As Claptrap rolled across his retreat and out onto the glacier beyond, navigating it surprisingly well given his blindness, we formed up around him, Maya, Gaige and I leading, with the others beside and behind him. Maya spoke up.

"Claptrap, what was that thing?"

"A particularly vicious bullymong called Knuckle-Dragger. As you might have gathered, he rather likes collecting eyes, regardless of their owners and their wishes."

"Lovely." Gaige commented. "Watch out for that wall, by the way."

Claptrap stopped, before changing direction and rolling around the wall of ice that he was about to hit. "Thanks. Anyway, there's a nearby place called Frostbite Crevasse. It's where Knuckle-Dragger likes to hang out. You know, when he's not ripping out eyes. We'll probably find him there."

Unfortunately, Claptrap was interrupted. Namely by the bunch of bullymongs that decided to pick that moment to try and convert us into their next meal.

Word to the wise, when you're going up against a Siren, a teenage girl genius engineer, a bloodthirsty nut-job, an intensely dangerous assassin, a battle-hardened commando, a trigger happy killing machine and a pissed off hacker, you'd better have one or more of the following on your side;

a. One, or more, hell of a bad-ass fighter.

b. A lot of fire-power.

c. Make sure you really want the fight.

If you do not have any of these, then option d is most advised; namely run like fucking hell is on your heels. The remaining option e is a gruesome ending for you.

All of the bullymongs elected to finish the fight via option e. None of us had a problem helping them with that. Claptrap was sensible enough to take cover and not distract us. Honestly, the little robot was starting to grow on me. We dusted ourselves off and continued, stopping at the top of a small cliff face. Claptrap turned to face us.

"There should be a way down. I just have to reme-AAAAAAHHHHHH."

Another group of bullymongs had leapt up at us, one of them knocking Claptrap over the cliff face. I didn't have time to worry about him, though, with a bullymong leaping straight at me. That one received a magazine of SMG bullets straight to the face, but I now had to reload and had another coming on its heels. The others were busy dealing with their own attackers.

Screw it. Drawing my sai, I threw my weight behind it and jammed it into the beast's skull. Spinning, I was too slow to intercept the final one, and got slammed to the ground. Releasing my grip on both the SMG and the sai, I settled for holding its head back before noticing how close I was to the edge. I grinned.

"You want to fly, asshole? Let's fly."

I slammed my fist into the bullymong's side, propelling both it and me over the edge. Regardless of Pandora's low gravity, falling off a cliff still hurts and I made sure it took the brunt of the fall, back first. The impact obviously stunned the bullymong, roaring in pain at the sudden and unexpected attack. I rolled off the beast and drew my sniper rifle, resting it against its skull and pulling the trigger.

It wasn't getting up from that.

Glancing around, I saw that Claptrap was upside down, half buried in a snow drift. I ignored his increasingly strident protests and hauled him out. Waving off his thanks, I looked up at the Vault Hunters that had just finished their own battle, I yelled up at them.

"What are you guys waiting for, an engraved invitation?"

All of them elected to take the quick way down, complete with grins. Maya held out my abandoned weapons. "Try not to lose them, huh?"

I shrugged sheepishly. "I'll try, thanks."

Salvador slapped my back, "That, amigo, was badass."

"Hell yeah!" Gauge agreed.

Axton grinned. "Definitely crazy enough to fit in with us."

Zero flashed a :D across his visor.

Krieg was laughing madly. "HIGH FLYER HAS TWO VEG OF STEEL!"

I laughed, "Just doing what I have to to survive, same as everyone else."

Our little moment of unwinding was interrupted by a very unwelcome voice over our ECHOs.


"Hey kiddos, Jack here, President of Hyperion."

I growled angrily. Jack evidently didn't hear me.

"Lemme explain how things work here. Vault Hunter shows up. Vault Hunter looks for the new Vault. Vault Hunter gets killed. By me. You see- seeing the problem here."

I'd had enough. Switching my ECHO to transmit, I replied, "Yeah, we see the problem, Jack. You're still alive. Never mind, though. We'll be happy to fix that one for you. We'll even do it for free."

There was a moment of silence before Jack growled, "Jason. You know, kiddo, I thought you were smart. But associating with Vault Hunters, you know how bad that ends up being as a career move."

"I don't work for you anymore, sir," I made sure to make it clear that I was spelling it with a c and a u. "My aim right now is to piss you off, and in that career, I think I'm something of a quick study."

"You're nothing more than scum I scrape off my boots."

"Yep, that's why you have a bigger bounty on me than most governments have in cash. How's that working out for you, by the way? Cause it's been a while since any bounty hunters have taken shots at me. They've learned it's not a good idea."

"You're just another damn bandit. Believe me, you've got no chance."

"Last time I believed you, it turned out you lied right to my face about something that you really should have known better than to do. I trust you about as far as I can spit you. See you round, Jackie-boy." I killed the transmission, fuming. I did notice just how quiet it was around me. I turned to them, raising an eyebrow.

Axton stared at me, not quite pointing his gun in my direction. "That's quite a bit of history you two have there to have that kind of argument. Care to explain?"

"No." I replied. "Not really and certainly not right now."

His gun was definitely pointed in my direction now. "I wasn't asking."

"That's fine, I wasn't answering either and I still don't intend to right now." Turning away from him, I almost ran into Salvador.

"He's got a point, amigo. You just happened to show up out of nowhere, just in time to catch the train with us."

"Coincidences/or not, only a fool would/ ignore such a thing." Zero said quietly.

I snorted. "Look, right now I don't much care if you all believe me or not. I'm pretty sure that this isn't the place for this conversation."

"We might not have a chance to have it if we don't have it now." Axton replied, flicking off the safety.

I swiftly assessed the odds. Best case, it was three to one against me. Maya, Gaige and Krieg hadn't said anything yet, but I could guess they were having doubts too. Still, my issues with Jack ran deep and were very personal.

"So, you want me to spill my life story to you, huh? Despite the fact that I've known all of you for less than 24 hours, most of which we've been either asleep or out cold? I'm just supposed to trust you with that?"

Gaige grimaced. "He has a point, guys."

"Given he's Hyperion, and they're the mob that just tried to kill us, I think it's best if he comes clean." Axton rebutted.

I snarled. "Ex-Hyperion. Very much ex, as is evident from the bounty on my head. Given at least one of you is an assassin, one is ex-military and one is a native that knows all too well how things work here, why exactly I am going to trust you with information that could easily see me killed?"

"Because you don't have a choice."

Things may well have gone very badly then, except Maya chose to intervene. Placing one hand on Axton's gun, she pushed it down. "Enough. Yes, we'd all like answers, Axton, but Jason is right. This isn't the time or place. We haven't exactly spilled our story to him either."

Axton glared for a split second before lowering his gun. "Fine, but you're going first, Jason."

I shrugged, "Fair enough. Thanks, Maya, I appreciate it."

She chuckled. "Didn't want Axton to get hurt."

"Huh?" Axton looked confused. "Why would I get hurt?"

"HIGH FLYER HAS CLAWS TOO!" Krieg yelled. Axton's eyes flicked down and widened in shock, seeing the SMG I had drawn and levelled at his gut, using Salvador's bulk to hide it from him and Zero.

In the following silence, I said softly, "If I wanted to hurt you, Axton, you'd know all about it." Turning, I brought the gun up to readiness and headed after Claptrap, who had wisely elected to vacate the area. The rest followed in silence.

After a short walk and a shortcut through a crashed Hyperion craft of some kind, Claptrap suddenly stopped. "Oh, my eye's turned back on. I can see us!"

"Well, that's good news." Gaige said. "The bad news is that..."

Claptrap suddenly huddled down as he too realised the implication. "The bullymong with my eye...IS VERY CLOSE!" A noise attracted our attention, as Knuckle-Dragger snatched up a derelict car and hurled it at us.

KNUCKLE-DRAGGER

Likes Eye-Candy. Literally.

Well, it certainly didn't waste time attracting our attention. We didn't waste time getting the hell out of the way. Knuckle-Dragger was less than impressed by that. It was even less impressed that we chose to respond to its presence by injecting seven weapon's worth of ammunition into its hide. Roaring, it elected to demonstrate said displeasure by charging across the icy ground at us. Claptrap proved his worth again, screaming about the bunch of smaller bullymongs that were emerging from the various holes in the cliffs around us and entering the fight.

I ended up diving into the same cover as Gaige, who was gamely holding off a trio of determined adult bullymongs with steady SMG fire. Drawing my own SMG, I elected to help deprive them of the ability to kill us, by killing them first. A shadow loomed over us and I yanked Gaige out of our cover just as Knuckle-Dragger smashed through it. We both turned and emptied our guns into it, the corrosive rounds from mine proving to be exceptionally popular with him.

Well, I assumed that was his reaction, giving the amount of jumping and dancing around that he was doing. I couldn't honestly say that I hung around and asked him to be sure. It did look like he had his own plans though, and we featured in them rather prominently, given the boulders and wreckage he was throwing at us.

"Anyone got any ideas?" I yelled.

"I have one but it/ is not without a great risk/ to Gaige, trying it." Zero replied.

Risk to Gaige? But Gaige was right next to me. Oh great, so Gaige is worthwhile, but I'm just expendable. Thanks a lot, pal. I made a mental note to get Zero back for this.

Assuming, of course, I survived the next few minutes.

Given the fact that I evidently couldn't trust Zero to watch my back, coming up with my own plan was sounding like a better and better idea.

I had an SMG rapidly running out of ammo, a sniper rifle that was next to useless at close range, a few crappy low yield grenades and an equally cruddy explosive shield that was faulty in its recharging circuits that I needed to fix, as it considered full charge to be a point where, in fact, it would only take a single...

That might just work.

I turned to Gaige, handing her my SMG. "Can you keep him busy for a few seconds?"

She looked surprised. "We're not waiting for Zero?"

"Given that Zero seems to not give a damn if I'm dead or alive and only slightly more of one about you, I'd rather not."

She shrugged and grabbed the gun. "This better be good. What are you planning?"

"To improvise." I replied, grabbing the shield and wedging the grenades within it. It wasn't pretty but it hopefully would hold together long enough.

Popping up to look at the situation, I saw it cornering Maya. Gaige and I exchanged a look and she knew what I intended.

"I'll cover you!" She stood and opened fire, drawing its attention briefly before it turned back to Maya. Breaking cover, I ran at the damn thing as it grabbed her, lifting her up. Thankfully, her arms were free, so I activated the shield and tossed it to her.

"Aim for its mouth." I yelled.

She didn't hesitate, catching and throwing it in a single movement just before it finished charging, before sending a quick burst of fire after it.

The reception was, well, critical. Not that Knuckle-Dragger was able to respond, given his lack of a head. His grip on Maya, however, was still strong enough that I had to help her out and support her while she caught her breath. Finally she managed to speak.

"Thanks."

I chuckled. "No problems. Consider us even."

She managed a weak grin as the others approached. Zero was the first to speak.

"Not quite the plan in/ mind, but it was undoubtedly/ effective to see."

I shot him a glare, less than thrilled by his attitude. "We should grab what we can." Retrieving Claptrap's eye from the nearby corpse, I headed over to the little robot. Crouching beside him, I examined the connections. "I think that between Gaige and I, we should be able to fix this up for you."

"If you're sure." Claptrap said shakily.

"Ah, don't worry about it. You'll be fine with us." Gaige crouched on Claptrap's other side and we carefully and cautiously reconnected the eye and eased it back into place. "How's that?"

Claptrap leapt back upright and did a small spin. "AWESOME!" He settled down and faced us. "From here, our best bet is through Liar's Burg. Luckily the entrance is just on the other side.

The others had gathered up all of the surplus supplies that had been knocked loose during the fight and we followed Claptrap up towards another Hyperion ship door. As we approached, however, it promptly locked down tight. Claptrap rolled across to the access panel before slamming the controls.

"Dammit. We must have tripped a proximity sensor. I'm not sure I can get it open."

I was about to offer to take a look when someone else intervened.

"Let me get that for you. Executing phase-shift." Angel's image appeared on the screen in front of us and the lock beeped, the door quickly opening. Her image sent a small grin at us.

"You're welcome."

I chuckled. "You really are patched into everything on the planet, aren't you?"

"Well, it does make things like this easier. I'm sure you could have cracked it yourself, but let's not give Jack a sitting duck to aim at, shall we?" Her image flickered and reappeared on our HUDS as, with those chilling words ringing in our ears, we swiftly entered the ship. Spotting a large chest that I recognised, I opened it and grinned, grabbing the spare ammo, grenades and shotgun, while Maya and Gaige topped up on their own ammo with Maya taking the assault rifle as well.

Claptrap rolled across to the other door and swiftly opened it. We followed him out into a small canyon before emerging onto a ledge overlooking a town. Claptrap gestured towards it.

"That's Liar's Burg. Sir Hammerlock lives here at the moment. He's an old, maybe not friend given how few of them I actually have, but certainly a friendly acquaintance. But he shouldn't shoot at us, if you're worried."

"Which is more than can be said for those bandits." Axton said, looking at the town through his scope. "Looks like there's surely a dozen of them, more likely a score."

"Meh." Salvador said. "Just makes this more fun."

Jack's voice suddenly cut into our discussion, though this was clearly more of a general broadcast than aimed at us.

"Attention all bandits. You might like to know that I'm offering a million dollars for the each of the heads of the Vault Hunters that just entered Liar's Burg. Plus there's still the bounty for Roland, the mass-murdering leader of the Crimson Raiders. Have fun, everyone."

Our ECHOs swiftly picked up a second, much closer transmission, IDed as belonging to a Captain Flint.

"A million bucks? All right boys, I want you to find them Vault Hunters and bring them to me, NOW!"

I shook my head. "You know, I think I'm insulted."

"Tell me about it." Maya commented. "My bounty is a lot higher than that."

"QUIT WASTING AIR AND GREET OUR NEW TEAM OF SLAUGHTER DOLLS!" Krieg yelled, jumping down and charging the bandits below.

I dived onto a nearby rock and drew the sniper rifle, picking off anyone who got to close to the others. Zero chose a nearby rock and did the same.

"Well, Jack evidently can track us again. Guess I'm going to have to scramble the encryption on the ECHO again." I snarked, taking the head off a marauder.

Zero was quiet as he took out a psycho. "How did he find us/ so easily? A signal/ from you, I wonder?"

I snorted, "Still on that tack, huh? Nothing to do with me, the only thing I'd want to help him with is a trip into a shallow grave. Knowing him, he probably has a tag on our ECHOs from that first transmission. Might explain why that proximity sensor picked us up so quickly, too."

"Hmm." I could feel Zero looking at me. "You seem to know an/ awful lot about how Jack/ thinks and operates."

"Yeah, well I know a lot of Hyperion procedures and he wrote most of them. Guy is a Grade A asshole, but when it comes to computers and programming, he's about as good as it gets. Aren't many around even close to his skill level and intelligence, just wish he wasn't such a psychotic megalomaniac. He could do a lot of good, otherwise."

"Oh?"

"Those New-U and Fast Travel stations? All his work. Imagine what he could come up with if he wasn't focused on destroying everyone that doesn't follow him."

Zero shuddered, though it clearly didn't affect his aim. "He is capable/ of enough damage as it/ is, I wish not to."

I sighed as I took out another bandit. "You guys aren't going to let this stuff rest until I tell you why I have such a beef with Jack, are you?"

"No."

"Fine. Tonight, then."


It didn't take us long before we had cleared out the town. Moving up, Claptrap directed us towards a house on the higher side of town as he made an ECHO call.

"Hey, Hammerlock, you around?"

A posh English voice responded swiftly. "Spectacular! First Flint's men attack the town and then Claptrap shows up. I must have been appalling horrible to puppies in a past life."

I chuckled slightly. "You sure go out of your way to make friends, don't you, Claptrap?"

"Hey, not everyone is as understanding as you lot."

Hammerlock interrupted. "Who's that, then?"

"Sir Alistair Hammerlock, I assume? We're a bunch of people that have managed to piss off old Jackie upstairs. Claptrap said you were a good person to talk to about that."

"I say, old chap, you wouldn't happen to be the new Vault Hunters that Jack placed the bounty on, would you?"

I grinned. "The rest are, I'm just the guy that walked into the cross-hairs with them."

"Good show! I'm impressed that you've kept Claptrap quiet, usually he's going on and on about anything by now. Let me deactivate the fence and we'll have a good old fashioned chin-wag."

We all stayed clear of the fence until a tall distinguished looking gentleman with a cybernetic arm, leg and eye emerged and keyed it off. "Now then, Vault Hunters. I am Sir Hammerlock, at your service."

SIR HAMMERLOCK

Civilised. Sophisticated. Deadly Accurate.

All of us swiftly introduced ourselves, with me last. "Name's Jason. Ex-Hyperion, since that seems to matter to people. Hacker by trade and hacked off with Jack-ass overhead."

"Ex-Hyperion, you say. Don't meet many that would want to get away from Hyperion and manage to do so. I'm more than a little curious about that, old chap."

"Yeah, well, get in line. I'm going to fill everyone else in, it would be rude not to include you. But if you don't mind, I think we'd like to take a bit of time to deal with today's events first. Been a long day."

"You're not wrong there. Bandits and Bullymongs, lovely place, Pandora." Maya commented.

"Bullymongs, you say? Any trouble there?" Hammerlock asked.

"Nah, Knuckle-Dragger was the worst and he's checked out." Axton said, rather rudely in my opinion.

"I say. Killing Knuckle-Dragger can't have been easy. Come on in, I'll put the kettle on. It will be good to have some company."


It took a couple of hours for us to get everything squared away, time that I was able to put to good use. Not only did I manage to get everything cleaned up, I also succeeded in restoring my original ECHO to working order, giving me a much better system to work with. I also got a small digistruct unit linked back up with it and proceeded to do some test runs with it. Gaige wandered over as I was finishing up.

"What are you up to now?"

"Finishing up a bit of re-tooling. With that ECHO of mine back to working order, I can start using my bag of tricks again. Speaking of which..." I quickly programmed and created a small ECHO chip, designed to attach into an ECHO system and handed it to her. "You'll want to add that to your ECHO."

"Why? What does it do?"

I grinned. "Makes sure that you won't get a nasty surprise when I start getting serious."

She raised an eyebrow. "Am I going to like this?"

"Oh yeah. You manage to get that robot of yours back up and running?"

"Hell yeah! Deathtrap's ready to bash some heads again."

"Seems to be good news all round, then." Maya sat down with us. "Axton's finally got his turret working, Krieg trekked back and found his axe, Zero's sorted out whatever his tech is and Salvador's got his system sorted out too."

"And you?" I asked. She grinned and flared purple light around her left hand. "Recovered and ready to go again."

I matched her grin as I handed her another chip. "Jack isn't going to know what hit him." I created enough chips for everyone and whistled to get their attention. "Guys, you'll want to add these to your ECHOs." I tossed them around to everyone, including Claptrap and Hammerlock.

"What are these for?" Claptrap asked.

"A few things. Firstly, I've programmed them to scramble our locator signals, so Jack can't track us via our ECHOs. He might still be able to manage it if he gets a visual on us with the satellites, though I'm working on countering that, but that's a lot more resource-intensive. Even if he calls us, and I'm working on dealing with that too, he can't track us that way. Secondly, it allows you to monitor all ECHO calls in the area around, as long as they aren't encrypted, which they mostly aren't around here. Gives us a bit of a heads-up if there's people around. Most importantly, though, it flags you as a friendly on my system, which means that when I start using my bag of tricks, you guys won't be adversely affected by it."

"And what exactly is this bag of tricks of yours?" Axton asked, crossing his arms. I grinned mirthlessly back at him.

"Now, that, you'll have to wait and see. I don't want to spoil the surprise. But, I'm pretty damn sure that you'll like it." I sighed. "But I guess you're not going to believe me about anything until I tell you why Jack and I know each other, right?"

He nodded coldly and Hammerlock looked surprised. "You did leave out that Jack knows you personally, old chap."

I nodded, eyes hard. "Let me tell you why. And try not to interrupt, I don't want to talk about this for any longer than I have to, it's painful enough as it is."


(Author's Note)

And another one down. As you may have noticed, I've been writing longer chapters as I've got further through the story. I like to aim for about 4k to 10k words per chapter to make it a decent length read for people. This one was just over 4k so I'm settling into the sort of length I like.

A fair warning to people, a lot of the next chapter is going to be flashbacks and they are not going to be pretty. This is Pandora and Handsome Jack after all. You have been warned.

There's also been the first set of clues to Jason's Action Skill. This one, I'm looking forward to unveiling, though if people want to have a guess at it, be my guest.

We get to see Hammerlock and there's a bit more of Claptrap and Angel too. Both of them will have larger parts to play in the next couple of chapters.

Now reviews, since I actually have some.

Verdin, I'm glad you enjoy where I'm taking this, and also glad to see you over here. I haven't forgotten about When One Domino Falls and I am trying to work on the next chapter for that too. Hope this chapter meets with your approval.

MrGreen, I'm glad you agree. Claptrap is still going to have some bad stuff happen to him, but it's not going to be as horrible as people treat him in the game. A fair warning to you, though, all of the Vault Hunters we see will eventually be making appearances, and in battle as well. That includes Claptrap, he's just too funny not to have in battle.

Hope everyone enjoys this, please read, review and do all that good stuff that us authors love so much and I'll see you in the next chapter.

Until next time.