Songs: First Aid Kit - My Silver Lining; The Prodigy - Thunder; billie eilish - COPYCAT
"Oh my God, are you okay?" was the first thing I heard from Lilith when she met with us at the Fast Travel Station. I nodded.
"We are. Mostly. I'm alright. I think Mordecai broke a few ribs and Brick is badly wounded, too. They're glad they made it out alive." I said to her.
"What about Athena?"
"She's knocked out, but she's alive. Where do you want us to take her?" I asked. Lilith motioned for me to follow her. I went over to Brick so we could carry Athena together. Once we got her where Lilith wanted her, we could go and take care of our wounds. I hoped and prayed Lil didn't have a long march planned.
"We'll question her at the edge of the city. I've got Zed there, as well. He can take a look at you." she said to me and then looked back at Brick and Mordecai.
"Thanks for doing this. I really should have come with you. You guys look pretty roughed up. How are you holding up?" she wanted to know from them. Brick shrugged, dragging his foot behind him.
" 's alright. I can manage." was all he replied. Mordecai was coughing and holding his ribs. I knew he was having trouble breathing, because it hurt his ribs. We really should have taken more people with us.
"Damn it. Mordy? What about you?" Lilith asked. I shook my head.
"Don't, Lil. He can barely breathe. Give him some time to rest." I told her. She sighed and hid her face behind her hands.
"I'm surprised you're not hurt more. I shouldn't have sent you after her on your own. I really hope this will get some results, at least." she said, as we arrived at the edge of the city. A good few Raiders were waiting for us there and quickly took Athena from us to tie her up to a pole.
Watching the whole thing go down seemed pretty cruel right now, but I knew we'd probably all be dead, if Athena was free. Still, I felt horrible bringing her here like that. I didn't even know exactly what she had done. Zed came rushing to her side and injected her with some sort of health vial or whatever it was to wake her up. She moved her head a little and slowly and groggily opened her eyes.
Zed made his way back to us, while Lilith was pacing up and down in front of Athena. She seemed to be pretty impatient about her fully waking up. I went over to Zed who was waiting for us at a ledge by Scooter's workshop. Mordecai and Brick were slowly making their way over there.
"You've got some explaining to do, tiger. Trained from childhood as an Atlas assassin with over a thousand successful jobs to your name. Damn near killed my two best men before they brought you in." Lilith started talking to Athena. She seemed awake enough now and pretty unhappy about her situation.
"She said we're her best men! That makes me feel good." Brick said to Mordecai with a big smile on his face and gave him a pat on the back. A Brick pat. Which was basically a pretty painful smack.
"Ow." was all Mordecai had to say to that, as he coughed and held his chest. I glanced over at Zed who seemed to be looking forward to this.
"Here's how it is, Athena. I'm gonna ask you a single question. And if I don't like your answer, you will die." Lilith said next. What? Was she... was she serious? Lilith looked back at the Raiders.
"Aim at the prisoner." she told them, then turned back to Athena.
"Now, I will ask you this only once... Why?"
"That is a long story." Athena said and sighed. I got up to help Mordecai and Brick sit down, so Zed could have a look at them. Some health vials and some rest should hopefully do the trick, but I was still nervous whenever Zed was involved. I sat down on the ground next to Mordecai, loosely holding his hand while Athena was telling her story.
"After the fall of General Knoxx, I wandered Pandora as a hired gun. One day, I received a job from a low-level Hyperion programmer. 'Come to the moon.' it said. 'Hunt a Vault, be a hero.' I didn't trust Hyperion, but I was too hungry to pass up a paying job." Athena started. Lilith didn't look too happy.
"And what did you find?" she asked.
"Violence. Insanity. And... a hero."
"Continue." Lilith said.
"I and a few other Vault Hunters made the trip up to Helios station. When we arrived there, the station was under attack by Dahl forces. We were greeted by a Claptrap unit who brought us to Jack. He was being attacked by the Lost Legion, so we helped him out. That was when Zarpedon declared the space station as belonging to the Lost Legion. Once we had helped Jack, he told us we could get down to the moon in one of the moonshots. After every other option failed."
"You had no idea why these Dahl guys wanted Jack dead?" Lilith asked. She had finally stopped pacing around and sat down.
"I had suspicions. Money. Revenge. That said, who ever needed a reason out there?" Athena answered.
"This is kind of exciting." Brick chimed in. Mordecai nodded.
"Yeah. Our story just began with us getting off a bus. This sounds all explosive and stuff." he agreed.
"Stop complimenting the prisoner." Lilith told them and rolled her eyes.
"Anyway, we got into the moonshot and Jack stayed behind because it had to be operated manually." Athena continued, but was interrupted by Lilith again.
"You're telling me Jack - Handsome Jack, the guy who MURDERED my boyfriend - stayed behind while you escaped?"
"Like. Hell." Mordecai commented.
"Whether his decision was heroic or purely strategic, I can't say. But if Jack hadn't stayed behind to eject the pod, I might well have died on Helios." Athena said.
"Pfft. Your story is making Handsome Jack kinda sympathetic. I hate it." Brick replied, shaking his head.
"Well, that's how it happened. We got shot down to the moon. The plan was for us to land in Concordia, but something went wrong and we ended up out in the wilderness. We were found by someone, though." Athena continued. She smiled a little when she mentioned that someone.
"And who was that?" Lilith asked.
"Janey Springs, she... she worked as a mechanic on Elpis. She found us and helped us survive. She told us that we'd need a vehicle to get to Concordia and in order to get one we needed to get back her digistruct key from a guy called Deadlift. On our way there Zarpedon contacted us, telling us to leave the planet, because she didn't want to kill us or something. Of course we wouldn't just leave, so she told Deadlift to kill us. He did try just that after Zarpedon told him we thought jump pads are stupid. Said he wanted to crush us with a butt slam or something." Athena said, rolling her eyes.
"Heh. I like this guy." Brick commented.
"Because of the jump pads or because of the butt slam?" I asked.
"Both."
"He had disabled his jump pads, so we had to fix them to get to him. We managed to do it with Janey's help." Athena continued her story.
"You got to ride jump pads?" Mordecai asked, as if he'd lost all will to live knowing he missed the opportunity to use a jump pad.
"I never got to ride a jump pad." Brick chimed in as well. Athena gave them an incredulous look.
"I also witnessed the deaths of many innocent people." she deadpanned.
"But... jump pads, though." Brick replied with a shrug.
"Would you let her continue with her story? I'm actually enjoying hearing about this, guys." I said.
"We killed Deadlift, got the digistruct key and managed to get ourselves a vehicle. We drove back to Springs' garage to get something else she told us we needed to get into Concordia when Jack contacted us again. He told us that he was still alive and that he was hiding from Zarpedon, so we needed to go to Concordia and find her jamming signal. When we got back to Janey's she gave us an Orbatron which would get us into Concordia, so that's where we went next." Athena told us. She stopped talking, because she had to cough. I looked over to Lilith, but she didn't seem to be in an agreeable mood at all.
"I'll go and get a glass of water, be right back." I mumbled.
"What? Why?" Lilith asked.
"Lil, the poor woman hasn't had anything to drink in a whole day. She's been hit by a rocket blast and now you want her to talk for ages? Come on. She's our prisoner, but you can damn well let her have some basic commodities." I answered and turned back to get some water from Scooter's garage. It was the nearest place and I knew Scooter was probably in Hollowpoint dealing with his workshop there. I'd just repay him later.
I grabbed a few bottles of water, and came back outside. Athena had been telling them how they got into Concordia and about the Meriff. I went up to her and kind of awkwardly held the bottle up to her lips. We somehow managed not to spill a whole lot of water. All the while I could feel Lilith glaring at me. Athena gave me a grateful nod and I went back to sit beside Mordecai while she continued her story.
"Lil looks like she might have a word with you after this is all over." he said to me. I just shrugged.
"She's been angry with me before. There's nothing wrong with what I did, even if Athena was the worst of the worst." I replied.
"Jack mentioned there would be someone else that could help us and we'd find her in the Up Over bar. We went there and that's where we met you and... Roland. But you didn't want to help out with the jamming signal, so we had to go to Moxxi." Athena explained next. Lilith sighed and started pacing again.
"She told us to find the source of the signal by triangulating transmitters. We got the transmitters from a guy at the black market. We placed them all on the roofs of some of the buildings in Concordia. Moxxi traced the signal back to an old Dahl facility, so that's where we were headed next. We had to get out through some secret exits and get to a place called Triton Flats. When we got there, Zarpedon first started using the... the Eye of Helios. She was trying to blow up the moon. We had to go through a whole initiation rite and whatnot to get into the place. Once we shut down the jamming signal - with some more difficulty of course - we found out that the Meriff had been working for Zarpedon all along. Jack told us to meet him in Concordia, so we could see what was going on."
"Of course he would be. Okay, how did you get there, though?" I asked. I had asked myself this question many times, but here I was, again wondering why everyone on Pandora (or Elpis) was just completely insane.
"Earlier, we had found a... rather intimate recording that involved the Meriff and one of Moxxi's bots and... anyway, we blackmailed him with it. Sort of. We went to the custom Claptrap unit and showed him the recording. He was outraged and got us into the Meriff's office. Jack went and talked to the Meriff, confronting him about the signal. The Meriff confessed he was working with Zarpedon and Jack was ready to let him go." Athena said and looked down for a second.
"He was just gonna let him go?" I asked. That seemed odd. Why would Jack do that? He didn't seem like the type to just let someone go.
"The Meriff tried to shoot Jack in the back, but he missed and then... Jack just lost it. He lost it and killed the guy. And I think he realized then that he enjoyed it. He started making a plan to get back to Helios and take down Zarpedon which involved building a robot army. So that was the first step. He sent us to Springs to find out where we could get an AI to run his army and Moxxi was going to contact some people she knew about finding hardware. Turned out that those people were Lilith and Roland."
There was a long silence after she said that. Lilith had shortly stopped pacing around, but soon started again. The more Athena talked, the more it seemed like no one really was at fault here.
"What's you think of Jack, when you first met him, Lil?" Mordecai asked, breaking the silence.
"Considering he was the guy that Moxxi left you for? I didn't like him." she answered and sped up her pacing.
"You don't like anybody." Mordecai replied and laughed a little. It seemed the healing hypos Zed had given him helped with the pain.
"I like Brick." she said and gestured towards him. Brick grinned broadly.
"Booyah!" he replied laughing. I noticed someone approaching our little group. It was Tina, she probably only just heard that we were back. She looked pretty annoyed that no one had told her earlier, but since Athena had resumed her story, she kept quiet for now and sat down next to Brick.
"We went to see Springs about the AI, but she couldn't help us. She sent us to a guy named Pickle. Was a nightmare to get there, really. Difficult to find and far from any Fast Travel Station. Zarpedon offered us a deal to leave the planet. She said she'd send us an interstellar ship and wouldn't follow us, if we agreed to leave."
"Pretty good deal. Why didn't you take it?" Lilith asked her.
"What do you think we were? A bunch of mustache-twirling villains? Jack hired us to kill bad guys, get paid, and help people. No different from y-"
"You say you're anything like us and I'll kill you where you stand!" Lilith practically hissed at her. Everything was quiet, until Tina cleared her throat to get some attention from everyone else.
"Konnichiwa, errbody! Wanna play another round of Bunkers and Badasses?" she asked. I raised my eyebrow at Mordecai.
"Not now, Tina." Lilith said and continued her nervous pacing.
"Oh right. Serious time. My bad." Tina mumbled.
"While we were on our way to Pickle, Roland found some old Dahl factories that might have the hardware we'd need for our robot army. So they were going to check that out while we organized that AI. It took us a good while, but we finally found Pickle. Turns out he was a young kid, but according to Janey he knew what he was doing. He told us we could find an AI on the Drakensburg, an old Dahl war ship. We needed to use a few detours, but we managed to get into the wreck. I think it was around that time that Jack got fired. Which didn't stop him from anything, really, so it didn't stop us from looking for that AI. The people running the Drakensburg wreck were called the Bosun and the Skipper. After we fought off the first wave of the Bosun's men, the Skipper contacted us, telling us that she was held prisoner and wanted us to rescue her. In exchange she would get us a military grade AI." Athena resumed the story.
"I'm gonna head back to HQ, lemme know when she's finished, so she can tell me the story again, cause I'm lost at this stage. Laters!" Tina chimed in, got up and left to head back to HQ. Of course she had missed the beginning of the whole thing. I was getting slightly confused at this stage and I had heard the story from the start.
"Just... continue, you'll have to tell her the whole thing from the beginning, I suppose." I said to Athena.
"Alright. We fought the Bosun, killed him and went through a door and we discovered that the AI we'd been looking for was actually the Skipper herself. She used to be the AI running the ship and the Bosun had reprogrammed her to be his companion. She really wanted to get out of that wreck and do something interesting instead. So... we took her. And then Jack contacted us about an old Dahl robot factory that Roland and Lilith had found. We took a train to get there. The place was infested with torks and scavs, but we pushed through them all and made our way into the factory. And that's where we found Gladstone."
"Okay, who the fuck is Gladstone?" I asked.
"A Hyperion researcher working on experimental technologies. He said he was working on a prototype that could digistruct an unlimited amount of other robots. He didn't get to finish it, so we gathered up the parts he needed, so he could build his constructor bot. The Skipper - or Felicity, she called herself that, after we rescued her - wasn't very happy to be stuck in a constructor bot, but Jack didn't care. There was another odd thing. It makes sense now, I suppose, but at the time, it didn't seem like something out of the ordinary. He was very concerned about Gladstone double crossing him."
"Weird. Sounds pretty paranoid to me." I commented.
"Of course it was paranoid! Jack was insane!" Lilith replied.
"Well, whatever it was, we went to the robot production plant. We had to restore the power first, then pick up an eye from one of the security bots around the place, get a torso, mount it on the crane system and - well, we got it done anyway. Felicity was suggesting that we copy her, because it would be less terrifying for her. She was talking about how she hated killing people and was doubting it would be a good idea to use her as an AI, but... well, we needed an AI, didn't we? She was begging Jack to just copy her, but he wouldn't have any of it. So we installed her into the constructor and she just... she went absolutely rampant. We had to fight her to disable her."
"And then?" Lilith asked.
"We wiped her memory, so she'd be sane. At least somewhat sane."
