This is the sequel to my previous stories, Hunter's Folly, Hunter's Quarry and Hunter's Will, all of which can be found on this site. It picks up after the events of the previous one and does not contain any form of recap, so it is strongly recommended that you read the rest of them in order to understand what is going on.
Note
I do not own the characters, setting, nor items used in this story. Nor do I claim to. They belong to Gearbox and whomever else created them. They have been used in good faith, with good intentions, with hopefully evident love and without permission.
This story is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual people and/or events is purely coincidental. Any comments, derogatory remarks or offensive comments are not intended to be aimed at anyone in real life, if a character is saying it, it is being said by that character and should not be taken personally. Any social message or real world allegory is likely not intended, I'm not that clever. But if you find one you liked, feel free to give me credit anyway.
Warning:
This story contains depictions of violence and gore, some real weirdos, as well as grievous grammatical errors, if any of these things are offensive to you, proceed at your own risk.
Chapter 1
Jaka 4
"This is a waste of time."
"Urgurr"
Gaige didn't look over at her best friend as he floated next to the tree she was sitting on, mostly because he was right, she was being crabby. She couldn't help it, she wanted a drink, though not as bad as she had before, and it was making her slightly irritable, a fact that wasn't helped by the heat and humidity of the jungle in which she found herself. But mostly it was because she was feeling especially useless at the moment. There just wasn't anything she could do as she watched her other friend trying to teach the third girl how to shoot the rifle she was holding.
After the events in the Garden of Minos, Gaige had been feeling especially down on herself. It wasn't just what she'd said there that was still bothering her, it was the nagging feeling that the other girl was going to leave her, replace her, and that she'd be on her own again. A feeling that she couldn't help but feel a bitter irony about, since that was exactly how Artemis had felt about her for the longest time. But as Gaige sat there on her fallen tree, watching her purple haired friend teaching A.I. ngel how to handle a gun, she couldn't help but feel a sense of impending doom.
She knew it was silly, she didn't really think that Artemis was going to leave her, not physically, but she couldn't help but wonder if she was planning on having the other girl join the crew, and if so, where did that leave her? She'd rejected who Artemis really was, something that she didn't think that A.I. ngel would, especially not seeing them together like this. So, she sat stewing and watching.
"Breathe in and out, slowly. Control your heart rate." Artemis was whispering "And then, as you exhale slowly, between heartbeats, squeeze the trigger, don't pull, squeeze."
The third girl nodded, her short black hair bobbing as she did. In the weeks since they'd last seen her in person, A.I. ngel's hair had grown out, it still wasn't long enough to style, but she seemed happy about having even that much, not that Gaige blamed her, few girls could pull off the bald look and fewer still even tried.
Unfortunately, the rest of her hadn't filled out as quickly. She'd changed her wardrobe, and was now wearing baggy pants covered in pockets, a loose shirt, with holes cut in the back for the strange nodes on her back, since they seemed to be sensitive, and a loose jacket, despite the heat. None of which did anything to hide how skinny she really was, in fact, it all seemed to only accentuate it. Gaige couldn't help but see how thin her wrists were, how the ankle peeking out from the cuff of the pants looked like it would snap under the girl's weight. It seemed that she had a healthy appetite, but something about the way she was made kept her thin, something else that Gaige resented her for.
But mostly, Gaige resented her for dragging them out into this hot, sticky jungle.
It had all started just after they'd left Wilina 2, they'd decided to check in with A.I. ngel and find out what she was up to before they went to Jaka so that Artemis could hunt down a few more Honeystuck Wibblers so that she could fix the damage done to her cybernetics. Only this time when they'd called, it turned out that A.I. ngel had almost finished what she was working on and begged them to come see her, and since they hadn't had any real plans, they decided to take her up on that, much to Gaige's regret.
On the way, they'd stopped and Gaige had sold off a number of the larger gems and more ostentatious pieces of jewelry that she'd picked up, allowing her to make another payment to what she owed Artemis, even though, like she'd anticipated, the other girl had protested.
At the time, Gaige had been happy. Things were still a little rough between them, but she'd been making progress, not just with paying her debt, but with getting the other girl to forgive her. She'd even sat in on a few of Gaige's ECHOnet meetings.
But then they got to the casino and things had gone wrong.
First off, A.I. ngel wasn't finished with her project by the time they'd got there. It seemed that she hadn't anticipated that things would go wrong, something that any experienced engineer or adventurer knew, nothing's ever as easy as it should be.
Still, they'd been glad to see the other girl, so they decided to stick around, at her request. It turned out that once she'd heard that they were going hunting, she wanted to go with. She figured it would be a fairly safe time for her to learn how to shoot from them, as well as a chance to see some more of the galaxy, both things that they'd promised to help her with. Not that Timothy was happy about it.
In fact, they could see that he wanted to forbid her from going, or at least go with, but since he couldn't do either, he'd just shot them evil looks when A.I. ngel wasn't looking.
It had taken nearly a week for the girl to finish her task, prompting the other two to see what else they could do around the place to help, which led to them doing all kinds of odd jobs, but eventually things had worked out and they were ready to depart.
That's when the second thing went wrong, as they were about to get underway and A.I. ngel was looking around for somewhere to store her gear, the question of where she was going to sleep arose. Timothy, who had come with that far to help carry her luggage, was adamant about her not sharing a bed with anyone, but since she couldn't kick out the other two girls to take the bed for herself, they were faced with a bit of a problem. In the end, they were forced to borrow one of the casino's beds, which, lacking a better place to put it, they set up in the hold.
Though they did feel a bit bad about making the other girl sleep in the hold, they'd only been able to bring a single bed, which the two of them wouldn't fit on, so that problem was solved, or at least Gaige thought it was.
On the second morning they'd woke up to find the third girl curled up on the foot of their bed, claiming she was lonely, and since Timothy wasn't there, he couldn't tell her what to do.
In the end, Artemis relented and let her join them. Something that irritated Gaige for some reason. If she was honest, she could tell why, though she didn't want to admit it to herself. It was that she was worried. Worried that the new girl was wriggling her way between them, that she was slowly taking Gaige's spot, a spot that she'd nearly lost due to her own stupidity, but one that she wanted to hold onto nonetheless. But one that she couldn't seem to defend.
Which was how she found herself sitting on a fallen tree, irritatedly watching her friend leaned in close to the other girl and trying to train her in the fine arts of sniping.
Without much luck.
It turned out that, much like Gaige, A.I. ngel wasn't all that good at precision firing. It wasn't that she was inherently bad at it, it was just that she wasn't gifted like Artemis. The truth was that A.I. ngel was slightly better at it then Gaige was when she had no Anarchy in her system, but all that meant was that she could hit a human sized target with eight out of ten shots from a few hundred yards away, whereas Artemis could sink all ten into the organ of her choice.
Still, Gaige had to give the girl begrudging credit, she was trying, something that Gaige herself had long ago given up on. Though she supposed it could well be that she was still new to shooting and was still trying to find her thing, whereas Gaige had long ago mastered the art of Anarchy, even if she'd forgotten about it for a while.
While the girl was determined to learn how to use a rifle, it wasn't the only weapon that they'd tried teaching her over the last few days since they'd landed on Jaka. It seemed that she wasn't all that good with any of them, except for the SMG, something that Gaige wondered if it was tied to the Siren DNA in her.
Gaige tore her eyes away from the training and looked out at the jungle. Deathtrap was the one actually keeping an eye out for any predators trying to sneak around them, not that Gaige didn't think that Artemis would hear them first, but it was still good to have her buddy around.
Still, the jungle didn't set her mind at ease, she still worried about the last time she'd been there and marveled at the fact that, despite how that trip had ended, that they'd been welcomed back.
When they'd found out that the bits of the anti-electric material that were still on the ship wouldn't be enough to fix Artemis's limbs, they'd found themselves in a bit of a conundrum.
She'd grown to like the anti-electric properties and wanted to at least have that as an option, but after the last time she'd been there, she didn't think that she could go back, so Gaige had suggested that she contact Wainwright, after all, the planet was part of the Jakobs corporation so he might be able to help. Only when they talked to him, they found out that no one had reported the murder she'd committed. It turned out that the natives had looked up the dead man, and finding out the bounties on him realized that whomever had killed him, probably had good reason, especially since a number of eyewitnesses came forward and testified that the girl that had helped save the factory had to be carried out by her friends. So, in the end, not only were they not wanted on the planet, but Wainwright had promised to let Brandibarry know they would be coming, and to let them use the foundry while they were there.
Which was what led to Gaige sitting on a log, in the middle of the jungle.
For her part, Artemis was attempting to ignore the other girl, not to be rude, or spiteful, but out of consideration. She knew how hard it was for Gaige to sit around and do nothing, especially out in the jungle where she felt she didn't belong.
Artemis knew that her grousing wasn't just about the situation at hand, but about something more, though she didn't know what. She'd been able to tell that something had been bothering Gaige for the last few days, something more than the lingering aftereffects of what had happened between them. She knew Gaige was truly repentant for what she'd done and it wasn't like Artemis didn't understand, it wasn't like she hadn't had her share of screw-ups and she knew that the other girl was trying her hardest, but it was still awkward between them.
Gaige had been true to her word and had started attending ECHO meetings about addiction, in fact she'd even convinced Artemis to sit in on one of them, though when it turned out to be a meeting for friends and family of a person with problems, she been pretty mad, but in the end, hearing the other people who were dealing with similar problems talk about it, she'd come to understand what Gaige was going through in a new light and it had done wonders in helping her get over a bit of the resentment she felt for some of the things that had been said.
Still, something had been up for the last few days, Gaige had been oddly silent, sitting off to the side and Artemis could feel her glancing at her frequently. It had almost got to the point where she was afraid she was going to snap at the other girl, so she knew that they would have to have a talk and soon, but that was something for when they got back to town, right now, she needed to focus on helping the girl next to her.
"That's it, line up your shot, take your time and when you're ready, squeeze the trigger."
The girl next to her was holding an older Jakobs rifle that they had found before they'd left Wilina 2, one that was easy enough for a novice to use. She was aiming at the unsuspecting Diomos as it picked at the corpse of some other creature. Artemis had already gone over things like making sure you were downwind of your target and such. They had gone over firearm safety before they'd even let her touch the gun, double and triple reinforcing the importance of it, till they could feel the younger girl getting frustrated about hearing the same thing on a loop. But they had still gone over it.
Now she was about to take her first shot at an actual living target, at least the first time since they'd come to Jaka. She claimed to have trained a bit with Timothy, as well as taking out a few Ratch's, but this would be her first larger prey.
The Diomos was small, at least in Artemis's eyes, especially after being chased by an Emperor, but it was still almost as tall as her shoulder and was a good seven feet long. Its multiple necks flexed as it tore chunks of meat off and used its teeth to tear it into shreds as it swallowed.
Just as the girl was about to pull the trigger, the Diomos's head popped up and it seemed to sniff the air before scampering away through the underbrush, causing A.I. ngel to let out an unintentional whimper of frustration.
Artemis patted her shoulder in sympathy, but tightened her fingers when the girl opened her mouth to say something. Putting a finger to her lips, Artemis pointed to the jungle before whispering in her ear "Something spooked it and it wasn't us, keep an eye out for it, but don't let it know we're here."
The other girl's eyes lit up with understanding and she started to scan the area only to let out a small gasp when what had undoubtedly spooked the Diomos came into sight.
The new creature strolled out and casually ate the carcass that the previous creature had been nibbling at in one gulp before straightening out. Though it was still a Diomos, it was easily three times the size of the previous one, with eight eyes and a massive rack of antlers. Though she'd never seen one before, Artemis instantly recognized it due to the bright scarlet on its front hands. It was a Great Red Footed Diomos, the smaller version of the Emperor that she'd faced previously.
Her hand tightened unconsciously on the rifle she'd been holding in case something went wrong with the other girl's shot, as she waited to see what the creature would do.
Gaige noticed the tension in the air and froze, not out of panic, but because the most knowledgeable person there wasn't moving, other than her hand tightening on her rifle, which was never a good sign. As silent as she could, Gaige moved herself slightly till she could look in the general direction that the other two were, and quickly spotted what they were looking at, and had to bite her tongue to keep herself from swearing.
The thing was huge, and when it yawned, with its head splitting apart and it's tongues wagging, Gaige felt a cold shiver run down her spine. Artemis had told her about them, back when they'd first come here, not that Gaige had been in any fit state to listen, but she dimly remembered the other girl telling her that the tongues were like tentacles, and that she'd been used as bait, allowing one of them to chase after her, something that Gaige couldn't imagine looking at this monster. It wasn't the biggest creature that Gaige had seen, not by a long shot, but still, the thought of having something like that chase after her made her shiver in sympathy.
Just as she was wondering what they were going to do, the creature turned away from them and took a step, before it's head snapped up, a split second after Artemis's.
Without caring about the creature Artemis yelled out "Buddy! Get her outta here!"
Deathtrap was stunned for a second, but reacted faster than anyone else, shooting forward and scooping A.I. ngel up and as he was wondering which way to flee, robots started falling out of the sky.
The robots were shaped like human torsos, none of them having legs, and they were slightly larger than an average man. Each and every one of them was a uniform dull grey, as if they hadn't been painted yet and were all identical, without any variation between them, as if they'd been plucked from the assembly line before they'd been specialized.
But even so, only one person there didn't recognize them, though it was Gaige who snarled out the name "Holloway."
She couldn't figure it out, he was dead, his company bankrupt, so why were his robots coming after her now, and how had they found her? The questions whirled through her mind even as she rolled backwards off the tree, pulling her gun up as she went.
Despite both girls having their guns up, it was the robots who attacked first. They'd both hesitated, unsure of what the sudden appearance of a whole fleet of bots meant, or why they were there, but the instant the first one charged at Gaige, they both opened fire.
Gaige lamented the fact that she hadn't brought along a caustic weapon, she hadn't thought she'd need it, especially since the creatures in the jungle were either flesh and blood, or, in the Wibblers case, surrounded by a hard shell that they were trying to harvest, so melting it wouldn't serve their purpose. Instead, she'd brought fire. Sighing, she brought up her assault rifle and opened fire on the nearest bot. The rifle wasn't fancy, but it did the job, quickly tearing through the robot and causing it to fall heavily to the ground. The only problem was that there were still thirty more.
There was the sharp crack of a rifle and one of the bot's heads went flying off as two others staggered. Artemis turned to the next one that was moving towards her and removed its head while nodding her approval, the new rifle that Wainwright had given her to replace the old one that she'd lost had a distinct upgrade to it, not only did it hit harder, but the bullet seemed to have a chance to split in two when hitting the target, reflecting into nearby enemies. She still missed her old one, but this would do.
Gaige watched as the fleet of robots quickly diminished, even without Deathtrap's help, they were making short work out of them, but even as she thought that, she noticed Artemis looking around. It was unusual for her to get distracted during a firefight so Gaige took a risk and yelled out to her "Whatever it is, go deal with it."
Artemis looked over in surprise, but Gaige gave her a smile and nodded, she could handle this, so take care of whatever else you're sensing, she said wordlessly. Artemis nodded back and took off into the trees. She didn't know what it was, but something was off, it wasn't that the robots were attacking in what seemed to be a pointless attack, none of them had weapons aside from clubs, it was like she was being watched, like there was a malicious intent out there, but she couldn't detect anybody, at least not over the sound of the robots squealing and flailing at them, so she got away from them.
Once she was in the clear, it didn't take her long to spot the people hiding a short ways away from her. They were clustered together, five of them on the ground and a sixth in a tree with what appeared to be a sniper rifle. The instant that they spotted her escaping from the fight, she heard one of them swear and suddenly two of the bots flew at her from behind, but before she could spin and shoot them, they crashed into the ground as domes of crackling blue energy sprung forth from them, quickly overtaking her.
"Aw, not again." She moaned as her cybernetics cut out and sent her crashing to the ground alongside them.
"Whew, that was close." She heard one of them say from her spot in the underbrush.
"Someone take care of her."
"I don't have a shot."
"Well, just shoot where she went down, it's not like she can move."
"Maybe we should wait, make sure the other one's taken care of first, it's not like she's going anywhere."
Artemis grit her teeth as she stealthily drug herself away from where she'd fallen, taking extra care not to disturb the underbrush too much and give her position away. She was pissed. Not only were these people plotting to kill both her and Gaige, not only had they recklessly attacked, putting A.I. ngel in danger, someone who undoubtedly didn't have anything to do with this, but they'd fried her cybernetics, again, right as she was getting ready to fix them. So, she hauled herself over to the nearest tree and pulled herself up, glancing around it to spot the people were just starting to move away, when one of them spotted her.
"She's over there!" Came the cry from up above. The sniper must have spotted her as she tried to maneuver herself.
Cursing, she rolled herself around the tree and out of his line of sight, but she could hear the others charging over to where she was, so she leaned out and looked the other way, spotting what she'd hoped as she drew her pistol and aimed.
Her shot tore along the Great Red Footed Diomos's head, popping one of its eyes and royally ticking it off. It let loose with a terrifying roar and charged.
Artemis had dropped flat before firing, so the Diomos couldn't see her, but the people whom had been coming to attack her weren't so lucky. They were caught out in the open as the creature charged past the tree where Artemis was and straight at the group of them.
It gored the first one with its horns, before giving its head a shake and throwing his still screaming body into a tree. Two of the others lost all will to fight and started fleeing while one of the others stood frozen in fear, silently soiling themselves. But the last one screamed and brought their gun up, firing wildly at the massive creature, missing spectacularly, but succeeding in drawing its attention. The Diomos unhinged its jaws and bit down on the man, enveloping him whole in its mouth.
Straightening up, the other person could see the flesh around its neck bulged and thrash as their friend tried futilely to get out, only for the creature's teeth to shred them as they screamed from within.
It thankfully didn't take long for them to fall silent.
The creature swallowed and looked at the last person standing in front of it, before letting out another roar and charging forward, smacking them aside as it chased after the fleeing pair.
It didn't take more than a few seconds for it to gore them, impaling them upon its antlers and turning back to the last one, even as they lay there, too scared to move as their friends twitched and gurgled as they dangled.
The Diomos trotted back into the small open area and tossed its head down, slamming the two dying people onto the ground and casually making its way to where it had left the last living member of the group, at least that it knew about.
Getting to them, it casually placed its rear leg on them, pinning them before leaning in and examining them closely. Cocking its head, it opened its mouth revealing bits of blood and cloth stuck to its teeth and letting it's long tongue loll out for a moment before it swung around and started stroking the person's face, it's eyes never leaving them.
Seemingly satisfied that this thing wasn't a threat, it casually picked its foot off of them and took a step back, seeing what they would do and when they didn't immediately spring up, it gave a short bark at them before settling into a low growl.
When the person still didn't do anything, it hopped forward at them and let out another roar. When they still didn't move, the Diomos grew bored with them and lashed it's tongue out, slapping them a few times, but they still didn't respond.
The creature grew bored and looked around, suddenly stiffening as it spotted Artemis sitting herself up against the tree.
"Come on ugly." She snarled at it "I haven't got all day."
It took two steps towards her and roared, only for her to fire three shots straight through the roof of its mouth directly into its brain, killing it. It's body slowly tilted and fell over, landing with a crash a few feet away from her feet.
With a sigh, Artemis scootched herself a bit around the tree before calling out "Hey, you, in the tree, why don't you come down here and surrender?"
The only reply was a sniper shot that went wide of her by a good ten feet.
"Seriously, if you don't throw down your gun and get down here right now, I'm gonna have to make you."
This time the shot only missed by seven feet.
Artemis sighed and fired, a second later something fell out of the tree with a thump.
Gaige found her still leaning on the tree a minute later. Looking around she demanded "What happened here?"
"What's it look like?" Came the bitter reply "And where were you?"
"I was finishing those bots up, no thanks to you, and here I find you sitting down and takin a break."
"Shut up."
"Did you at least save anyone that we could interrogate?"
"I donno, why don't you look around and tell me."
"Why don't you do it yourself?"
"I can't, my limbs are fried. Again. What? The bots around you didn't fire off those damn domes?"
"Right, sorry. I kinda forgot." Gaige said like she'd just remembered why they were there in the first place. To cover for that, she started looking around, but a few seconds later she called back "Nope, they're all dead."
"What? All of them?"
"Yeah, maybe if you hadn't attacked them with ah, ah, whatever this thing is again."
"Diomos."
"That's it, a Diomos. If you hadn't attacked them with a Diomos, we might be able to ask them some questions. Might've been helpful to find out who they were and why they were after us, but no, you had to kill them all."
"Wasn't my first choice." Came the snippish reply "I even tried to get one of them to surrender, but no, he had to do things the hard way. But he should still be alive, I mean, I only wounded him."
"No, they're all dead."
"Help me up, I wanna see this."
Gaige shrugged dramatically, but went over and helped pull the smaller girl up before helping her hop around to examine the corpses.
The ones that had been impaled were dead, not that she'd ever had any doubt about that, but the one that had frozen up she'd thought should still be alive until she saw him. It turned out that when the Diomos had smacked him with its tongue, it had torn his face off, leaving a gory mess in its place. And the sniper, who should've still been alive, had fallen out of the tree wrong and broke their neck on impacting the ground.
"Well shit." Artemis moaned, looking at him.
"See, I can tell a corpse when I see one."
"Yeah, I know." Artemis sighed in defeat.
Picking up on the disappointment from the other girl, Gaige tried to cheer her up "It was just bad luck that he landed the way he did."
"Yeah, that's me, bad luck." Came the muttered response.
Gaige reached over and flicked her in the nose, electing a yipe out of the smaller girl before she rounded on her and said "Enough of that, you're not bad luck, everyone had moments like this. Hell, this one time, Zero was supposed to take this one guy down so we could interrogate him, but when he shoots him, the shock of it caused him to have a heart-attack. I mean, right there in the middle of the compound, this guy just up and dies, totally embarrassed Zero, cause he's supposed to be this expert assassin and all, but no one could've know that this guy had a bad heart, I mean he was a bandit and all that, no one even thought they had hearts. Point is, everyone has a bad turn like this."
"Yeah, but I tend to have a lot of them."
"Rrrgh." Gaige growled, wanting to pull her hair. Changing tact's she asked through clenched teeth "So, any ideas about who they were? And if you try and blame yourself cause we can't ask them, I'm punching you."
The other girl closed her mouth and looked at Gaige for a second and seeing she was serious, dropped the 'but it's true' she was about to say and instead said "No. Though I have a few ideas."
"Yeah, so do I. Maybe we should crack open one of these bots and see what we can find. Well, that and rifle through these people's stuff, see if they have anything on them."
Just as she was about to turn back, Artemis grabbed her around the neck and threw them both behind the nearest tree as the jungle was enveloped in explosions.
