An Ass Full of Stars


Fisher could hear the Calypsos as his mind drifted in and out of consciousness.

"What is up, brothers and sisters!? God-Queen Tyreen coming at ya live! We got something real special for ya! 'The Great Liberators' themselves! The Outsiders!"

"Great Liberators? More like 'Great Losers'!"

"Oh! This one's definitely a liberator!"

"Ty!"

"Fine."

"Fuck!" Fisher immediately woke up from his imposed slumber.

In an attempt to reassure himself what happened a while ago was real, Fisher looked at his arms. Shit, he thought to himself when he saw them. Both of them were still covered in the mysterious blue tattoos that he acquired during his first true encounter with the Calypsos themselves. In the midst of this, Fisher finally realized he felt lighter despite being well…Fisher. Looking around, he found himself floating in the air in some ship's medical bay. In doing so, he found his fellow Zeta Squadmates, all of whom still sporting the same weird tattoos as he was but in different colors, floating next to him.

"Kane!" He called one of their names, "Wilkes! Tommy!"

"Uuuggghhhh…" Wilkes started grumbling after Fisher called his name.

"Ugh, my fuckin head hurts." Grimm was inches away from one of the bay's big windows, "Ow!" He blurted when his head the hard glass.

"Huh, what's happening?" Kane was the last to regain consciousness.

Fisher clung onto one of the handles of a medical bed in the center of the room. He tried keeping his distance from the dead Skag laying on it.

"Look around and find out." Fisher said to Kane.

Having a look around, Kane cocked an eyebrow, "Umm…I'll ask again. What the hell is going on?"

Wilkes being Wilkes, the demolition man took out his sidearm, "I'll tell ya what's happenin! The Calypsos took us to their capital ship so they could tell us to join their little scrapheap cult again!"

Kane rolled his eyes, "…Yeah, no."

Grimm joked, "Med-Bay looks too clean to be owned by Tyreen Calypso or her equally-annoying brother!"

"Woah, man!" Exclaimed Wilkes while he floated just above the dead skag.

"What?"

"My arms!" He then looked at the arms of his fellow Marines, "Holy shit, look at your arms! And your arms!"

"Uh, yeah." Grimm looked outside the window for signs of any other human life in the ship, "You don't remember what happened before we passed out?"

"No?"

"Nothing out the ordinary then." Fisher mumbled to himself.

"What?"

"Nothin."

And out of the blue, the artificial gravity of the ship they had just woken up in finally came back. In an instant, anything and anyone that floated in the air came back down hard, including Zeta Squad. Kane was unfortunate to have his face meet the solid surface of a cold medical bed, Grimm's body slammed onto the hard, dirty floor, Fisher, having somewhat suspected the Zero-Gee wouldn't last long, was plopped onto the floor as well but still felt the impact hard, and Wilkes landed right onto the dead, dissected skag. Hitting the skag with his battle-ready body, something flew right out of the skag's partially-open stomach. Being the first to get up, Fisher looked down, discovering Tannis laying on the floor, covered in blood and viscera not her own. The machine gunner inspected his clothes, finding a small splash of blood on his left shoulder and little droplets going down his arm.

Having been helped up by Fisher and at the last minute Grimm, Tannis turned her head to the skag she had been experimenting on. Discovering Wilkes, who eventually slid down onto the floor, Tannis's teeth gritted.

"Are you the Neanderthal that pushed me out of the skag?" She asked angrily.

Falling on his ass, Wilkes struggled to get up, "Wasn't my fault! Artificial gravity came back on!"

Grimm pointed and laughed, "If only we got that on camera! You shoulda seen yourself slide right outta…whatever that is!"

Dusting himself off, Kane asked Tannis, "Never mind him, Doctor. What happened? Where are we?"

"Well, if you barbarians must know, Ellie and some Crimson Raiders carried you before we left Pandora."

"…Where's Lilith?" Kane then asked.

"She's in the Command Center." She revealed, "Just take a left and head down the hall. You can't miss it."

Giving a single nod, Kane and the other Marines left the med-bay to go find Lilith. Listening to Tannis's directions, the four took a left and went down the hall, passing by few Crimson Raiders along the way. It wasn't hard finding the door leading to another hall that took them straight to the Command Center, where Lilith, Vaughn, and a clown-faced, skimpy woman Zeta Squad had not seen before. Their new Siren tattoos made them easy for all three of them to spot the four as they were having a conversation.

"Start talking." Lilith spoke up first with crossed arms.

Kane looked to his fellow Marines before making eye contact with the three, "About what?"

"Your tattoos, sugar." Said the clown-faced woman, "You – "

The woman was interrupted by an excited Vaughn, " – look like badasses, shit! Look out, Calypsos! We've got fou – five Sirens now!"

"Sirens?" Fisher cocked an eyebrow.

"Yeah." Lilith approached the four, "What I am. Well, except that only one side of me gets blue tattoos. Never seen ones like you guys before."

Much to the their misfortune, Vaughn walked up to the Outsiders, "Uber-Sirens!" He said out loud.

Kane, Wilkes, and Grimm eagerly took a step back from the heavily-disheveled, smelly, Sun Smasher Warchief. Fisher, on the other hand, had his focus on the clown-woman.

His eyes connected with hers, "What's your name?"

She smiled, "Moxxi, sugar. What's yours?"

"Robert Fisher."

Kane told Lilith, "Yeah, we don't know why we have these tattoos." He pointed at her left arm, "We're kinda hoping you would."

"Can't say I do, killer. I never met a single fellow Siren with tattoos on both sides, let alone male ones, aside from Troy Calypso."

The seven were interrupted by a Raider, "Uh, Lilith?

"What's happening?"

"We got a transmission from someone."

"Put it through."

One of the moniters placed high up above the ship's controls, which had nothing but static on display the whole time, shifted to an unfortunate one of Tyreen and Troy. Seeing them on the screen caught the immediate attention of Zeta Squad, all of whom tried to bring the Calypsos down with all their strength and prowess only to fail disastrously before their very eyes much to their delight.

"Hey, superfans!" Tyreen of course was the first to speak up, "And Outsiders!"

"Fuck you!" Wilkes kindly gave the God-Queen the bird.

"Aw, so kind, Soldier Boy! You don't mind if I call you Soldier Boy, do ya? K, thanks!"

Grimm snickered, "What? You got nicknames for us now?"

"Yeah!" She confirmed much to their chagrin, pointing at Kane, "You're White Knight, " She then pointed at Grimm, "and you're Joker – Where's the Gun-Slut?"

Kane looked around, "Where the hell is Fisher? Where's that woman with the clown face? Moxxi, was it? Forget it, never mind. What do you want?"

"Oh, nothing." She smiled, "Just wanted to show my superfans something special! A gift from yours truly!"

The Marines rolled their eyes as the screen shifted from Tyreen and Troy to…Tyreen and Troy.

"What is up, brothers and sisters!?" Tyreen greeted to her followers and enemies.

"Oh, God." Kane muttered to himself.

"Bitch!" Wilkes yelled at the sight of her.

"God-Queen Tyreen coming at ya live! We got something real special for ya! 'The Great Liberators' themselves! The Outsiders!"

"Great Liberators? More like 'Great Losers'!" Troy laughed at his own joke.

Tyreen and Troy's camera was quick and generous enough to show Zeta Squad footage of them in their passed out state. Tyreen and Troy, being the attention seekers they are, tried to keep their faces in front of the camera as they revealed their new enemies to their followers. Tyreen decided to present a closer look at one of the Outsiders, Fisher to be precise. With her eyes focused on the camera, Tyreen didn't notice where her hands landed on the Outsider's body.

Eventually, she noticed the one hand on Fisher's area and the other on his abdomen, "Oh! This one's definitely a liberator!" She admired the unconscious Marine, "In the bedroom, if you know what I mean! If someone needs to be liberated from these 'liberators', it's this guy!"

"Ty!" Troy angrily whispered to Tyreen

"Fine." Tyreen took her hands off the Outsider.

Their camera then turn away to focus fully on them. It was only in that shot did Kane notice his rifle was held against its will by Tyreen's hand, and Fisher's machine gun in Troy's.

"Oh, by the way!" She continued running her mouth, "Thanks for the guns!"

Troy observed Fisher's machine gun, "This'll look great on my – "

"Fuck off!"

BOOM! The screen exploded at the same everyone heard the discharge of a firearm. Kane, Grimm, Lilith, Vaughn, and the rest of the Raiders all turned to Wilkes, who had a single-shot Jakobs shotgun in his hand aimed directly at the destroyed screen. One glare from Kane prompted him to look to his friend.

"What?" Asked Wilkes with an irritated voice.

Kane didn't bother to respond to Wilkes's improper firearm use. A shaken head was enough to express what he thought of it.

Lilith decided to chime in, "So, you guys have questions?"

"Uh, yeah, I have one!" Claptrap raised his hand, "Can you get me down?"

The four looked up at the ship's windows. Each took a step back when they saw every single one was heavily cracked, one of which had Claptrap lodged into the glass.

"Uh, how long have you been there and how long have the windows been damaged?" Kane asked out of internal panic.


THIRTY MINUTES LATER…

"Six galaxies!?" Kane asked Lilith.

"Yep." Answered the Firehawk.

"We've been gone that long, eh?" Grimm commented as he relaxed his back against the soda machine.

"So we're the last Marines now." Said Wilkes after slurping on a can of soda.

Grimm chuckled, "The Confederation will be very proud of us."

"Oo-rah."

Kane, Wilkes, Grimm, Lilith, Tannis, and Ellie all sat on a table in the break room to bring the Outsiders up to speed on what's been happening while they were gone. While she had more pressing concerns at the time, Lilith thought it'd be better to reveal more than just what's been going on in Pandora since Zeta had come such a long way from humanity's home galaxy.

A brief moment of silence went by. Lilith spoke up and asked, "What year did you think it was before I found you?"

Kane answered after a deep breath, "2175."

"Oh, boy. We're way beyond that." Said Ellie, "I don't mean to be a stick in the mud but your Confederation's dead and buried, amigo."

"Shit…" He relaxed his back further into his chair, "…So we're on our own then."

"Don't worry, killer. You're not alone in the Crimson Raiders."

Grimm smirked, "I think you'll need more than that to take on Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum's army of misfits!"

"That's why I'm glad you guys are here." Said Lilith, "We need your help. We need to get to the Great Vault before the Calypsos do."

"Of course, Lilith." Kane said, "We'll help you in any way we can."

"Hell yeah." Wilkes smiled.

Grimm snarked, "Fine, but if we're gonna take the Calypsos head-on again, I'm gonna fight from a distance, thank you."

"Fuck no!" Wilkes slammed his fists onto the table, "I wanna kick their candy asses after what they did to us!"

Grimm looked over to the door, "Oh, look who's back after half an hour!"

Coming to meet up with the Raiders after not being around for a while was Fisher and Moxxi. The rest took notice of their unkempt clothing and heavy breathing as they both took seats next to one another on the table. Lilith couldn't resist her smirk while Kane rolled his eyes over his squadmate's latest distraction, which admittedly was tame compared to Wilkes's shenanigans, but still, it would've been nice if he stuck around with his unit.

"Welcome back!" Said Grimm to Fisher.

"Thanks."

While Lilith smirked and chuckled, Kane decided to speak up.

"Got that outta your system?" He asked politely, "You ready to get back to work?"

"Yup."

Lilith asked Moxxi, "You feel better?"

She took a deep breath. "Always, Firehawk."

"You missed it!" Grimm took a sip of his soda, "These…Crimson whatever talked about Pandora, six galaxies, and some handsome dude named Joe or Jack or whatever."

"Don't worry." He grabbed a can of soda Grimm tossed to him without looking, "Moxxi brought me up to speed. He's called Handsome Jack by the way."

"Oh. Douchey."

Kane crossed his arms, "So, Promethea, right? That still on?"

"Yep. We should be there in a few minutes."

Kane got up from his chair and looked to his squadmates.

"We should gear up." He turned to Lilith, "Where's our – Shit. Calypsos took our weapons!"

"Don't worry. Marcus can supply you with whatever you need."

"If we're gonna save Promethea and take on the Calypsos, then I hope you got the best military-grade weaponry money can buy..."