Songs: The American Spirit - Sons & Daughters; Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger
Mordecai anxiously glanced at his ECHO device, until he had found what he was looking for. He smiled a little and turned his ECHO off.
"She'll be fine, Mordy, don't worry. Talon can take care of herself." I told him. He had sent her off to spend some time with her kind on Pandora while she was changing sex, but because he was too worried about her, he had given her a little tracker on a collar. He constantly kept checking on her, which was really cute.
"I know, I'm just making sure." Mordecai said quietly. I quickly looked back at him and gave him an encouraging smile, before looking back onto the road. Anouk was leaving to go back home today. The Fast Travel station wasn't far away, but it was too far to walk, especially with her luggage.
"You sure you got everything, Anouk?" I asked her. I quickly glanced back at her. She was looking at the passing scenery for a little while, until she looked at me.
"Yeah, pretty sure. If I forgot it, it's probably not that important. And if it is, you've got a good excuse to visit me." she answered with a smile.
"You wanna know an absolutely foolproof way to get us to visit?" I asked, as I stopped the car.
"Yeah?" Anouk replied, giving me a curious look.
"Be on a planet with a Vault. Lilith wants us to go and look for Vaults anyway, so if you've got one for us we'll probably be there in no time." I answered. Anouk grinned and nodded, as I climbed out of the driver's seat.
"Sure, I'll just pull one out of my ass or something. No problem at all." she replied and rolled her eyes.
"Hey, I'll come and visit if I can, alright? I wanna see where you've grown up, after all." I said to her as we were standing in front of the Fast Travel station with Anouk's luggage. She'd travel to Tundra Express from here and then get the shuttle from there. I would have gone with her if I hadn't promised Lilith to get back to base as soon as possible. It was something about Vaughn and Tina and Brick and Axton and who knows who else. Everything was probably collapsing. Again.
"Just ECHO ahead, you can come and visit any time. Except for when I'm on holiday. I mean, you can visit then, too, but I won't be there, so..." Anouk replied and shrugged with a smug grin on her face.
"I'll just send an ECHO before I get on the shuttle, don't worry. And in case you should stumble over any info on a Vault or something, let me know."
"Sure thing. I can actually check the archives back on Aeres and see if there is anything." Anouk offered.
"Sounds good. Don't get yourself into any sort of trouble, though."
"I would never."
We hugged and said our goodbyes and Anouk got ready to fast travel back to Tundra Express. It still felt weird to me to think of Anouk as my daughter, because we were more like friends, really. Which was probably a much healthier dynamic in our situation, to be honest. Still, both felt somewhat strange.
"Send me a message when you get onto the shuttle safely, alright?" I said to her, as the station was counting down the time until she was dematerialising. She nodded quickly and smiled.
"And you take care of Jael, alright? As long as you're on Pandora, that is." she replied and was dematerialised right after. I turned back and looked at Mordecai who was checking his ECHO device again for Talon.
"She okay?" I asked. Mordecai looked up at me and nodded.
"Yeah. I think so. You wanna head back to Lilith and see what's going on?" he answered as we walked back to the car.
"Sure. What do you think she wants to tell us?" I said, as I climbed back into the driver's seat. Mordecai shrugged.
"I dunno. She's been all over the place since Sanctuary blew up. Especially since a lot of us are actually considering leaving Pandora for real. I think she's scared of dealing with the Raiders on her own." he answered. I sighed. I knew Lilith wasn't doing too well lately and I felt really guilty for planning to leave Pandora and leave her behind, but on the other hand - how else were we supposed to find new recruits? Or new Vaults? It wasn't like they were just lying around all over the place. (Except for the Vaults. They actually seemed to be all over Pandora.)
"You know I'm gonna feel really bad leaving her behind, if she doesn't get her shit together anytime soon?" I said.
"I know, I know. Things is, she'll be fine. And if she's not, there's Tannis and Ellie that can look out for her. You're not leaving her behind. Plus, leaving Pandora now doesn't mean that we'll never come back." Mordecai replied. We had almost made it back to our current camp and I was getting a little nervous about whatever it was that Lilith wanted to tell us. It usually wasn't anything good.
"I know we can come back. It just all feels very final. I mean, we don't even really know where we are going first, we've got no plan whatsoever. Who knows how long it'll be before we get back, you know?"
"I know. Don't worry. Never did you any good to worry." Mordecai replied, as I stopped the car. I sighed and looked at him.
"You'd know best, wouldn't you?" I asked with a smile.
"Mh-hm." he hummed. Poor Mordecai always had to put up with me being worried about anything and everything. We got out of the car and made our way into the camp to meet up with Lilith and the rest of the Raiders. Maybe she just wanted to give us a quick update on what had been happening, but those usually didn't happen with everyone there, because someone always seemed to be busy with something.
When we came closer we could already see Lilith waiting for us, outside of the small hut we temporarily made into our HQ. We had already told Lilith we'd have to find a new place we could stay at permanently soon, but she said we'd do all that in due time. Without a Vault map or a way to get off Pandora for now, it seemed like now was the due time to me, but after Lilith hesitantly had taken control of the Raiders, I wasn't going to question her every move.
"Sorry it took us so long, Lil." I said, as I walked up the stairs and passed her before going inside the room. Everyone was there already. Man, we really seemed to be pretty late for this.
"It's alright. You weren't that late. " she replied and sat down.
"So what is all this about?" Salvador asked, seeming somewhat impatient. He was probably planning on seeing his grandma, that's where he went a lot lately. He absolutely loved his grandma and it was the cutest thing in the world.
"Three things. First thing is something Vaughn needs done and we need a few volunteers. Second thing is about what we're going to do over the next few months. And last but not least, Axton has something to say." Lilith announced. I glanced over at Axton who was shifting nervously.
"What does Vaughn need help with? Is it his recruiting again?" I asked. He had been starting a few more attempts to recruit people for his bandit clan, but without success. I honestly didn't know how he was still surviving on Pandora. It was like a miracle, especially because he used to work for Hyperion and Pandorans didn't take too kindly to that. Maybe the bandit life was for him after all.
"No, it's something about a pony. Apparently, Brick and Tina are already on it, but Vaughn says he needs more people out in the Helios station." Lilith said.
"Brick and Tina are in Helios? On their own?" Mordecai replied immediately. Ah shit. Of course he'd be worried about Tina, he constantly was.
"Yeah. I know. You can give out to them in a few minutes. Anyone wanna come with them and make sure Tina doesn't get hurt? Or Brick?" Lilith asked.
"I'll go. Mordy can help us out over the ECHOnet and give out to Tina without getting distracted. Plan?" I answered.
"Alright, if you think that's gonna work out, go ahead." Lilith said and shrugged, moving onto the next topic.
"So, our plan for the next few months then. First of all, we need to rebuild and slowly start recruiting. We lost a lot of people with the attack on Sanctuary and we lost our home. We need to establish towns and strongholds all over Pandora." she explained. Gaige shifted nervously. Something was up with all of them, I could literally feel it.
"Why do we need several strongholds? We were fine with Sanctuary and that was just one." Salvador wanted to know.
"Not really. We lost a lot of good people, because they were all in Sanctuary and all in one spot. If we set up several camps, our losses won't be as high if one of them gets attacked." Lilith replied.
"That's true, but won't the single strongholds be more vulnerable, too?" I chimed in. Not that I really had much to say, since the plan for Brick, Mordecai, Tina and me was leaving the planet behind anyway, but still.
"I've thought about that, yeah. The thing is, evacuation will be much easier with less people trying to get out. There is a risk that it'll be easier to overrun smaller strongholds, but it'll be way more difficult to attack all of us at once. And I doubt all the bandit clans will ever be determined enough to unite against us. They're all fighting their own little battles, they'll keep themselves busy." she explained.
"Alright, makes sense. What else is on the agenda for the next few months?" I asked her. I had no idea how long we'd actually stay around for, so I was curious if there were any short term projects I could help with.
"Well, it's gonna be difficult to plan, because I have no idea who of you will be staying and who will be leaving, but I suppose our main goals are finding the Vault map, finding out about other planets with Vaults on them, even without the map if we can, recruiting new Vault Hunters and Crimson Raiders and trying to get a ship built that's suitable for interplanetary travel. We should definitely try to get to the Vault map as soon as possible, I don't want it falling into the wrong hands." Lilith answered. To be honest, this all sounded pretty realistic. Maybe I was worrying too much about Lilith. She seemed to be doing alright since Sanctuary was gone.
"Alright, that's good. What about Axton, though?" Maya asked. That was odd. I would have thought, she would probably know what Axton was up to, out of all people. Maybe Salvador, too. But both seemed clueless.
"Well, the thing is... I'm leaving Pandora." Axton replied himself. Lilith had stepped back and sat down, letting him do the talking.
"What? When?" Gaige wanted to know, looking just as surprised as the rest of us. For some reason I never really thought that Axton would be the first one to leave. My bets were on Gaige or Salvador. Maybe Maya or Zero. But not Axton.
"I'll get a cargo ship in two weeks. I've gotten an offer to do some odd jobs for Anshin and I figured... I don't know, it's just more my thing to go out and do stuff. All the sitting around has made me pretty restless. I just gotta go and do my own thing. I might come back, though, so don't count me out just yet." he said.
"Wow. That's... that's unexpected, man." Salvador commented. Gaige didn't look too happy either.
"Dude, we just went on a long mission and hopped planets and stuff and spent aaaaaages together and you didn't even tell me?" she asked in disbelief. Axton gave her an apologetic smile and shrugged.
"Well, I just told you, didn't I?" he answered. Gaige responded by throwing a half-empty pack of ammo at him. Axton just barely managed to dodge it, but he didn't even say anything about it.
"Damn. I guess, you're gonna be busy packing up the next few days then, huh?" I said, trying to break the shocked silence. Axton nodded.
"Yeah. But don't think I'll leave without throwing a goodbye party." he answered with an apologetic grin.
"Well, you definitely owe us one!" Gaige replied. Poor girl seemed to take the whole thing pretty hard. It probably was normal that she would - after all, one of her closest friends was just about to leave her behind. And everyone else would probably leave sooner or later, as well.
