
"Why don't we just get it in the air again?" Salvador asked.
"Because we don't have fast travel stations on this planet, if we go airborne, we can't get back down," Mordecai answered.
"I say we get a shield, this place is our home we can't leave it," Izuku said
"Actually, I might be able to help with a shield," the voice of Zed called out from behind them.
"How?" Maya asked.
Zed plopped a steel cylinder on the table, "Those quirk things are medical marvels, I even found a way to incorporate them into a shield core. So I borrowed a little blood from that Tiger fella and now it can withstand five times the amount of strain that the normal ones could!"
"Wait a minute! You 'borrowed' Tiger's blood?!" Izuku yelled.
"Yeah, don't worry he didn't feel a thing. He was sleepin'" Zed chuckled.
Izuku dropped his head into his hands and gave an exasperated sigh.
"Alright Gaige, Izuku, and Angel will work on the actual shield generator. Zed, Zer0, and Maya will work on some more cores. The rest of us should work on the platform," Roland ordered.
Izuku nodded, following Gaige and Angel out of the headquarters and into Gaige's room. He had been in Gaige's room many times, he knew how messy it was, but this was a whole different level of mess.
He decided not to question it, considering how awkward the two of them were being he doubted he'd get any actual answers.
"So, how do we even go about building something like this?" Izuku asked.
"Oh it's really simple, I have the blueprint right here." Gaige unfurled a sheet of blue paper on her desk so they could all get a good look at it.
Izuku had never been more goddamn confused than he was looking at the schematics for the shield generator, and the worst part was Gaige and Angel seemed to understand it perfectly!
"Dude look at your face!" Gaige burst into a fit of giggles upon seeing his bewildered expression.
"Look it's not my fault I don't understand this!" Izuku indignantly told her.
"That's ok. I'm pretty sure Roland wanted you to do the heavy lifting while we worked on the programming," Angel said, also laughing at him.
Soon Izuku joined them in their laughter, "My face couldn't have looked that weird."
"You looked like a confused skag," Gaige chuckled.
"What is a skag?" Izuku asked.
"A skag is a dog-like creature, they're a rather big problem on Pandora, almost as much as the bullymongs," Angel said.
"And what exactly is a bullymong?"
"It'd be easier to just show you." Gaige booted up her computer and clicked on her gallery. The first picture that came up showed Gaige posing for the camera as Maya and Zer0 fought against a gorilla-like monster with blue skin covered in patches of white fur, as well as an additional set of arms.
"Oh god," Izuku whispered.
"Eh, they're not so bad, as long as they don't get close to you, but they're loud so they can't exactly sneak up on you," Gaige shrugged.
"Well at least you don't have to deal with Russian Death Hornets, somebody smuggled them over here a few years back and they're some of the worst things ever," Izuku grimaced.
"What makes them so bad?" Angel questioned.
"Their venom gives men a four hour long painful erection before it actually kills you. We're lucky that we have an antivenin or they'd take a lot of people with them," Izuku answered.
"Oh, so like Varkids?"
"Gaige?"
"I got you." Gaige pulled up a picture of a snowy environment as she, Axton, and Salvador ran from thirty small yellow wasp-like creatures, behind the small ones, ten bigger versions were flying towards them with an angry look in their six eyes, and in the center, a huge blue and yellow stag beetle looking thing was bursting from a red pod and screeching as Krieg charged at it with his buzz axe.
"You guys sure have done a lot of cool stuff," Izuku remarked as Gaige flipped through some more photos.
"And we'll do more here. I've read about these things called 'Bigfoot'? Apparently they're thirteen feet tall and twice as strong as normal humans. I so wanna fight one!" Gaige exclaimed, Izuku didn't even have the heart to tell her.
It was weird being around them, he often found himself losing track of time and spending hours just talking to them, he had never met anybody he could do that with, not even his mother.
A soft smile graced his face as Izuku once again lost himself in conversation with the two.
After two months of grueling work, the shield generator was finally built. The Raiders were currently gathered around on a concrete platform where the generator rested.
"Jack won't even be able to touch us now!" Brick laughed.
Zer0 nodded, "Indeed, it seems for now, Sanctuary is a sanctuary once more."
"Well what are we waiting for, turn the thing on already!" Lilith cheered.
Maya stood up and grabbed the power core, before plugging it in to the shield generator. The core spun around and lit up for a few seconds, before abruptly stopping.
Now Izuku didn't know anything about this kind of tech, but he didn't think it was supposed to do that.
"What happened?" Axton asked.
"I don't know but it shouldn't be doing that," Gaige said.
Izuku looked over the railing and noticed the main power cord had been severed somehow.
"Anybody have any electrical tape?" He asked.
"Yeah why?" Gaige asked back.
"Something cut through the power cord. I think it was chewed through actually," Izuku answered.
"I can fix it but somebody's gonna have to hold the ends together."
"You mean the ends that are currently sparking?"
"Yeah."
Izuku looked back to find everybody was looking at him, it took a bit but when he finally realized he answered with a very loud and indignant, "No!"
"You are the one with super healing and super durability. Please?" Gaige leaned over the table and got close to Izuku, close enough to make him back away with a blush on his face.
"Alright fine." Izuku jumped off the side and grabbed the wires, he waited for Gaige to get ready with the electrical tape before bringing them together, a shock coursing through his body as the wires met.
Once Giage was done Izuku dropped the wires and marveled as huge, almost invisible hexagon shaped panels stretched over Sanctuary and some of the woods.
Just as the shield finished its construction, the sky flashed blue and a couple dozen grey crates crashed down from the sky, exploding on impact and sending flaming debris flying.
"LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY!" Kreig screamed.
"Yeah big guy, we did get lucky," Maya agreed.
Izuku walked over to the edge of the shield, a WAR loader was laying on the ground missing most of its body, only its eye and a small bit of its torso left.
Getting a strange feeling from it, almost like someone was watching him through it, Izuku bent over and picked up the robot. He panned it over to look at the Raiders and the shield generator, and then back to him before giving a sky grin and shoving his fist through the loader, shutting it down for good.
Jack roared as he threw whatever was in his reach at the monitor in front of him, sending multiple cracks stretching across the screen like a spider web.
"Jack you need to calm down," Nisha said, using her whip to prevent him from hurling another mug.
"You don't get it Nisha! Not only do they have my daughter, but they also have another shield, none of this is going according to my plan!" Jack yelled in frustration.
"Um, sir? It actually looks like your daughter is there willingly," one of the guards posted at his office door pointed out.
He was quickly dispatched with two bullets to the head.
"So? That's what happens when you're the bad guy. You make plans, they get foiled, you make new plans," Nisha shrugged.
"BUT THIS ISN'T JUST SOME PLAN I CAME UP WITH, IT WAS GIVEN TO ME BY A HIGHER BEING!" Jack took a deep breath before continuing, "How do you think I knew the Vault Hunters would try to steal my key, or how I even knew where to find the key in the first place? I could've killed Roland when he was taken by the W4R-D3N but I didn't because I knew I wasn't supposed to yet. The Vault on Elpis told me everything."
"So when Lilith punched that symbol in your face, you saw the future?" Nisha asked.
"Yes, but ever since we came to this planet everything's gone haywire," Jack scowled, "But mark my words; even without the prophecy I'm going to murder every last one of those bandits!"
Jack grabbed a chair and smashed it into the monitor, destroying half the screen, leaving it on a still image of the face of Inko's son, "STARTING WITH THAT FUCKING KID!"
Happy Halloween everybody, I apologise for the short chapter but I was kinda sick this week and I lost power for over a day so I hope you can forgive me for that. Also no Russian Death Hornets aren't a thing, I just thought a boner death hornet was funny. Here's a link to the main two discord servers I kick around in if you want to talk to me directly:
Epsi's Hoard: https/discord.gg/fxcYHwKq
LoM: https/discord.gg/R9BU25t
That's it for now, peace.