Chapter 7

Pandora

They looked at the camp, which was situated a bit above them. It clung to the edge of the cliff, with pillars and supports stuck haphazardly into the rocks as it trailed down, with platforms and boxy buildings hanging off the cliff. Ladders and stairs led down to the lower levels, but it didn't look like there was a way up from the valley floor. Above all that, the walls rose high, capped off with what appeared to be a landing pad and trailing away from that were all kinds of buildings tripping over each other on the way down, from squarish sheet metal shacks to large curved Quonset huts, often built on top of each other. Here and there were towers and across everything was a series of bridges.

Laying in the short grass, Gaige looked around before whispering "So, do you see a way across?"

"From here? No. But I can just make out something down that way a ways," She replied, pointing a ways back down the valley a bit off to the side from the direction they'd come from "But there's a rise right in front of it, not to mention that it curves."

"Well, whatever it is would be better than climbing down."

Artemis shrugged and moved back before standing up and leading them down the hill and back towards whatever she'd seen.

They cautiously rounded a pile of rocks and got their first real look at it. It was a bridge, or had once been, now it was a barely standing mess of rusted girders and welded together plates of metal that one might be able to cross if they were daring. On either side were the remnants of buildings, undoubtedly from when Hyperion had built it, though the nearest one was mostly collapsed in on itself and the one on the far side had been reinforced by the bandits with scraps of metal that had probably been pried up from the bridge itself.

"So, what do you think?" Gaige asked.

"Well, we could easily take it, but it would require a bit of gunfire, which would echo up to the base. Otherwise, we could wait for nightfall and sneak across, either on the bridge, or having Deathtrap carry us across. Alternatively, we could go back and see what's the other way, though it did look like the valley widened out, so that might not work."

"Hmm, well waiting for night might be more prudent, it's also boring, plus I don't wanna be out here that long, not to mention that if we waited, we'd have to attack at night, and I for one, don't have the best night vision. I mean it's not bad or anything, but it's not like yours."

"Oh. But wouldn't they be suffering the same problem?"

"Maybe, but they know their base and we don't, so we'd be at a disadvantage."

"I guess that makes sense. So, what should we do?"

"I guess we should try and find a place that we can get across without drawing too much attention."

"Well, we could try and climb down."

"Heck no, I ain't dealin with those Stalkers."

"Yeah, I suppose we couldn't get past them without raising a ruckus."

"Yeah, sure, that's what I meant"

"So, what other options do we have?"

"Urgrrruggr"

"You sure?"

"Urru"

"All right, now all we need is to find a good place, somewhere that we can't easily be spotted."

Artemis led them off and after a bit of a trek, they found the perfect place to put the plan into motion. She started by digging the cable out of her pack and wrapping one end around a bit of rock that was jutting up. Once that was secure, Deathtrap took the other end and flew across the valley, stretching it tight. Once it was taunt, Gaige took one look at it and had second thoughts.

"This is seriously the best we could come up with?"

"Hey, if you don't like it, you could always climb down and try your luck with the Stalkers."

"I'm gonna have to pass."

"Then don't worry about it. Besides, Deathtrap came up with this, so it's good." Artemis said while looping a belt over the cable and after giving Deathtrap a thumbs up to let him know she was about to begin, stepped off the edge.

She slid across the valley on the cable and just before she got to the other side, Deathtrap flew up, killing her momentum and letting her grab onto the cliff face. She scrambled to the top and turned around, giving Gaige a thumbs up to let her know it was all good.

Gaige groaned. Nothing about this had gone right, they were supposed to be getting an explosive to make things easier, so why were they out in the middle of nowhere, sliding over a Stalker den on a cable on their way to kill some deranged artist? She couldn't figure out how things had gotten this out of hand. The only plus side that she could think of, was that her relationship with Artemis had improved since the ride in the Technical and she needed to keep things good between them, so with a sigh, she wrapped her belt around the cable and flashed a thumbs up of her own, before double checking her grip on the belt and stepping off into air.

She felt her stomach drop further and faster than she did as she fell for a split second before the cable took her weight and then she was flying across the valley, desperately trying to not look down, nor at the wall flying towards her at an alarming rate, and then suddenly, she was slowing down till she just bumped against the wall.

Grabbing on for dear life, she slowly started to make her way up, when a metal hand clamped around hers and yanked her up.

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Artemis said with a smile.

"How can you be so cheerful?" Gaige muttered.

"Eh, I'm out here, with my friends, about to kill a whole bunch of bad guys and maybe a creature or two, what's there to not be cheerful about?"

"You're weird, you know that?"

"Yeah." The reply was a bit sad all of a sudden.

"But a good weird. I like weird." Gaige quickly added, patting the other girl's shoulder to try and cheer her up. "Well, let's not forget what we're really here for."

"Right." Came the neutral response as Artemis took point and led them back towards the bandit camp.

Gaige glanced at Deathtrap, who just shrugged in response, so she just turned and followed behind Artemis, keeping her distance.

It didn't take long for the bridge to come back into view, but this time, they could see into the back, which was armored, but not as much so as the front, causing Gaige to wonder what they were guarding against. It couldn't be the Stalkers, if they were a worry, they would've been worried about them coming up the sides of the valley and attacking from behind, so she started to wonder if the other bandit base they'd seen might not be hostel and if so, if they could use that to their advantage if they needed to.

Moving past those thoughts, she could see at least three bandits moving around in the guard post and judging by the electronics she could make out, it seemed that they had a method of communicating with their base, meaning that avoiding the head on fight had been the right move.

It wasn't long after that, that she caught up to Artemis as she sat examining the main base. Unfortunately for them, the base was higher up on the hill, surrounded on three sides by the valley. It seemed to have been built at the edge of where the valley widened out, giving it ample protection from attacks. On the path up to the front gate, they'd set up small barricades which would force any attacker to either jump them, or follow a twisting, indirect path that would slow them greatly and give the guards ample time to raise the alarm and then pick them off. In fact, it was so well laid out, that she had to wonder if they hadn't taken it over from someone else.

But that didn't matter at the moment, right then, they needed to figure out how to get up close and get in, all without being seen.

"So, any suggestions on how we're getting in?"

"Me? I was hoping you had something, cause this isn't gonna be easy."

Gaige groaned at the response, but the other girl didn't seem finished as she continued "Having said that, I've got a couple observations, and then something I'm gonna probably need to check."

"Alright, let's hear it."

"Well, first, judging by the walls, I'd say our artist lives here." She nodded to the outer walls which were covered in the stenciled art like they'd seen on the signs, though only one section had the picture of Tina. Most of the rest were similar in style, but all over the place in subject. Just looking with her naked eye, Gaige could make out four different colored, but otherwise identical pictures of Tyreen Callipso, an inverted Firehawk symbol, a stylized Skag and even a broken Handsome Jack face. But, while they were decent, something about them seemed familiar to Gaige, and not just that, but for some reason she felt bored looking at them, which made her wonder if she was an art snob.

Shaking her head to get back to the matter at hand she realized that Artemis was waiting for her to reply, so she quickly gave her a "Yep."

"Second, we aren't gettin in the front door."

"No, really?"

"Third, sarcasm still doesn't suit you."

"No, really?"

"Fourth, I'm supposed to be the bitch here, so quit tryin to take it from me."

"We can both be bitches, but you're right, it's not helping, so I'll try and lay off."

"Good, so, where was I?"

"Uh, somethin about not gettin in the front door."

"Right. So, if we're not gettin in that way, we're gonna need another way in, something that they can't see, which leads me to the next thing I need to check out."

"Which is?"

"I need to check off this side of the cliff, see how much they've built up on it, and if I can spot any form of a path I could take to sneak around."

Gaige just shook her head.

"What? You got a better idea, cause if so, I'd love to hear it."

"No, it's not that, I was just thinking that you're better at this then I am, that I wish we'd had you back when I was Vault Hunting, and lastly, I was thinking, better you than me."

"Uh, thanks, I think. And no, you don't wish I was with you when you were Vault Hunting."

"I do."

"No, you might wish you had the current me around, but remember, when you were Vault Hunting, I was just starting hunting, so I wouldn't have been any use to you."

"Alright, fine, get technical with me. That said, I'm at least glad I've got you with now. That better?"

"Uh, thanks?"

"Why did that sound like you weren't sure if you were thankful or not?"

Gaige didn't get a response, instead, Artemis turned away and muttered "I'm gonna go check this out, stay here." And scurried off, but not before Gaige caught sight of the glowing red of her ears.

Artemis was grateful for the cool wind blowing on her overheated cheeks. She knew that she shouldn't get so embarrassed by Gaige complimenting her, but she couldn't help it, she was just grateful that she had an excuse to get out of there.

It didn't take her all that long to come to the far side of the spit of land she was on and cautiously moved to the edge, partially to avoid being seen, but mostly cause she didn't know how stable the land around here was. It turned out to be strong enough to support her weight as she slithered out and glanced over the edge.

Below her was another sharp drop off, it wasn't a sheer cliff and had ample juts and pits that she could use as handholds to climb along, but she would be exposed as she went, so she didn't want to travel very far that way, so she continued sweeping her gaze across the cliff till she came to the bottom of the bandit camp.

A minute later she was back where Gaige was sitting.

"I found something."

"Jeez," Gaige jumped, holding her chest "Stop doing that or I'm seriously getting you a bell."

"I've heard of training that involves wearing a bell, something about learning to move without jiggling or something, so if you think that would help, I'll give it a try."

"You're hopeless, you know that."

"Oh."

Gaige resisted the urge to pull her hair out, as well as smack the other girl on the head and instead chose to move on. "So, what'd you find?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, I think I found a way in, but it's gonna be a bit of a challenge."

"So what else is new." Gaige sighed "So what is it?"

"Uh, it's a small path that leads around the cliff, but it's really narrow, so I should be fine, but, uh..."

"Is that one of those fat cracks I warned you about?"

"No, no, it's just that, well, your, uh, chest might get in the way."

"My chest isn't that big!" Gaige paused for a moment and then hung her head and let out a sob "Which is something I never thought I'd say."

Artemis had enough wherewithal to not say that it was plenty big, or any of the other things running through her head, instead settling for the not complete foot in mouth of "Well, if you're sure, let's go."

"Yeah, I'm sure it's not that big."

This time, Artemis didn't hold back and said "Well, it's certainly bigger than mine."

Gaige sighed and accepted that it could always be worse while picking herself up and following along after Artemis.

Once again, she was struck by the difference in their ability to sneak, it seemed that the other girl was not just moving silently, but the grass didn't even seem bent when she passed, which made Gaige feel like Mr Torgue on Athenis, loud and unwelcome.

Artemis slowed down for her, allowing her to move with as much stealth as she could and soon they found themselves at the edge of the cliff. At first Gaige could only see the sharp drop and a few Stalkers milling about down below, but after having it pointed out, she managed to see the path that Artemis had mentioned, and immediately understood why the other girl had been concerned. It wasn't so much of a path as a slight bump in the rock face that happened to go in a line. She wondered if even the other girl, as light on her feet as she was, could manage it, let alone Gaige herself.

"Well, what do you think?"

"About what?"

"The path, what else were you expecting? Which Stalker you wanted to adopt?"

"You're messed up, you know that? Adopting a Stalker."

"It was...you know what? Forget it. You can do whatever you want, but I'm gonna start going in a minute."

"What're you gonna do until then?"

"Get ready, obviously. I mean, I'm not takin my entire pack with, this thing would definitely drag me off." She said, digging into her bag and transferring a number of its contents to her smaller bag.

Gaige quickly followed suit, kicking herself for not thinking of it and simultaneously thanking Artemis for reminding her to bring a smaller bag herself.

It did take a little longer than the minute she'd assigned, but soon Artemis was lowering herself over the edge and carefully moving along the lip till she was over the path. From there she slowly climbed down and as soon as she was on the ledge, started to shuffle her way along.

Gaige groaned and looked over to where Deathtrap was floating, telling him "Keep close to me, just in case, alright?"

"Urru"

"This is such a bad idea." She groaned as she lowered herself after her friend and started along.

It didn't take long for her to regret letting the other girl talk her into this, even though she knew that she hadn't been talked into it so much as there was no other real option. Still, it was more fun to blame someone else then to admit that she couldn't think of anything, so she blamed Artemis for choosing this path, she blamed Tina for giving them this task, she tried to blame Brick and Mordecai, but the thought of trying to blame Brick made her blanch in fear, even if it was just in pretend, so she went back to those that were more fun.

She kept playing the blame game in her mind mostly to distract herself from the fall just a few inches away, but also to keep her mind off the fact that her chest was scraping across the rock in a rather uncomfortable way. She was glad that she wasn't wearing a good jacket, and lamenting the fact that she hadn't thought to bring anything to flatten her chest with, not that she had fond memories from the last time she'd done that.

With all her mental bitching, she didn't realize what kind of progress she was making until she noticed Artemis grabbing onto the bottom support for one of the buildings and start hauling herself up.

Gaige made the mistake of relaxing, which ended up pushing her chest against the wall and nearly throwing her off, only for a hand to grab her shoulder. Looking up, she spotted Artemis giving her a dirty look, though whether it was due to her carelessness, or the fact that she was irritated by the chest at fault, Gaige couldn't say. Still, she flashed a smile in thanks, which only caused Artemis to shake her head and roll her eyes, but she still helped Gaige onto the support.

They made their way up to the bottom of the building and waited. Gaige wanted to say something, but the look on the other girls' face told her everything she needed to know, that there was someone above them.

Time seemed to drag out as they clung to the metal, but eventually, Gaige heard the sound of footsteps clanging away. They hung there for a few more seconds, to make sure that they were really gone, and then carefully swung up, climbing up and over the railing.

As soon as their feet touched the metal, they both had their guns in hand, though they both knew not to use them unless it was an emergency, since any shooting would alert the entire base.

They looked around and found themselves standing in between two chairs with a bucket between them and a fishing pole tossed on the ground. Artemis couldn't help herself and glanced back over the railing, as if she'd missed the giant lake below, but still only found scrub grass and Stalkers. Looking back, she caught Gaige shaking her head.

Giving up on making sense of things, Artemis took point and padded silently across the deck, glancing into the building as she passed. Gaige followed along, and checked the building as well, finding nothing of interest inside aside from some magazines that were scattered around, but a quick glance at their covers told her they were all years old, and she'd already read the ones she'd have been interested in, so she moved on.

Just as she was getting to the top of the stairs, she looked around and realized that she'd misplaced Artemis. The smaller girl was nowhere to be seen. In a bit of a panic, she nearly headed back down, when she heard movement ahead. For a split second she thought it might be Artemis, but as she took the first step towards the sound, it suddenly hit her that she wouldn't be making that much noise, just as the psycho rounded the corner.

Before he even had time to register the girl standing in front of him, he stiffened slightly as an arm dropped down from above and shoved a thin blade through the top of his skull.

Artemis dropped silently down behind him, not retracting her blade until she was grabbing him from behind. She quickly motioned for Gaige to get with it and to grab his feet before leading them back down.

Once they were there, she quickly stripped the psycho of the explosives at his waist and after doing a once over started dragging him to the edge.

"What're you doing?" Gaige hissed.

"Feeding the Stalkers."

"But won't they make a bit of noise?"

"Maybe, but where else would I put him?"

"Inside?"

"Where anyone coming by could see him?"

"Fine, but if this goes bad, it's on you."

Artemis shrugged and slipped the body over the rail and dropped him straight down. It seemed that the Stalkers were used to people slipping, cause they were on the corpse instantly and with barely any noise that reached the girls, the body was gone.

Artemis slipped back up and this time Gaige saw her pull herself onto the small building, where she waited.

The next two were normal psychos and the following one was a bandit, all of which went down to feed the Stalkers, but the fourth one was another explosive psycho.

Carrying the body down, Gaige muttered "Are you sure you're not related to Zero?"

"Why?"

"Cause he's disturbingly good at these types of kills as well, which in his case makes sense, since he's an assassin."

"Don't think I'm related. Where's he from?"

"He never said."

"Then who knows, but probably not."

"I was mostly kidding anyway. So how we doing? On the explosives, I mean."

"We should have enough." Artemis said, double checking her bag.

"Good, then what's next?"

"Well, we could get outta here."

"We could, but we still need to take care of Tina's problem."

"I don't think anyone could take care of her problems."

"Hey, that's my friend you're talkin about."

"Sorry. But you seem to be friends with a lot of people with serious problems."

"I'm friends with you."

"Exactly."

With that, Artemis turned and started moving back up, leaving Gaige behind. She shot Deathtrap a look, but he just shrugged and motioned for her to get going. Sighing, she did.

This time they didn't stop until they'd made it to the top. Looking out, Gaige spotted a courtyard butting up against a stack of buildings topped off with a half-constructed head that looked like when it was finished, it would breathe fire.

Continuing to look around, Gaige was able to piece together a rough shape of the compound. Down by the gate was a ramshackled pile of buildings that no doubt housed most of the guards and such. Above them stretched a walkway that went the entire length of the perimeter. A few buildings were built on top of the walkway, but they looked like huts and a few watchtowers, though it didn't seem that the bandits thought anyone would be sneaking in from the sides, so there weren't many of them.

"So," Came the whisper that interrupted her observation "Where should we go?"

Gaige wanted to snap back with something nasty, but bit it back, cause she knew that the other girl was just leaning on her expertise. "Well, we need the Flumblebumble's, which Tina thought would be here."

"Right, so first, they're probably in the main building, right?"

"Yep. So, what's second?"

"What if they're not?"

"Then we'll have to go looking for them."

"No. I mean, yes, but I was meaning, what if this group didn't take them?"

"Erk." Gaige choked at the thought "Uh, then I guess we'd need to find whomever did."

"Right, and let's be honest, the only other group in this area is that Hyperion place."

"That we know of. It's the only other one we know of."

"OK, I'll give you that. So, long as we're here, we might as well do this one first, so how do you wanna do it? Cause if we go in guns blazing, we won't get far, but if we sneak in and get caught, we'll be caught in a pincer."

"Uhg, I hate it when you point out the obvious."

"Sorry."

"No, I hate that it means I have to say something else, usually trying to be clever to cover for the fact that you just said what I was going to in the hopes that you had something else to add."

"Oh, well, sorry again."

"Again, not your fault. But as you said, we've got a hard choice ahead of us, though I guess we could start a fight out here, that way if things go bad, we can force our way out the main gate."

"But then we'd need to come back and they'd be expecting us."

"So, you think we should try and sneak in?"

"If we're gonna have to fight our way out no matter what, I'd rather not have to come back later."

"Well, you've convinced me, let's do it."