Don't Own Borderlands, Only The Oc.

'thought'

"Speech"

System

"Speech through echo devices and Text via book, notes, or newspaper... when those are around..."

(Mid Chapter Authors Notes)

"Ugh. Annoying jackasses." A masked man scoffs as he enters his office. "Sexbots again?! I already added stripper loaders to the Handsome Jackpot, what more do you fat bastards want from me?!"

He slumps into his desk. "Hey, Angel, could you be a dear and tell me the progress on that vault key."

"…"

"Angel?"

"…"

"I swear to god if you are touching yourself again, young lady-"

The man notices a certain light on his desk.

That one seems important. What did he have it for again?

"Angel, I respect your privacy, but I'm asserting my authority as your father by coming in anyways."

He taps into the cameras.

Nothing here.

Nothing there either.

"A-Angel?"

He remembers what the light means...

It means the Bunker has been destroyed...

"SHIT! ANGEL!"

Pov: elsewhere

Roland slowly blinks at the black haired girl sitting on the couch in front of him.

"…"

He gives us a look of confusion. "Did you kidnap someone?"

"That's Angel. The used to be technopath siren." I state as I stand there, vault key still floating above my hand.

She bows her head. "Greetings, Roland, Lilith, it has been a while."

Lilith flinches back. "What the fuck?!"

I glance over to Gaige again and frown slightly, my eyes lingering on her robot arm before I look around again.

"Anyways, I have another plan!"

"The last one got Sanctuary attacked." Axton points out.

"Mayhaps." I slowly nod. "But on the other hand, we faced NO resistance, had Jack knooown we were going for Angel. Someone in this room would be dead right now."

We fall into an eerie silence.

"Also, had that happened-" I gesture to Angel. "She would also probably be dead right now... considering I don't really think I'd have an opportunity to save her if Jack like... locked her in a bubble or something to keep us away from her."

Angel nods her head. "The room did have a defense mechanism to 'protect' me... I was unable to access it, so Jack could have triggered it at any time, forcing you to destroy the eridium injectors instead of the simple thing he did."

Her eyes stray to the key.

"But we really should quickly remove the charge from the key. It is incredibly important, as if Jack gets his hands on the warrior, Pandora is doomed."

"You do realize that we have already killed a vault monster before, right?" I deadpan.

"The warrior is on an entirely different level than the phoenix... the warrior was made to combat the Destroyer..."

Lilith shrugs. "Well, we killed the destroyer how hard-."

I point at her. "No, you did not. Stop saying that you did."

Her eyes widen. "Oi, what the heck do you mean by-"

"It is a fourth dimensional being that eats STARS Lilith! No way in hell do four pricks with guns EVER kill it in ANY universe! What the hell are you thinking?!" I rub my temple with the hand not keeping the vault key aloft. "It required a HYPER ADVANCED civilization to seal it away! Do you not think it would be dead already if GUNS would do it?! Why even imprison it!"

The room falls into silence.

"David's rude..." Maya begins. "But he's right. It was a little dumb to assume you killed it with just the four of you."

Lilith lets out a quiet growl. "It's missing its eye! How the hell is it still alive when Jack turned its eye into a weapon that nearly blew up the- oh..."

"ooooh." She whispers.

"Yeah, Lilith. 'Oh'. It's not a human. There's no telling how many eyes it might have."

"…"

"I'm confused." Salvador states.

"Mhm." Tina slowly nods, casting another wary glance at Angel.

She probably considers her partly responsible for the death of her parents... or maybe she feels for how she has suffered from Jack as well.

I slowly look over to the others and frown. "Just imagine a picture coming to life and trying to kill us... yet it can't get off the paper. The only way we are even hurt by it is by touching the paper. That's basically what we are to it."

"All Lilith and friends did was akin to breaking its finger, by all means, really impressive to do even slight damage to a world breaking entity, but it's far from killing it."

I look over to the key. "As for the key... draining it would be such a waste, no? I can scan any item I touch with a small flex of my powers... and... well... a map to every vault in the cosmos? That sounds pretty good."

I let out a small hum. "Salvador, Gaige, Tina, Axton, Krieg, Zero, Maya... it's time for a little trip!"

Angel's eyes widen. "You CANNOT be going to wake up the warrior, are you?!"

She notices my smirk as I look towards the key. "He who holds the key controls the Warrior. Jack killed my dog- er- Varkid, so now I'm going to get a new one!"

"It's a vault creature!" Angel responds. "You seriously can't expect to-"

"If I can't control it, I'll just kill it." I shrug. "But I am at least ninety nine percent sure this will allow me to control it... given the fact that it literally says that the one who awakens it controls it."

"It's the best plan we've got right now." Roland mutters as he cups his chin. "First we need to find out where it is-"

Angel interjects with a long sigh. "I know where it is... it's in Hero's pass."

Roland looks over all of us. "We will leave tomorrow, I'd like a little time to collect resources just in case this gets bad."

"Fair." I shrug. "I've got to go hide this key really fast, then we can get well-rested and all that junk."

I give the vault hunters a wave as Gaige stands up and walks towards the door. "See ya!"

Gaige sits quietly beside me as we stare at the wall, my arm around her shoulders as she leans against me.

"It's finally coming to an end, hm?" She slowly asks.

"I guess." I slowly nod, grimacing at her metal elbow inadvertently poking my ribs. "It's the closest we have been in a while."

We fall into silence once more.

"Gaige, do you ever regret getting a metal arm?" I suddenly ask.

"What brough this up?" She slowly asks.

"Well, I thought back to older conversations of your arm, and well, if I remember correctly, you never flat out said that you regret it... but at the same time, you have implied that you aren't satisfied with it?"

She looks down at her arm and frowns. "Well. Yeah. I am a little unsatisfied by it... my pinky might have been a bit weird, but I sort of miss actually touching stuff with it."

"Like yourself?" I ask with an innocent expression.

Her elbow pokes harder in my side.

"Ow." I snort.

She looks down at her arm again. "It stores my precious DT, so I guess it isn't all bad... it can break concrete- at the cost of its fingers- and allows me to touch a burning pan- for a short time otherwise the heat transfers and burns my stump- plus it gets really nippy in the cold... and I have to be careful in the shower because my hair gets caught in the joints sometimes, then there's the fact that due to my time on this hell planet the water proofing is getting ruined and sand gets inside."

She clenches her fist and I hear several crunching noises from inside her metal fingers, it's the sound of sand being crushed and broken.

She lets out a long sigh.

"I see." I slowly nod.

'I wonder how mad this is going to make her.'

I quickly apply a certain perk for my time stop ability.

Perk: Sands in A Bottle (Phaseclock) Your Time Stop Duration is doubled, but the cooldown is tripled.

Everything freezes as I channel a ridiculous amount of essence into her, I see her metallic arm extend farther and farther, eventually the upper part of it comes to rest on her fingertips...

The fingertips of her new hand... her new arm.

'Might as well go the extra mile, I'm never going to use it, of course, plus I'll probably get another from the Warrior.'

You have lost Skill Tree 5, 'Phase Shift'.

Blue tattoos rapidly coil around the new limb and spread to the rest of the left half of her body, stopping before reaching her neck, but who knows what she looks like underneath.

I wish I knew what she looked like underneath...

"Ohoho she's gonna be pissed." I whisper. "Better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission."

Time resumes as her robot limb drops into my lap, she jerks back, out of my grasp and lets out a hiss of pain. "Sss- What the fuck?!"

She brings her arm to her chest and lets out a small groan. "Fuuuuuuck! Damn static overloading my- my- my-"

She now seemingly notices just how squishy and fleshy her arm is.

"N-Need a hand?" I ask as I raise her robot limb.

"AAAHHHHHHHHH!"

Pov: elsewhere

She's alive.

The masked man slumps in his chair, all murderous rage subsided. All weight removed from his body.

She's alive... and is better than ever. She will be staying alive thanks to that little bastard, he cured her Eridium poisoning like it was nothing.

She was originally bound to those very rooms, unable to even see the sunlight because of his blunder... she would never be able to go to any fun places like Lazy River Land, she would never find love, he would never get to walk her down the aisle.

He would have never asked her to charge the key had he known it would have done that to her...

But that has changed. The brat has healed her at the cost of her powers... while it is annoying to have such an advantage disappear, those powers were nothing but problems to him... first they cause some brain-dead mouth breather fucker to try and kidnap his daughter, then said daughter inadvertently... kills... her own mother and the only true love of his life.

He lets out a long sigh as he looks to the picture on his desk, a black haired girl with blue eyes stares back with a large grin as she gives the camera a peace sign, she couldn't be any older than ten.

He gives it a sad smile.

So many mistakes. But at least one of them was fixed.

It'd leave a bad taste in his mouth killing them all without giving them one final chance to leave after the brat put in all that effort to save her... if the others- barring the mechanic girl who is a bit too soft for this planet- had their way, they would have probably just killed her to prevent the key from falling into his hands.

Completely foolish when there are two other sirens on the planet that can charge the key, but they'd pat themselves on the back for murdering his daughter because 'at least she was free from suffering'.

His eyebrow twitches.

He still needs to reclaim his daughter. Damn her teen rebelliousness.

He also should probably thank the anomaly brat for saving her life.

He cracks his fingers.

It has been a while since he has hacked into anything personally, but he should still have the knack he had way back when he was a single parent in a small apartment, hacking into Hyperion's database to shunt absolutely ludicrous work given to him by that dickbag Harold Tassiter to others.

"Oh yes, John, I fully expect you to develop long range teleportation tech by the end of the year." The man scoffs.

I mean, he did that one, because he realistically couldn't shunt the work off him since he was asked in person, but for other things? Nope!

Being a single parent is hard. Nobody can fucking judge him!

His fingers tap away at the holographic keyboard.

Alllmoooost.

*Tap Tap Tap*

Just a little more.

*Tap Tap*

Done!

"YOU LITTLE FUCKING BASTARD ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME YOU DUMB FUCKING DUMBASS?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! WITHOUT ASKING ME?! YOU DID THAT WITHOUT ASKING?! I'M GOING TO WRECK YOUR SHIT, BOY!" A certain mechanic shouts through the echo, causing the masked man to flinch back.

"Jesus Christ." He whispers, idly wondering what the little siren did to gain this much of a reaction from the girl.

"G-Gaige! P-Please calm down!" The anomaly responds.

"calm down? CALM DOWN?! YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU JUST GREW ME A NEW ARM AND IT STUNG LIKE A FUCKING BITCH! NOT ONLY THAT, BUT WHATS WITH ALL THIS BULLSHIT ALL OVER IT?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WAS MY BOUNTY OF TRILLIONS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? YOU WANT TO KICK IT UP TO A NEW LEVEL, HUH?!" The girl shrieks

Grow her a new arm? Well damn, time to add 'Cellular Regeneration' and 'Phase Shift' to his list of abilities.

"I-I'm SORRY!" The boy replies. "If you don't like it I'll just take it back! You can cut off your arm again if you don't like it! "

"HELL NO! I LIKE THE GIFT, ITS JUST THE WAY YOU GAVE IT TO ME HAS PISSED ME OFF!"

"Please just stop hitting me! It's not even hurting me and its just making me sad!"

"THEN BE SAD YOU LITTLE BASTARD! DO YOU KNOW HOW IRKED I AM RIGHT NOW?! HOW MIFFED I AM?!"

"Hm." The man hums slowly.

He'd give them some privacy to sort this out. He can thank them later.

Gaige's face is smushed into my shoulder as she lays there in silent contempt. She seems to have cooled off a little bit.

I honestly didn't expect it to set her off that badly.

I guess I did sort of play with her body... and didn't give her a chance to say 'no'… that's the problem here... and yeah, that was a bit of a mistake... I just didn't want Jack to know I transferred the phase shift powers to her... also I didn't know if this would legitimately work, so I didn't want to get her hopes up.

Overall, just a triage of fuckups, errors, and miscalculations, creating an avalanche of mistakes that resulted in Gaige repeatedly punching me with her weak baby arms.

It didn't hurt physically, but it did sort of hurt my feelings.

"David..." She mutters into my shoulder, sounding slightly muted. "I'm sorry I yelled at you and hit you."

"I forgive you." I sigh.

"No, no. Stop being understanding. I was wrong here. I shouldn't result to shouting, yelling and above all else, hitting... even if you don't even slightly feel it. But you have to understand what sort of stress you put on me when you do all this completely wacky shit at seemingly random. You have no idea how badly it fucks with me." She lets out a long sigh and begins petting the back of my head with a hand, the one I had given her. "I appreciate the gift, David... thank you... even if I didn't expect it and it cause me a little mental trauma."

"I'm sorry..." I quietly whisper.

She pats my head. "Don't worry, you had good intentions. But can you promise me that you'll let me know about anything like this in the future?"

"I guess." I slowly mutter. "You are probably going to get a second wave of rage when you take a shower, though."

"What do you- oh. Right." She questions only to sigh as she understands what I'm getting at.

She tugs out her shirt and looks down it, I lean forwards, but she places a hand over my eyes and forcibly shoves my head back. "Ugh. You horny little bastard. I'm not wearing a bra right now so just stop."

"I can tell." I smirk. "You are squishing your chest against my arm right now."

I notice her pointed glare.

"But I'm just curious if you have the tit circle or not." I mutter shyly.

She gives me a half-lidded glare. "Yes, David. I have the tit circle."

"Nice." I smirk, causing her to roll her eyes and let out a quiet scoff.

"So, what's it feel like?" I ask.

"What?" She questions with a raised eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"What do your new powers feel like?" I elaborate. "I didn't use them when I had them, plus I have like several mental barricades."

Gaige tilts her head as she thinks of a way to describe it. "I feel... powerful."

"It's like I have been living a sham my entire life." She continues. "I can see like... code... anything that's remote and is nearby, I can access it."

"Watch." She grins as she points up at the lights. "On."

The lights flicker on, briefly blinding us and causing the two of us to cringe.

"Off." She immediately states, returning the room to darkness.

She flashes me an excited grin. "I haven't felt this good since I made DT!"

She frowns and cups her chin. "Hmm... I'll be forced to bring around my old severed arm to summon DT now... hn. I guess I can use it as a blunt weapon until I get something to transfer him."

She gives the ceiling a sad smile as she stares upwards. "I'm not going to lie; I have been feeling a little useless recently... everyone is so strong... even Tina. I'm not good at fighting, I don't have any special skills, I don't have that 'killer instinct' that everyone else has... I'm just a girl. Even Tina has better skills that me, she is incredibly accurate with a pistol- when she wants to be- can build city leveling bombs in mere minutes out of table scraps, and doesn't even flinch when she ruthlessly executes people."

"I'm just a girl who got lucky... my one attempt at creating something somehow worked, with all of my effort, giving literally everything I had, I made a robot that is only just a little bit better than the mass-produced Hyperion garbage. But now... I feel special. I feel like I'm an actual part of this team! Not someone you have to babysit every waking minute. Thank you."

I lean forwards and kiss her on the cheek. "I'm glad you like it... when I got them, I thought of you."

We fall into a comfortable silence.

I eventually break said silence with a thought that honestly crushes my soul just a bit. "Do you think Tina isn't here right now because she heard us fighting through the door?"

Gaige tenses up.

"Fuuuuck." She slowly whispers. "Us fighting probably broke her heart... we need to apologize to her tomorrow."

"We should." I agree with a quick nod.

We fall into silence once more.

"Want to pull a prank on the other vault hunters when we meet them tomorrow?" I suddenly ask.

"I'm listening..." She states with an impish smirk.

As we walk into the headquarters- masterfully dodging Tannis who had been standing in the front door, seemingly looking for me- we see all of the other vault hunters stood around the table.

Gaige is standing beside me with a cloak around her shoulders.

Tina gives us a cautious look.

"Trouble in Paradise?" Axton asks with a smirk.

*CLANK*

A metal arm bounces off his face and clatters to the ground.

He gains a confused expression and looks down at it, then looks up to see Gaige flipping him off with an arm wrapped in bandages.

"What the hell-" he begins.

"At least I am in a relationship, Axton." Gaige scoffs.

"Oooooh." Salvador and Tina wince.

"Damn, she just fucking killed you." Tina cackles.

Axton rubs his forehead, where the limb hit him as Maya asks the question on probably everyone's mind. "Why the hell do you have another arm?"

Gaige slowly looks over to me with a half-lidded expression. "SOMEONE decided to regrow my old arm."

She gives the others a wave. "And let me just tell you, having all these nerve connections that have long since died reconnected suddenly? Not fun. My arm is tender and annoying- thus the bandages- but it definitely works."

She looks down at the robotic limb laying limply on the ground "DT. Come here."

The arm spasms and begins slowly crawling its way across the floor with its fingers.

"OHMYGOD-" Axton nearly punt kicks it, but it quickly scurries out of range.

Gaige reaches down and picks it up, then points it at Axton, the middle finger of the limb extended. "Stay out of our drama."

"Are we leaving- CRUMPLY LIMBS FALL UPON THE BATTERED RIBCAGE!" Krieg shouts.

"My weapons are found/ My Ammunition Refilled/ Let's fucking do this." Zero adds in as Lilith slowly stands up.

A drunk man with a Great Dane sized bird sat beside him slumps in a chair as he takes a drink from a bottle.

Roland looks over to him.

"I got it. I got it." Mordecai sighs. "I'll watch Sanctuary while you are gone."

"Are we good to go?" Lilith asks as she walks over to the group.

"Yep." I nod once.

"Then let's go before Jack realizes what we are doing." She states as she looks around the room. "Gather up, everyone."

"Sooo, it's somewhere in this volcanic hellscape, right?" I mutter to Gaige who looks ecstatic that she doesn't have to deal with teleportation sickness.

"That is what Angel said." Lilith nods from my other side as the other vault hunters- minus Maya- are promptly vomiting their guts out behind us.

She slowly looks over to Gaige. "You... aren't sick?"

Gaige scratches her chin. "Not this time, No."

She suddenly looks over to me, eyes wide.

She taps my shoulder and gestures down to my echo.

'ah, she can sense when someone is listening in. That's really good!'

"What do you want, Jack?" I ask as I look down to my hip.

"So, you know that I'm here..." He states slowly. "I might as well get this over with, then. I won't say this again, so you better take it to heart."

"Brat- no... David... You did me a real solid, so I am giving you one last chance. Leave Pandora. You saved my daughter's life... I don't want to kill you. we can put all of this behind us, if you leave Pandora, I won't attack you, I won't contact you, hell, I won't even look at you... we will never have to meet ever again. You can do whatever you want with your life, you can take whoever you want with you, hell, take the entirety of Sanctuary with you. I won't care. I will even get rid of that annoying bounty on you and your friends. Just as long as you leave pandora and never return."

I'm caught off guard by just how... sincere he sounds.

His voice takes on a dangerous tone, the kind of tone a parent might use to scold a child. "But I'm warning you... if you keep on going on this path... if you wake up The Warrior like I know you are planning to... if you wield its power against Hyperion... I will be forced to kill you."

"As if you haven't tried already." I scoff with an eye-roll.

"Brat... if I wanted to... I could kill you. So please, I'm begging you here, turn around and leave." The man sighs.

"Hmmm. Nah. I've come this far already."

I nod to Gaige.

"Kid-" Jack abruptly cuts out as Gaige does her siren magic to fuck with the encryption.

I glance over. "You are getting seriously good at that."

She scratches the back of her head and gives me a bashful smile. "Thanks!"

Lilith gives her a confused expression. "Did... you do that?"

"You wanna go ahead and tell them?" I ask slowly as I look over to the shorter red-haired mechanic.

"Might as well." She shrugs.

She tugs off the bandages revealing blue swirling tattoos that briefly flicker white.

"You're a siren?!" Lilith asks.

"Since last night." Gaige smiles.

She looks proud as she lets out a cheerful laugh. "I have spent the last five hours this morning hacking into the Hyperion space station all to change their heating... my plan is to make it uncomfortably hot in there!"

"Why not... go for their oxygen? Or something like that?" Lilith slowly asks.

"Oh, believe me, I tried." The new technopath siren sighs as her shoulders slump. "But for some reason there are better defenses around their life support systems instead of basic things like air conditioning... and well, I've only had these powers for like sixteen hours, and most of that was spent sleeping. There's absolutely no way I could brute force Hyperion's firewalls in my current state."

"I think Angel was so good at all that because she had implants and was constantly on an eridium high." I mutter. "So, really, you are probably doing fine right now."

"Let's get to the warrior, yeah?" I ask as I look over the slowly recovering group.

I land on the ground, key floating above my hand as I look around the crater slowly.

All around me are ancient ruins, markings going along the ground all the way over to an arch made of several pieces of stone floating in place, sat on a peninsula above the molten pool, the vault key in my hand glows brightly as I grant it some essence, the pieces seem to seal together with audible crunches, the grinding of stone on stone reaching my ears.

Lilith lands behind me. "So... this is the place, huh?"

"Yep." I nod as I slowly walk forwards, spying a large hole in the ground, shaped exactly like the key I have floating above my palm.

"Oi! Get on with it Chico!" Salvador calls down.

"FIIIIINE." I sigh as I call back up at the group.

"Don't let me enjoy the scenery, then." I scoff under my breath as I step up to the hole.

"Lilith, considering you aren't immune to melting I'd probably take a step back." I call over my shoulder.

I watch as her wings spark to life and she floats off the ground, coming to stand on a rocky spire a mere thirty feet from where she was originally standing.

"Welp." I mutter with a frown.

"AWAKEN! MY BOY!"

I slam the key in the hole.

Nothing seems to happen.

"…"

"Welp, we tried guys." I hum with a small shrug. "Better luck next time-"

The vault key glows brightly as the carved runes upon the ruins begin steadily glowing, purple lights slowly approach the broken arch as suddenly.

*CRASH*

The vault archway shatters into several pieces and floats in the air, the magma behind the arch rises upwards, quickly dripping downwards as a large figure rises from pool of molten rock, the floating pieces of the vault gate float behind the rising figure, pausing atop its back where a misty blue electricity looking thing connects the pieces to the back, creating two large wings.

The figure crawls out of the magma, it is made out of rock and lava, its bulky and durably looking body is supported by four powerful limbs, each leg has four powerful toes with large rocky nails, the beast has a short snout with an outer jaw on each side of the lower part of the mouth, honestly its mouth looks slightly beak-like, but with dozens of extremely sharp pointed teeth.

It has six eyes, three on each side of its head, one atop its head, where normal eyes might have been, a second pair, right at the corners of its toothy maw, and a final pair on its lower jaw.

It has a long frill made of pointed spikes of rock, and a long tail that is made of dozens of loosely floating rocks, the tip being in the general shape of a spear with a gap down the center.

It shakes its head left and right, letting out a quiet hiss as bits of molten rock rain down onto the ground, it steps up onto where the vault arch was moments before and lets out a titanic roar that reverberates around the crater we have found ourselves within, sending nearby Rakk scrambling off into the sky as they get the shit scared out of them.

It looks down at me, gaze sweeping across the volcano, eyes briefly pausing on Lilith.

I float upwards as my two siren wings appear behind me, causing the beast's attention to quickly snap back to me.

It watches as I float up before it, pausing just in front of its face.

I reach out towards it; time stop prepared just in case this fucker tries to bite me.

It stares at me; I feel its hot breath ruffling my hair.

It leans forwards and presses its burning snout into the palm of my hand.

I gain a small grin and begin madly giggling. "Heheh HAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!"

Oh, Jack. It is so over.

And thus, another chapter of badass' quest is complete! Gaige is a siren now, The Warrior is David's pet, and everything is coming up sunshine and rainbows! I wonder how Jack could possibly fuck this up!

Hm... actually we still have a few plot threads hanging around.

Oh well, those tooootally won't matter!

Guest reviews:

Guest 001: nah, I still plan for it to be a purely Gaige/David fic.

Guest 002: correct! I don't know what most of the reviews were smoking when they wanted him to drain the key! Why drain it in the first place when he who controls the key controls the warrior?

Breaking Barrier: since David drained the powers they would have stayed with him until he lost them, also it's more of a 'general' power... Tannis originally got Angel's power, and it was the exact same as Angel's, if not a little weaker.

JustAFan123:
Why drain it when you can awaken the final boss yourself and make it your minion?

Guest 003:
Why would she need a prosthetic? She has both of her arms...

Fire Type:
Yeaaah, people would probably target her if they knew... but Jack is smart enough to know that as well, so he won't bust into Sanctuary all "RETURN MY FUCKING DAUGHTER TO ME!"

Anyways, I'll see you next time, who knows if this motivation streak will remain! But now I sleep!