Songs: Horslips - Dearg Doom; The Stunning - Brewing Up A Storm; The Chemical Brothers - Galvanize
We followed Brick inside the abandoned space station and watched him punch some sort of big massive pipe.
"Timber! Hahahaha!" he screamed as the pipe fell over slowly and created a bridge for us to walk over. When I looked back at brick, he was holding his hand, as if he had hurt himself while doing that punch.
"Bruised my cuticle on that one. Hell yeah!" he said next. I sighed. I knew the day would come, when he'd hurt himself while punching something and here it was. He looked a little more apprehensive about going into Helios right now.
"I'll post up here. You get in there and blast those fools! Mordy's life is on the line!" he said to us.
"Alright. Keep us updated on everything, okay, Brick?" I said to him.
"Of course. Now get in there and blast that mine open." he replied. I nodded and started balancing over the pipe. I made the mistake and looked down right when I had made it halfway across to the other side. It went down pretty far on either side. Shit. My knees started feeling weak, as I continued onwards, hoping I'd make it all the way over to the other side.
"You got this, Nova. You're almost there." I heard Gaige's voice over the ECHO. I took a deep breath and quickly walked the rest of the way, collapsing on the floor after I had some solid ground under my feet again.
"How was it?" Axton asked. I looked up and saw Zero balancing over the pipe as if he'd never done anything else in his life. Axton was up next.
"Kids' play." I mumbled and laid back down, waiting for my racing heart to calm down. I saw Zero walking past me and into something that was probably a hallway back when Helios was up in the sky.
"Alright, time to practice some botany! See ya at the Backburner, Slabs." Brick echoed us. Axton sat down next to me, looking pretty done with everything.
"Dear God, that was stressful." he said to me. I sat up and looked back at the pipe. Anouk was just balancing over it and she didn't look too stressed out.
"You afraid of heights, Axton?" I wanted to know. He shrugged.
"I wouldn't say I'm afraid of them, I just don't particularly like them." he answered. Yeah, I could get that.
"Same here."
"Now, Salvador over there is dead afraid of heights. He's gonna have a bad time with this." Axton told me. I saw Salvador standing at the other end of the pipe, looking very distressed. Poor guy.
"Come on, Sal, you got this!" I shouted at him. He looked up at me and cautiously set foot on the fallen pipe. The whole thing made a squeaky noise. This really wasn't good. But he had to make it across the pipe, he was the last one still on the other side and we didn't have forever.
"Don't look down, just get it over with!" Axton told him.
"I LOOKED DOWN!" Salvador shouted. I buried my face in my hands.
"JUST GET OVER HERE ALREADY! It'll be worse the longer it takes, because I'll personally get you, if you don't hurry up right now and chances are that one of us will fall!" I replied. I definitely wasn't going back over that pipe ever again, but Sal didn't have to know that. He quickly made a few steps and then slowly, but surely walked over the pipe until he ended up at our side. We were complete again.
"Okay, guys, through here." Maya told us and went ahead into the hallway.
"Alright! Time to wreak vengeance on the loader bots that Hector hacked to murder most of my clan." Vaughn announced as we turned around the corner. The stupid plants were even in here, growing throught the walls of Helios.
"There's more important things at stake, bandit. We need that moonshot cannon to clear the way to Cassius. He's our only hope of curing Mordecai." Lilith replied. She sounded anxious and stressed and I really hoped that didn't mean Mordecai had made a turn for the worse. We walked through some sliding doors.
"Right! Of course. Totally. Yeah-yeah-yeah. But I'll give you a ton of cash if you also wreak my vengeance." Vaughn echoed as we shot our way through a big room with lots of containers and crates lying around in it. Maybe this was some sort of loading bay or something, but right now it was crawling with infected bandits and I don't think anyone of us had any idea on how to get to the moonshot cannon.
"Hey, bandit king, any idea on where we have to go from here on? Looks like we're in some sort of cargo hold or loading bay, not sure what exactly it is." I asked over the ECHO. If he worked on Helios, it might be worth a shot asking him about it. Even though I didn't think he'd have the floor plan memorized.
"Uhm... I'm not 100% sure, but there should be an elevator somewhere and that should get you on the right floor at least. Then I might be able to help you out more." Vaughn replied to us. Well, that was a start.
"No elevator in this room, but the next room over here seems to be some sort of cargo hold, so maybe we'll be lucky there?" Anouk echoed us next.
"Anouk? How did you check the whole room already?" I replied as we made our way over to her ECHO signal.
"Didn't see anything that looked like an elevator, but there sure is one here. I could use a little help, though, 'cause I'm getting swarmed." Anouk answered. Oh, for God's sake. Why would she run ahead into a horde of infected bandits.
"On our way!" Gaige echoed back and ran off towards the next room. With a sigh I started following her quickly into the other room. It was full of infected bandits. I could see Anouk standing on some sort of platform with a gun that looked like she had just picked it up from the ground, firing ammo rounds all around her.
"Looks like she found the elevator." Gaige commented.
"Holy shit." I mumbled and started making my way towards her. There were two guns at her side just lying on the ground. She probably ran out of ammo and had to use whatever else she could find.
"Get onto the platform, everyone, I don't think we can kill them all, and I can't hold them off for much longer, either!" Anouk echoed us.
"Jesus, Anouk, what were you thinking, running ahead like that? It's dangerous!" I said when I got to her and started defending the elevator platform from the infected bandits. They were relentless and they came from every direction.
"I'm fine, I just ran out of ammo. Twice." she replied and nodded towards the guns on the floor.
"Why didn't you say something earlier? I was worried."
"I still had ammo earlier. I'm okay, I know what I'm doing." Anouk answered and kicked one of the psychos back against a metal beam which split his head open. Maybe she was right and she knew what she was doing, but I was still worried. At this time everyone had made it to the elevator platform and I hit the button. The elevator started moving upwards slowly and soon we weren't under fire anymore.
"Say, did anyone stop for a second to think about Hector's plan? Dude hijacks your ship to spread a mutated spore-seed-whatever gas to make Pandora a paradise? I mean, it's pretty righteous! Elevators, huh?" Vaughn babbled on over the ECHO while we were all standing on the elevator platform in silence.
"Focus! Moonshot cannon. Get it working. Blow open the door to the mine." Lilith chimed in. She sounded really angry right now and I could absolutely understand why she would be mad.
"So where do we go?" I asked Vaughn as we made our way through a long hallway and ended up in a room full of boxes with ammo.
"Where are you right now?" Vaughn asked us.
"Some sort of ammo storage room." I answered.
"Oh. Yeah. That place. You can literally just follow the corridors from here on and they should lead you to the moonshot cannon. Can't miss it." he replied.
"So, does anyone actually know how to use this thing? We've gotta blow open that door." Lilith echoed us again, sounding more worried than angry now. Oh no. Of course no one had thought of bringing someone who knew how to use the moonshot.
"I mean, I can try my best..." I said, but was interrupted.
"Waaaaait, wait-wait-wait-wait-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-WAIT! Hold up, HOLD UP! You gonna fire the biggest cannon on the whole muckabluckin' planet, and you didn't call ME?! I am offend." Tina chimed in on our conversation. Of course. Tina would probably find a way to figure it out.
"Tina, it's... it's a war zone between us and Helios. I'm not putting you in danger." Lilith protested.
"Lily, girl, I hear you, but I'm your demolitions expert! And now the Vault Hunter is inside and you can bamf me in to help out with the mission and I wanna so bad please it's probably my birthday!" Tina complained, as we entered some sort of robot factory. The sign on the door had said Loader Bay #24, so we probably had to fight our way through some loaderbots on the way.
"It takes a lot out of me to teleport anything besides myself, it's not as easy as -" Lilith started saying, but was interrupted by Tina wailing.
"PUH-HUH-LEAAAAASE! I WANNA USE THE BIG SPACE GUN! IT'S ALL I'VE EVER WANTED!" she cried.
"You know, Lil, she kinda has a point. If anyone can figure the moonshot out, it's Tina." I said to her. Lilith sighed.
"Fine." she said. We had just managed to disable the last Hyperion bot when the New Pandoran guys came at us again on our way to the next room. If we continued on like this, I'd run out of ammo myself, soon. And I had just stocked up in the other room beforehand. This was insane.
"You're almost to the moonshot control room! I took my bandit oath there with my right hand on a Hyperion account ledger, and my left hand on a still-beating skag heart! Man, I could stress-eat some skag hearts right about now." Vaughn echoed us. Well, at least that was some good news. We followed the corridors, just as Vaughn had told us to and soon got to another room where we were greeted by a purple flash.
After we weren't blinded anymore we could see an exhausted Lilith with Tina next to her who was vomiting her guts out. Yeah, I remembered that one time Lilith teleported me for shits and giggles (when she was still on the Eridium) and it wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. I threw up a lot that day.
"YES! That was AWESOME!" Tina shrieked as soon as she was done vomiting. I had to admire the energy of that girl. I definitely didn't feel like that after getting phased somewhere by Lilith.
"Okay, Tina, I hope this was worth it. I'm just gonna... rest here for a sec... You take care of the moonshot." Lilith said to her, breathing heavily and leaning on her knees. She got exhausted pretty easily, since she had cut back on the Eridium, but at least she wasn't melting people anymore.
"Lily, I got this. Listen UP, class in session! This is Ballistics 101, and I am Professor Boom! FIRST LECCIÓN! Those regular moonshot shells ain't gonna do SHIT against big ol' metal doors! We need that GOOD good armor penetration. So, whilst I start constructing the missile, your homework is to get the explosivos that are goin' inside. Class DISMISSED!" Tina said to all of us.
"Okay, guys, I think I'm gonna stay here and help Lilith look after Tina. You guys go ahead and get the explosives, I'm probably better off helping out with the construction." I replied while glancing over at Lilith who looked like she was about to pass out any second now. Poor thing.
"I ain't need any help, I got this, girl." Tina protested.
"Yeah, maybe I wanna have a look at the big space gun, too. Come on, we can construct the missile together, it'll be fun." I said.
"Only if I get to name it." Tina replied. I nodded.
"Deal."
"Okay, now you guys go and get the explosives while us women get to work on the important stuff." Tina said to the rest of the group. They just shrugged and went off to find some explosives on the way.
"Alright, how about you go and start with the missile construction while I have a quick chat with Lil?" I asked Tina.
"No problemo, auntie." she replied and went off to work on her construction plan. I knew Tina would do a good job with that missile and she didn't need my help, but I needed some time to wind down right now. Plus, I liked to have a quick look over Tina's plans for explosives just to make sure she wouldn't split the planet in half or something like that. Not that I didn't trust her abilities, but she was a teenager, after all.
"You alright, Lil?" I asked as I sat down next to her. She was pale and had dark rings under her eyes. She definitely didn't look alright.
"I'm just pretty exhausted." Lilith answered.
"You're not just exhausted. Lil, don't let this get to the point of a meltdown again. We've been through this whole routine so many times." I replied.
"I know, I know. It's not that easy, okay? I just... I mean, this is all my fault. I should have seen something like this coming. I should have taken some responsibility sooner and started making a move or something. I should have done better when I phased all of you out of Sanctuary. If I had paid more attention we wouldn't all have been scattered and Mordecai wouldn't be infected. My point is, I'm horrible at this leading thing and I don't think I can do it for much longer." Lilith told me.
"Lil, none of this is your fault. Hell, you got us out, that's why we're alive in the first place. You're doing a great job. Everyone makes mistakes, but you're here to learn from them. You can't learn if you blame yourself." I replied. I don't know for how long I've been telling her this now, but it came up again and again and at this point I could only hope and pray that Lilith would bounce back from this endless cycle.
"I know all that. In my head. But I can't get rid of feeling guilty and feeling like it all boils down to... to me blaming myself for Roland's death. If I hadn't gone in there, he might still be alive right now. Or Jack might have died sooner and we could have avoided a lot of... all this." Lilith said and gestured at the room.
"Lil, it wasn't your fault. None of us can know how things would have played out if you hadn't been there. We might as well all have died in there, because we couldn't have... taken out Angel, if you weren't there to help. It's over now. What happened, happened." I replied. Maybe Lilith really needed to leave this planet and go on a long extensive holiday. Maybe she wasn't ready for this job after all. But to be fair, none of us were ready for that kind of responsibility.
"I know. I try and keep telling myself that, but it doesn't really help." she said. I sighed. I was at my wit's end. I really had no idea what else to tell her. I could easily tell her that she probably should try and get some help, but we were on Pandora. And we had stuff to do here. There was just no way we'd find someone... maybe, if Tannis was to come around in any way, but I somehow doubted she'd be a great help to Lilith. But she seemed to be the only one with the necessary expertise. At least with the necessary theoretical expertise. And she seemed concerned about what happened to the Raiders, as well.
"Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, that'll do. MORE!" we suddenly heard Tina shout into her ECHO device.
"You wanna go and check on Tina? I think I need some time to myself for a while." Lilith said. I nodded.
"Alright. Watch out for any loaderbots or infected bandits coming your way, there is loads of them around here." I told her before making my way over to Tina. She was sitting at a console, a few notes scribbled around a sketch of a missile.
"How's it going, Tina? They got the explosives yet?" I wanted to know.
"They got some of them. Need more for this lady, though." Tina told me without looking up. I took a look at her plans and quickly skimmed over the notes. It looked good and safe enough. As safe as we could afford, really. Tina definitely had the job down to a T. She might be a little insane, but she was a genius.
"We found some more, are those good?" Anouk asked over the ECHO. Tina brought up an ECHO transmission and looked at the explosives Anouk was showing her. Then she smiled happily.
"HOMEWORK COMPLETE! A'ight, I'm bored. Different bit! Now you're a lovesick aristocrat who pines for the hand of Contessa Aorta Heartsworth. I shall play the part of the celestial imp, Cherubian. If my love-arrows are to fly true, you must purloin two stabilizer fins. For when I shoot her. Blat!" Tina echoed them back and then turned to me, glancing at the sketches I was holding.
"So, whatchu think? They good? Ooh, don't say it. I know they good. They fine. They damn fine." she said to me with a big smile on her face. I nodded.
"Yeah, they're really good. This is gonna be fun." I replied.
"It iiiiiiiiiiiis!" Tina answered and turned back to her ECHO transmission. I saw a hand that looked suspiciously like Salvador's hand pick something up from one of those yellow Hyperion chests.
"Uh... this any good?" he asked.
"Aw yeah. This love-missile gonna have wings like a... like a big dragon!" Tina squealed. She moved to a different transmission and this time it was Maya holding up another stabilizer. Tina nodded approvingly.
"Love is in the air, mon amie. Return posthaste!" she told them. I raised an eyebrow. All those romance references didn't just come out of nowhere...
"Have you been watching cheesy ECHO shows with Mordy again?" I asked her. She nodded proudly.
"Indeed, I have."
"I swear, if you continued that one show without me, I'm gonna be real pissed!"
"We didn't. I promise. No spoilers."
"Good. You better not, I wanna watch that show with all of you." I said, just as the other Vault Hunters came back.
"I started thinking about dragons and made this. Load them explosives!" Tina said to them and revealed the missile she had been working on. The missile literally had a little dragon on top of it. Zero came down to the missile and started attaching the explosives to the rocket slowly.
"Careful. Caaaaareful. CAREFUL! Careful." Tina told him while he was doing that, making everyone more nervous than we already were.
"Now slap them wiiiings on there. Contessa Aorta is gonna be swoonin' over your badonk in no time." she said after he was done. Maya was carrying the two stabilizers and made her way down to us, attaching the wings quickly.
"Rrrrromance! Verily, and stuff. Okay, now, uh... go salvage a power core from the bot bay. Not really feeling a shtick this time." Tina told them and they went off again, back to the loader bay we had just come from. God, hopefully this was all over soon, so I could at least stop worrying about Mordecai.
"Sorry if I'm being a bummer, I'm just worried about Mordy and I want to help out but it's scary 'cause I don't want to lose him. He's my friend." she suddenly said into her ECHO. I glanced over at her and this was one of the very few times I had seen her actually look nervous and worried.
"Can I be... mega-real? Sometimes I feel like if I don't keep moving, I'll just... stop? Maybe it's a defense mechanism? Whatever. It's nothing. Sorry I'm buggin' you with all this sad crap. Forget it." she added.
"It's alright, Tina. Same here. We're all worried about Mordy. If you don't feel up for it anymore, we can swap, alright?" I said to her.
"Thanks. I'm good for now." she replied and sighed.
"You guys might wanna see this." Salvador echoed and chuckled a little. Tina opened an ECHO transmission and we looked at one massive Hyperion bot. At the side you could see his name was... Uranus. Tina started giggling quietly, but it soon turned into full-blown maniacal laughter. At least she was feeling better, I guess.
"Its name is like a BUTT! THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE! GAHAHAAAA!" she roared with laughter, while the Vault Hunters did their best to destroy the turrets that were mounted on Uranus.
"DOES URANUS HURT? AHAHAHAHAHA!" Tina shouted next. I looked at the transmission and it seemed like the bot was almost destroyed. Thank God. That thing was pretty big and it seemed like there were a good few other loaders around.
"We almost got it down, Tina." Gaige echoed back, just as one of the bots arms fell off and he just exploded right after that.
"AHA! HAH! Hahaha. Hah. Heh. I needed that! I'm back, bugaboo! Get that power core!" Tina replied. I saw Axton pick up the power core.
"HAH! Back to me, Vaulty Vault!" Tina said to him, as he started carrying it off on his shoulders. Thankfully they didn't have to go too far to get the powercore for Tina, so they were back pretty quickly. I was starting to get nervous again and was pacing back and forth next to the missile.
"F+! F is for fantástico. Remember the homework thing? The - the bit? Whatever, you done good. Plug in that core!" Tina shouted, as soon as Axton stepped back into the launch room. He walked up to us and plugged the power core in.
"Okay, what next?" he wanted to know.
"Now look. I'm not gonna lie. I wanna arm that cannon. But you know, if you wanna, if you really really wanna, then you do you. But I wanna do it." Tina answered and looked at Axton expectantly. He shrugged and walked up to the button, but I managed to stop him by gesturing wildly at him.
"Please lemme push the button. It's... it's my birthday... okay, it's not my birthday, but I only lied because I really really really really really really really really wanna arm the cannon, pleaaaaase!" Tina added and started sobbing dramatically. Axton looked over at me, a confused expression on his face, while Tina started sobbing even more. I just slowly shook my head.
"Please?" Tina asked again and started full on wailing now. Axton took a deep breath and looked at her.
"Hey Tina, you wanna do the honours?" he replied.Tina looked up with a big smile on her face.
"Really? REALLY really?! Oh Vaulty Vault, I thought you might be raisin, but now I know you chocolate chip." she said, as she started skipping over to the button while humming happily. Thank God, Axton had some common sense and let the girl arm that cannon. Mordy, Brick and I would have been hearing about it for years to come, if Axton hadn't let her do it, and I really wasn't in the mood for that.
"Yes! My dream! It's happening! Follow dis butt!" Tina shouted ecstatically and pushed the button to arm the cannon, before running off towards the lift that would take us to the main console. Lilith was already waiting inside the lift. She pushed the button once we had all squeezed onto the elevator platform.
Thankfully the lift was pretty fast and we could get out and into the main control room quickly. Tina ran up towards the main console and made a few adjustments aiming the moonshot at the mine entrance. We all gathered behind the console waiting for Tina's instructions.
"Axton, my main man, your turn to push the button." Tina said. Axton walked up towards the console, looking at Tina to tell him when to push it.
"Fire."
Axton pushed the button and we could watch through the windows how the missile was launched towards the mine entrance. It looked really damn cool, to be honest and I was a little jealous that Axton got to push the button.
"What in the hell is goin' on down there?" we heard Hector echo us all. He sounded a little groggy, as if he had just woken up from a nap. Which was probably what had happened, since it was the middle of the night.
The missile hitting the mine entrance and tearing right through it was beautiful to watch. We finally had a good chance at saving Mordecai and Sanctuary and Pandora again. Maybe this would end well after all.
"Goddammit." Hector just mumbled, right after the door was blown wide open. Tina was looking at the explosion in absolute awe.
"It's... it's so beautiful." she said in a voice that sounded almost teary. Lilith sighed and then smiled a little.
"Good work, everyone. The way up to the lab is clear. Cassius better come through for us." she told us.
