Zer0 woke to silence and a familiar warm, light sensation. Decepti0n was no longer bombarding them with warnings of hemorrhaging and potential death. Actually, they felt surprisingly okay.

Or unsurprisingly okay, once they were awake enough to remember the hour preceding their loss of consciousness.

"Oh, good. You made it / After all I had gone through / It would suck to die." Zer0 greeted. They didn't need to open their eyes to know Maya's presence.

"Really? That's all you have to say? No, 'Thank you for saving / Me with your powers, Maya / It was pretty cool.'?" she tried to mimic their monotone, but couldn't help the smile that broke into her voice.

"Thanks for saving me / With your cool powers, Maya / For the thousandth time." Zer0 projected a "=P".

"You're welcome. Mind explaining why I got dragged out here at 3 AM, though? Is that-" she gently poked the torn fabric at their ribs, "-from a sword?"
Of course, Maya just had to get straight to the point.

"Wow. Not a moment / Without interrogation / To enjoy my health?" They looked down at the wound, now only a small gash.

"Just answer the question."

"This wound's still open / You haven't finished healing."

"It's barely even a paper cut. Don't try to distract me, Zer0."

"Could get infected."

Maya narrowed her eyes. "Zer0, do you see how much blood is on you? Do you know how early it is? I'm not in the mood."

The remains of the Atlas statue were suddenly immensely more appealing than Maya.
"...Yes, it was a sword," they answered, reluctantly.

"Was that so hard?" the smile was back, but this time her voice sounded strained. "So, how did someone with a sword even get close enough to do that?"

Zer0 projected a "D". All she needed to know was that they got hurt but now they were fine. No one needed a play-by-play.

"I'm not trying to insult you, I'm trying to understand how this happened. I was really scared when I saw you, you know?" Maya used the tone that a human parent would take with their petulant offspring. The last time Zero heard her use this particular voice was when she caught Gaige planning to saw off her own leg.
This was the first time it had been directed at them.

They continued to study the statue.

"If you're embarrassed-"

"There were four of them / An ambush, naturally / I was unprepared." A faint bitterness snuck into their typically emotionless voice.

"Right… So, details? You can ditch the haikus if you want, I won't tell."

Zer0 knew better than to keep deflecting. If Maya wanted to, she could phaselock them until they talked. They'd seen her do it.
With a defeated sigh, they recounted the ambush, making some minor omissions. They left out their inability to land a single blow, and their clumsy tumble down the cliff face.
Maya could do without knowing the exact degree of their shame.

"They had been prepared / To counter each of my moves / They were hunting me." They glanced back at her as they finished. The hint of sympathy in her expression only served to irritate them more, and they returned their gaze to the titan.

"Shit… And you have no idea of who they are or what they want?"

"I barely saw them." The statue's legs were covered in faint bloodstains. A tell-tale misty spatter from a bullet wound, mixed with some lovely arterial spray.

"And they used this?" Maya held up the dart. She must have forced their hand open, while they were still unconscious.

Zer0 glanced at it briefly, before returning their attention to the statue. "Yes. Why? Do you know what it is?"
There was some smudging of the bloodstains from an attempt to clean them, long after they were made. It took away from the aesthetic, but Zer0 supposed it was for the best. Old blood would begin to smell. Still, the sculpture itself was subpar, and honestly improved by the blood, in their opinion.

"According to your friend, it's a type of Eridium slag, 'Achlys'. Apparently it's some weird experimental Hyperion stuff?"

This revelation made it harder for Zer0 to focus on art appreciation.
"I considered slag / Yet I retain sanity? / Perhaps I'm immune?" They said, somewhat reassured by Maya's lack of worry.
It was a small dose, after all. They'd taken small doses of slag through their wounds before, if those counted.

"Yeah, apparently, it doesn't work like that? Your friend pulled up a long list of symptoms, but I have no idea how many of them apply to you." She shrugged. "I don't think there's an antidote or anything like that, but it iprobably/i won't kill you. At least, not now that I've healed you. But it's safe to say you're going to be out of commission for a while… Sorry."

"Great." Zer0 slumped down. They'd probably lose their sanity anyways, sitting around not doing anything. At least insane eridium mutants got to go out and kill things.

"Hey, look at it like a vacation. Hang out in Sanctuary for a while, play video games, catch up on ECHOnet shows…Entertain Claptrap?" she tried. Obviously, she wasn't even convincing herself.

"That would be unsafe. / Sanctuary will be watched. / I will have to hide."

"Really, or is this an excuse to avoid babysitting Claptrap?" It was a weak attempt at making light.

"Only partly so. / But, for the most part, it's truth. / Embarrassing truth." They projected a "-_-;".

"Sanctuary is the safest city on Pandora, and you're in no shape to be hiding out alone. The rest of us can take turns keeping watch."

Zer0 shook their head. "Babysitting me. / Throwing away resources. / Completely futile."

"Futile?! Really, or are you just embarrassed?" They could practically hear her patience snap. "Look, Zer0, I know it sucks, but the rest of us wouldn't have fared much better. You're being childish."

Zero was unaffected by her outburst. "I have killed targets, / Who were guarded on all sides. / It takes one slip-up."

It was the truth. An assassin had to be patient. They would study the routines of everyone surrounding the target, and find the opportune moment to strike. In the best case, they would slip through a crack and take Zer0 out when the other's backs were turned. In the worst case, there'd be additional casualties. Dying like that was humiliating enough, but having someone else die protecting them reached a whole new level.

"We won't slip-up, then."

"Everyone does."

Maya closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it back out. "Fine. Okay. Zer0, I think you're being completely paranoid, but sure, you're the expert, or whatever. And I guess we can't really force you to come back? Or, we technically could, but that would probably end in some choice stabbings, huh?" She had successfully regained her composure by the time she finished talking. She still didn't look too happy, though.

"Most likely."

"Okay, fine. But you don't get to completely disappear. We...We're your friends, if there's trouble, you call us. And next time, you might want to come up with an easier method of doing this sort of thing than using a suspicious ex-Hyperion lackey as your messenger."

A red "!" popped up in front of Zer0's helmet, their attention finally wrenched away from the statue. "Where is Rhys? Is he okay?"

They hadn't even considered it before now, but Rhys was the sort of guy their friends would naturally distrust. Most Pandorans had a lot of reason to hate Hyperion, and Atlas didn't have a much better reputation.

They scanned the room. The only fresh blood on the floor seemed to be their own, at least. That didn't rule out other types of injuries. Phaselocking was often bloodless.

"He's fine," Maya said, laughing. "Krieg gave him a pretty good scare, and we threatened his life a little, but no one got hurt. Not seriously, at least."

The exclamation mark turned into a ":\".

"Unnecessary. / Why did you bring Krieg along? / Rhys is no danger."

"Krieg insisted. You know how he gets."

Zer0 gave her a long, silent look.

"Okay, in my defense, Krieg had run inside ahead of us. I caught up to him a minute later, and there's this guy covered in blood, trying to threaten Krieg with your sword. What was I supposed to think? The whole thing was suspicious as hell, we were all a little bit cranky, and it was like four AM. I get that you were paranoid about ECHOs or whatever, but if Athena hadn't caught up with us, we might have killed him."

"He...used my sword?" they tilted their head. Krieg was over twice Rhys' size, and Zer0 had seen him slice bandits in two. It was a wonder Rhys even had the guts to stand up to him. Impressive, in the sort of way it was impressive when a skag pup tried to chase a full-grown bullymong.

"The important part of that was how we almost killed him, but yes."

"Where has he gone to? / I regret involving him / I should make amends." Zer0 didn't feel guilty, per se. Just annoyed that someone who already saved their life had to go through that, while they uselessly bled on the floor. They were starting to rack up quite a debt to Rhys.
Also, Rhys hadn't been anything but nice to them. He deserved better treatment.

"I kicked everyone out so I could focus on healing you. I think they all went to the break room for coffee or something?" she shrugged. "Since when do you care, though? A LOT of people resent you."

"It is abnormal, / I would be offended now, / If you weren't right." They chuckled softly. "Perhaps I have a head wound you missed?"

"You know I'm better than that."

"I am having doubts / So many wounds left open / An unfinished job."

She lightly punched them in their good shoulder. "Maybe if I let you suffer through some little scrapes this time you'll think twice before you almost get yourself killed again."

They projected a "DX". Their entire body was still fairly sore.

Maya ignored their silent protest. "Anyways, you probably don't need to apologize. He was just really worried about you..." she trailed off for a moment, looking thoughtful. "...He's the fanboy, right? The one that had the giant Vault guardian-fighting robot?"

"...Yes?" They'd never considered Rhys to be a "fanboy", but they supposed that may be an appropriate label, if perhaps a little degrading to him.

She got a sly smile. "Great! Stay here, I'll be right back."

Zer0 projected a "?!" after her.

Athena wasn't the best conversationalist, as Rhys had learned during the brief period they'd traveled together on the caravan. Lack of sleep certainly hadn't improved that. After asking her about her day and learning that she'd spent five hours helping Janey clean guts from various creatures out of outrunners, he decided that small-talk wasn't the best way to distract himself.

Naturally, Athena didn't seem to mind the silence. She sat across from him, slouched over an empty espresso cup. Rhys had offered it up as an apology for waking her. Genuine Atlas brand espresso.

It had managed to turn her tired scowl into a less-tired scowl, if nothing else.

Rhys was considering a second shot to help overcome his own exhaustion. It had been a long day, and a near-sleepless night before it. Sleeplessness was nothing out of the usual, he hadn't rested well since coming to Pandora (aside from the times he'd been literally knocked unconscious). He stayed one step ahead of exhaustion through copious amounts of caffeine and constant distractions. Tonight, those came in the form of espresso paired with a small helping of Zer0-related anxiety.

And Krieg-related anxiety. The large man was standing right outside the door, angrily muttering to himself. Something about "gouging" and "eyeballs", which Rhys sincerely hoped didn't have anything to do with him.

Athena had offered some reassurance regarding the psycho, going so far as to call him "pretty much harmless". Maybe Rhys was narrow-minded, but that was hard to believe. The fact that Krieg had almost decapitated him less than an hour ago didn't help.

To pass the time and distract himself from Krieg's violent mutterings, Rhys pulled up the ECHOnet browser on his palm interface. He attempted productivity for all of three minutes, but found that it was a total bust. He could barely even process the subject lines of his unread ECHOmail.
Instead, he resorted to social media. Aimlessly scrolling through his feed turned out to be almost as fruitless a distraction.

His eyes kept traveling to the time displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the holoscreen. Stupid, he knew, considering that Maya hadn't given them any time estimate. She'd only assured him that Zer0 would be okay, and then kicked everyone out.

Salvation came in the form of footsteps echoing down the hall, exactly thirty-three minutes after he'd first checked the time. Rhys straightened up and shut down the holoscreen, staring at the open door.

Maya paused there, addressing Krieg first. "Hey, mind keeping an eye on Zer0 for me? I'll be back over in a couple of minutes."

"I'll eat their death!" Krieg announced, enthusiastically.

"I don't think we have to worry about that. Just let me know if they start bleeding again. And make sure they don't try to leave."

Krieg grunted in acknowledgement and skulked off.

The word "again" appearing after "bleeding" was a good sign. Rhys opened his mouth to ask for details, but all he managed was an "Uhh..."

"They'll be okay," she answered the unspoken question.

"Great! So then, uh-"

"They'll be okay, but I can't do anything about the slag poisoning. They're going to be in recovery for a while. If they're right, and these people are hunting them, that's going to be a problem." She took a seat at the table, facing Rhys.

"Right…" He had assumed that with these certified badasses coming to their rescue, Zer0 was out of danger.

"These guys sound tough, and we don't have the resources to keep Zer0 well-guarded at every hour. At least, Zer0 doesn't trust that we do, and I can't convince them otherwise. They seem determined to go off on their own and hide in some cave or something. Like an idiot. Which is where you come in."

"Me?" Rhys frowned. She'd seen his attempt to protect them earlier. It involved shaking like a leaf with a sword, yelling poorly thought-out threats.

"You've got a good place here. I saw some of your security on the way in. Outside of Sanctuary, this would probably rank as one of the safer places on Pandora." Maya sounded confident.

"Seriously? There must be a better place than this. Athena went on a literal killing spree through here, and that was when it actually had soldiers. It can't be that safe." Rhys looked to Athena for backup.

He had caught her mid-yawn. "What? ...Oh. Yeah, the facility's security recognized me as an Atlas employee. Otherwise it would have gone on full lockdown. It should be safe enough from anyone else, in theory. From the looks of it, you haven't been drawing a lot of attention to this place, right?"

"I…" Rhys racked his brain. "I...guess not. My employees don't even know I'm staying here?" There'd been a couple visits from Vaughn, Fiona, and the rest, and of course Cassius knew of his plans with this facility, but most of Pandora had yet to even catch on to the resurgence of Atlas.

Normally, he'd see this as a negative.

"And I've killed everyone who used to work here, which leaves very few living people who are even aware this place exists. Even less who know what it is. At its full potential, it could be one of the most secure places on Pandora." She yawned a second time. "It's built like a fortress, with defenses to match, if you get it up and running properly. Make the exception protocol stricter- no strangers get in without your clearance, add a few more guns, and it's… Well, it's not nearly impenetrable, but safe enough."

"What Athena said." Maya nodded. "We'd repay you, after this is all sorted out. We're Pandora's best vault hunters, if everything goes well, these assholes should be dead within the week."

"I...Hm... I guess?" It made sense that Vault hunters would be knowledgeable about stuff like this. He could probably trust their judgement.

Plus, it would be an excuse to hang out with Zer0. That was kind of anxiety-inducing and scary, but also pretty cool. Not that he was glad about the whole slag poisoning thing, of course. But hey, he was looking at the bright side. "Okay, sure. I can do that. I've been meaning to upgrade my defenses anyways."

"Wait, really?" Maya seemed to have been caught off guard. "I mean, that's great! I just kind of thought you would take more convincing."

"Yeah...If it's safe for them here, why not? They're cool and- they- I- erm…"

"You're prone to hero worship." Athena finished for him, voice deadpan.

Maya snorted. "So Fiona was serious? He is their biggest fan?"

"What? No! I never- never said that." Rhys protested, perhaps too fervently. "Sure, I admire them, but...I just...It would suck if they go off and get killed or something when I can easily help and...and uh...It-It gets kind of quiet around here, so uh…and...I mean, if Zer0's okay with it?"