Chapter 14
Pandora
"What d'ya want?" Artemis snarled, trying to check to see if Gaige was alright.
"What do...You dare ask that? After what you did to me?!" The busty monstrosity shrieked.
Artemis scratched her head, as if she was trying to remember what she'd done to set the woman off, but ended up shrugging "Well, yeah."
"You...you..." She sputtered "You marred my beautiful face! You gashed it open."
"Oh, is that all? I mean, an Insti-health shoulda fixed that right up. Plus, you were kinda threatening my friend, so there is that." Artemis said, a bit disinterestedly as she made sure that Gaige was alright.
"SILENCE! You break into my house, kill my artist and then disfigure me!" She shouted, foam forming at the corners of her mouth "And then your excuse is that it could be fixed? It could be fixed? I can still feel it, every time I talk, every time I touch it, I feel the scar, the disgusting mark that destroys my perfect beauty."
"Uh, you know that what you're feeling is the skin you rubbed raw, right?"
The woman fixed her with a glare even as her finger continued to rub back and forth across her cheek. A pinkish liquid started to ooze down from the ugly red wound she was inflicting upon herself, but she didn't seem to notice, instead her twitching smile crawled back onto her face.
"Oh, but I'll make you pay. The things I'll do to you, you'll serve as a warning to all the others what will happen to anyone that crosses me. Maybe that loser Handsome Jack was onto something...It's just a pity that your face is so...so...blah, otherwise I'd try it out for a mask and your girlfriend is barely any better...Oh, but I can still use you, yes I can, maybe bathing in your blood will help restore my face, but then, no, that might not work, you being so plain and all, still you are young...Oh, are you a virgin? That always helps."
Artemis couldn't figure out what to feel at first, but she felt something crack inside herself as a rising anger took hold while the psycho continued.
"Who're you calling plain?" She said in a soft flat tone, her eyes sparking dangerously.
"Why you, of course. If that upsets you, then you've never seen a mirror."
"Who gives a crap about me, I know I'm a monster, but what'd you say about my friend?"
"Your...That's what upset you?"
"I'm gonna puncture those overinflated...ego...of yours." Artemis hissed, a creepy smile of her own stretching across her face "Buddy. Go help her out, this one's mine."
Volupta stepped back unconsciously "You think I'm going to fight you? Preposterous. Take her, but keep her alive." She declared with a hand wave.
Artemis responded by whipping her left hand around, throwing something low through the crowd of psychos and bandits. The object traveled a good way considering the density of the people in front of her, but that was why she'd aimed low, to get it to fly between their legs. When the grenade finally landed, it immediately exploded into a fire nova, before beginning to rain down fireballs onto the crowd.
As they screamed and thrashed, she just continued smiling "Now then, shall we?"
Gaige had taken the blow badly, getting thrown a ways before landing, in the process she'd lost her gun and before she could grab another, she'd found herself looking at the end of a badass psycho's hammer, which had hooked under her chin to pull her face up. The psycho looked down at her, distracting her as she heard the boss begin to rant and rave.
Realizing that the psycho wasn't going to do anything until the conversation was finished, she turned part of her attention to what was being said, and quickly realized that Artemis should never be put in charge of negotiations.
It wasn't that she didn't agree with just about everything she was saying, it was just that she was egging on a raving psychopath, but then the woman crossed some kind of line and Artemis got angry, though Gaige couldn't really tell what had set her off, mostly because her responses were so soft and low that Gaige was having a hard time making them out, but she could hear the crackling anger in them.
Then she felt a surge of disappointment as she heard her call herself a monster again. Gaige had thought that she was over that, that she'd accepted that part of herself at least a little, but it seemed that deep down, she hadn't.
In her disappointment, she missed the next bit, but she caught the sudden instructions to Deathtrap and knew that things were about to start, so she subtly shifted her weight so that she could get at the only weapon that she could and waited.
The psychos began to charge, only for them to be interrupted by a giant explosion in their midst, one that Gaige recognized well, so she slid forward, off of the psycho's hammer and drew her own melee weapon and swung it upward, connecting with the badass's fingers with a satisfying crunch.
"Owchie!" The psycho yelled, leaping back still managing to hold onto its hammer and gave her a slight appraising look, before laughing at her. Motioning with its hammer at hers, he yelled "Tiny baby in your hands, make mine a meat puppy!"
Gaige regretted listening to him as she tried to fall back to draw a gun, but the psycho didn't want to give her any time as it sprung forward, swinging it's hammer recklessly and forcing her to dodge.
It seemed that the others around them were willing to give her to the badass since they fell back to form a ring around them, even as Gaige caught out of the corner of her eye Deathtrap wadding into the back of the pack, and laying waste to them.
Turning her full attention to the fight at hand, she ducked under another wild swing and popped up to deliver a blow to the back of the psycho's elbow. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to do enough damage to really do much beyond annoying him, since he spun the hammer around and tried to slam it onto her, forcing her to dodge again.
He seemed to be getting annoyed with her constant moving, which she interpreted more from his body posture and increasingly wild swings, rather than the yelling of "The intestine balloon waves in the wind."
After another particularly wild overhead swing, she darted in and delivered another bone-breaking hammer blow to his fingers, causing him to roar in pain. He wrenched the hammer out of the ground and started to spin, forcing her back as the hammer cleared a large amount of space around him. As Gaige managed to get out of the immediate danger, she realized that this was the reason that the rest of them had fallen back, they were worried about getting hit by one of their own.
Just as she realized that, her back hit one of them and he gave her a mighty shove, hoping to throw her into the path of the spinning hammer. Forced to act instantly, she dropped into a roll, feeling the hammer tear at the ends of her ponytails as she did.
Coming to a crouch at his feet, Gaige remembered her time on Jaka suddenly and slammed her hammer down onto the top of one of his feet, breaking enough bones to cause the psycho's hammer to yank him off balance.
Wasting no time, she sprung up and leaped onto the fallen psycho's back, bringing her hammer down on the back of his skull with a bone shattering crunch.
After the second blow, he stopped moving, giving her a second to holster her hammer and draw the rifle off her back and opening fire on the stunned crowd.
Deathtrap sliced through the nearest bandit, pushing ever closer to where Gaige was fighting, he knew that if he flew up, he could get to her in seconds, but if he did that, the psychos on this side would attack Artemis from behind and the bandits would all be able to target him, so he had popped his Digi-claws and wadded into the melee.
He managed to get a good look at Gaige finishing off the badass that she'd been tangling with and pop up with her rifle. Knowing things were about to get more chaotic, he took a second to expand his sensor range to include Artemis and saw that she was doing alright, so he continued following her instructions and backed Gaige up.
He was a bit worried about Artemis, not that she couldn't handle the woman she was facing, but that her anger might be the symptom of something else that was bothering her. He would have to talk to her about it, or better yet, if Gaige had heard her, there was a chance that she might bring it up, even if that chance was slim.
He debated telling her about it, but he worried that if he did, it would either lead to Gaige relying on him to tell her when something was wrong, or that Artemis would feel it was a breach of trust. He stuck his crystal into their business as often as he felt he needed, but to overdo it would be counterproductive, so he had to find a balance.
Still, he was grateful that they seemed to be getting along better. They still had their issues, but they were slowly airing them, so things were moving the right direction for once.
Resolving to think about it some more later, he caught and chucked a leaping psycho into a badass with a rocket launcher, knocking their aim off and sending the explosive ordinance into a group of their allies as he finally made his way up to where Gaige was fighting.
"Well, look who decided to show up, were you on break?"
He knew she was just blowing off steam at being caught off guard, but he still rolled his eyes internally and responded with a "Uggrug"
"Yeah, we could all use one." Gaige nodded in response "Tell you what, we finish this mess off and we can take a nice break before we head back, or better yet, we can take one once we get back."
He shrugged and replied with a noncommittal "Urrur"
"Yeah, I guess she should get some say in it, how's she doing anyway?"
Artemis dodged around the oncoming psycho, firing her pistol into his head on the way past. She clicked her tongue in frustration and holstered the empty sidearm while punching her blade into the throat of another bandit.
She was quickly losing her patents, not that she had many to begin with. Her opponent kept falling back, throwing more and more of her followers in front of herself to try and buy time. Artemis was chewing through them without any real problem, but she was running out of loaded guns and there wasn't enough time to reload, even with as quick as she was, so she was having to rely on melee more then she liked.
It wasn't that she was bad at it, it was just that she didn't like it all that much. It wasn't something she'd trained herself in to the same degree as the rest of her hunting skills, especially since it was only really useful if something got the jump on her, or she was overwhelmed by numbers, so while she wasn't bad at it, she knew she wasn't all that good at it either.
Still, she was making progress.
She let the bandit fall as she retracted the blade and spun around another psycho to find herself facing Volupta. The woman's face had paled considerably, making the raw red line cutting across her cheek stand out even more. The only other color on her face, aside from her makeup, was the splotchy red of her fury, but even that was being overshadowed by fear.
She'd thought that she'd win, if not through sheer numbers, then because she was special and would therefore always win, but Artemis knew that there was no one like that in the galaxy, everyone lost some time, it was just a matter of when.
Two bandits threw themselves in front of her, bringing their guns up, which Artemis thought absently was foolish, they should've stayed where they were and shot as she approached their boss, or at least jumped out with their guns up, instead she stepped in faster than they could get their weapons up and slashed through their throats, letting them fall as she stepped between them and continued towards her target.
It wasn't like she wasn't getting hit, in fact, her shield was almost depleted, but she wasn't about to show this big breasted behemoth any weakness, something had snapped inside her and she wanted this woman to realize her mistake before she died and nothing said that quite like an unstoppable force.
As she made her final approach, the woman snapped up her pistol and opened fire, but her hand was shaking so much that it would've been harder to try and dodge. The few shots that did manage to hit their target weakened Artemis's shield to next to nothing.
Her gun clicked repeatedly as she kept pulling the trigger, but then, something in her eyes changed and a slight smirk touched the corners of her lips. A Digi-blade suddenly popped out from under the barrel and she lunged forward with a fair amount of skill, nearly catching Artemis off guard.
She must have been more skilled at melee, Artemis decided, either that, or she figured that acting scared and throwing her shots around to weaken her shield would be a better use of her bullets then launching an attack that would be dodged. Either way, she was tricky.
As good as Artemis's reflexes were, she wasn't able to completely dodge the attack, catching the blade across her shoulder. The cut wasn't too bad and wouldn't impede her movement, but it screamed out in pain, forcing her to stop attacking for a moment, which seemed to embolden the woman.
"No, no." She crowed "Don't bleed too much just yet, I want to see you writhing in agony as I slowly bleed you dry as I sit underneath you, bathing in your blood."
Artemis didn't reply, instead she focused on defense as well as making sure that Volupta wasn't trying to distract her so that one of her underlings could back-stab her.
But it seemed that wasn't her goal, since she dashed in and tried to stab again and again, her blade darting forward at high speed.
Frustrated with her lack of connection after her first strike, she started to lose it "Why won't you be a good little bitch and die for me, if you do, I promise to make your friend's death only agonizing rather than the full course of excruciating suffering that I'm going to inflict upon her. Tell you what, as an added bonus, I won't make her watch as I bleed you out."
Artemis ground her teeth as the woman trailed off into a fit of giggles and felt the fury rise within her again. She was sick of this, sick of all these psychos threatening her friend, of ranting and raving at them, of hurting them. She knew it was par for course with the kind of lives they led, but it would be nice if just for once, things would be easy, if things would work out the way they were supposed to without all the suffering.
It would also be nice if she could stop feeling what she felt, and that might have been what was really pissing her off, that no matter how much she knew it was wrong, how much she knew it would only bring pain and suffering, her feelings were only getting stronger.
But for right then, she'd had enough of this cow, so she let her guard drop ever so slightly. The woman took the bait and lunged in at her usual high speed, only this time Artemis ducked to the side and threw a punch at the exposed elbow.
While she connected fairly solidly, the punch didn't break the bone, only sent the arm flying across her body, but it did send her gun flying into the corpses littering the area.
With a howl of frustration, the woman jumped at her, catching her off guard and pushing her back. Artemis felt the woman's thin fingers clamp around her throat with surprising strength as she let out an unintelligible shriek and started throttling the smaller girl.
In desperation, Artemis didn't try and pry the hands off, instead she grabbed hold of the woman's arm with her right hand, and punched it with her left. She felt the bone snap like a dry twig and heard the woman howl in pain as her grip loosened. Artemis shoved the arm back and the broken bone tore through the skin and into the woman's throat.
Volupta staggered back, flailing with her good hand at the foreign object she suddenly found jammed into her neck and yanked it out with a spray of blood. She staggered back and forth while her mouth flapped noiselessly, unable to comprehend what had happened to her.
For her part, Artemis blinked in surprise, she hadn't fully intended that to happen, in fact, she felt a little disappointment, she'd wanted to slice the woman's face a few times before killing her, or maybe give those overinflated things hanging off her chest a good punch, but instead, the woman was dying like this.
'Oh well.' She thought, turning part of her attention to the rest of the bandits to see how they were reacting. As she'd feared, they seemed to have gone into a frenzy with some of them wailing, but mostly they were split between trying to get to their boss and trying to get to Artemis.
"Well, that's not good." She muttered as the hoard turned on her with hate filled eyes.
Gaige felt the shift in her opponents and spotted the target of their malice, as well as Volupta, who was staggering slowly, blood pumping from a wound in her neck.
Realizing what was about to happen, she called out "Babe, help her, now."
Even before she'd finished shouting, Deathtrap was plowing into the back of the mob, spinning with his Digi-claws out to tear through them.
Gaige trusted that with his backup Artemis could handle what she was facing, so she turned back to the bandits around her and resumed firing, watching the bullets tear through them with increasing ease.
It didn't take long before she heard the sounds of a second assault rifle opening fire and shortly after that, the last of the bandits fell dead.
Gaige let out a sigh of relief and looked around. Artemis and Deathtrap appeared to be alright, so she walked over to them, rather than doing her usual check of the dead's weapons.
When she got there, before she could speak, she heard a weak gurgling and looked down to where Volupta was laying, blood still oozing from the tear in her throat, her eyes weakly found Gaige and seemed to be trying to convey something, whether it was pleading with her to finish her off, or trying to convince her to spare her, Gaige couldn't tell, but either way, Gaige spun to the other two and swore.
"Oh for...Would one of you just finish the...her off?"
"She's dead anyway." Artemis flatly said, rubbing her throat for some reason.
"I thought you were one of those who always made sure their opponents were dead."
"I haven't turned my back on her yet, have I?"
"Just put her out of her suffering."
"Some people deserve to suffer." Artemis muttered as she walked over and stabbed the woman through the chest.
"If you say things like that, then someday it might be you laying there." Gaige warned.
"Probably will be." Came the noncommittal response.
"You've got issues and we need to talk about them. Again."
"Great, I can't wait."
Gaige shook her head and turned to Deathtrap "And you, what were you doing just letting this happen?"
The robot looked around as if to say 'Who, me?', but when Gaige just continued to fix him with a hard flat stare, he hung his head and let out a soft "Urrrr"
"I know she deserved to die, and probably badly at that, but that's no reason to make her suffer, is it?"
"Urur"
"So don't let it happen again."
With that, Gaige walked off to go loot the dead so that they could get outta there.
Boomtown
Later
The ride back had been uncomfortable, there had been some unsaid thing hanging between them, so Gaige hadn't really pushed to start a conversation or asked if Artemis wanted to ride up front with her, which had led to the ride feeling longer than it had on the way in. A few times, she'd almost tried to say something, if for no other reason than to break up the monotony, but she couldn't figure out what to say, so she'd just let her mouth close again. She knew that anything like this would just fester and lead them to another confrontation, but she couldn't even figure out what'd went wrong, if anything, or what she was feeling, so she didn't know how to say anything, and she knew that unless things were really wrong, Artemis would never start the conversation, which left her only hope being Deathtrap, and he seemed to be being rather quiet at the moment, so it seemed unlikely that he'd be much help.
So they'd reached Boomtown without anything being said and quickly found where Tina was sitting, messing with something that looked like it would explode, so they'd stood off to the side until she spotted them.
"Greetings ladies, and how is the party shaping up?"
"We found the stuff, I think." Gaige said, too tired to play along with Tina at the moment.
Artemis and Deathtrap set the gear onto the table and Tina nodded in approval.
"Yes, these gents will do nicely." She grinned until her eyes fell on the watches and a dark shadow passed behind her eyes.
Catching it and the meaning behind it, Gaige said "Thought it would be the best and most satisfactory use of them to blow them up helping me...us."
A crooked smile twitched at the corners of Tina's mouth at the thought.
"And the other things?" She asked.
"Other...oh yeah, let's just say that that Pollux Warhull's paintings are going up in value as we speak."
Tina cocked her head as if she wasn't following.
"He's dead." Artemis flatly interjected.
"Ah. Take that you Skag butt sniffin, two-bit knock off defamer o' Tina's." Clearing her throat, she continued "And the other one?"
"That truly monstrous creature's dead as well." Artemis spat.
"Last time she steals somebody's girlfriend, specially mine." Tina nodded. "Well then, you haz upheld your end o' the bargain, so there's just a one more thing I needz before I can begin."
The girls groaned.
"Tina, haven't they done enough?" Mordecai asked while walking up with Brick.
"Shut it Mordi! I wasna gonna ask them for nothin else, I just be wonderin, would you two's be interested in a game of Bunker's & Badasses? I mean, obviously not right now, but I's always lookin for mo playas, even if it just be a quick one-shot."
"Uh...sure?" Gaige replied, nervously looking around.
"Yes! I'z totally gonna run you through my campaign."
"Tina." Brick said from the side "If you want 'em to come back, don't kill 'em in the first session."
"Wha...but...booo, fine. You'z right, but only for the first hour or so, then, da gloves come off. Oh, and no playin the Siren, she be Bricks."
"She's the prettiest."
"I have no idea what they're talking about." Artemis muttered, shaking her head.
"Yeah, I feel ya." Mordecai said, nodding.
Tina happily turned back from Brick and announced "Good, good, now scoot, the grand Crunk Bunny's got to introduce these gents to the rest of the party goers."
"Come on, leave her to it." Mordecai said, leading them away.
A minute later, the girls found themselves sitting in a familiar spot overlooking the Pandoran landscape.
"We had our first real heart to heart here, didn't we?" Gaige asked, trying to break the ice.
"Hmmm." Came the noncommittal response.
"Look, we need to talk and this place seems as good a spot as any."
"Now what?" Artemis muttered, noticeably deflating.
"First off, stop that, it's not always bad."
"Every time I hear 'we need to talk' it turns out that way."
"No it doesn't. I mean, there was that one time on the Project Odysseus site."
"It still went wrong though."
"Only cause you jumped to conclusions. And before you do that again, just listen to what I have to say. I just wish I knew what it was I needed to say."
"Well, that's a great start."
"Don't be so crabby."
"Me? You say we need to talk, but then have no idea about what."
"Well, when you put it like that...You know what, you're right. It's just that I spent the entire trip back here trying to figure this out and got nowhere, so I was kinda hoping that if we started talking, I'd figure it out, only now that I'm here, I feel kinda silly."
"Ah."
Gaige had hoped that the other girl would've opened up and said what'd been bothering her, or that Gaige had been imagining things, instead all she got was a minor acknowledgment that they were talking. Just as she was feeling the frustration boiling over, Artemis spoke back up.
"There was one thing," She paused till Gaige nodded for her to keep going "What's with you and Stalkers?"
"I don't have any stalkers. Well, aside from Holloway and you."
She regretted the joke instantly as the other girl curled up on herself. Gaige quickly tried to spin it with a "It was a joke, I know you're not a stalker, it's just that I'm not sure what you're talking about."
"It's alright, I know I'm creepy. OW!"
Gaige punched her in the arm and when the girl looked up, she held her fist up threateningly "You are not creepy, nor are you a monster or any of those other things, you're a beautiful young woman who deserves to be happy and have better friends then what you've got, so stop doing that."
"Sorry." She curled away, making Gaige feel worse. She almost asked for Artemis to punch her back, but knew that she wouldn't, so she tried to change subjects, knowing that this one wasn't going to go anywhere "Now, what were you talking about?"
"Um, oh yeah, the Stalkers, what's with you and being afraid of them?"
"Well, I wouldn't call it being afraid, more of that I just really don't like them." She tried not to look at that other girl as her mind spun. She knew it was time to open up, show that she was flawed too, but it scared her to show that side of her, like she thought that everyone would leave her if she did, even though she knew better, then it hit her that that was exactly how Artemis felt all the time, so she sighed and continued.
In the end, she told Artemis all about her bad encounter with the Stalker and how afterwards, she'd been a bit reluctant to face them. It wasn't that she had a problem with invisible opponents, it was just something about the Stalker's face as she'd turned to look up at it that unsettled her deeply.
Artemis sat there in silence for a long moment, then finally said "We've all got those, things we don't like facing, you shoulda just told me and I would've tried to figure out a way further around them. But there is one good thing here."
"And what's that? That you've got something to mock me about now?"
"I'd never..."
"I know, though there are times I wish you would, it'd make this feel more like a friendship or something. But anyway, what good thing have you got?"
"Uh, well..."
"Just spit it out."
"Uh, alright. You remember those twins, on the Project Odysseus station? You know the, uh, what were their names? The death guys, the ones that had the shields."
"Oh yeah, what were their names? Hadis? No, Hades, that's it, Hades."
"Yeah them."
"What about them?"
"Well, you remember how they went invisible? And how we took the devices off of them? I just remembered that we never did anything with them, I'd completely forgotten about them till we had to deal with the Stalkers."
"Oh yeah. Once we get back, we definitely need to look into them. Speaking of getting back, where to from here?"
"What? I was hoping you'd know."
"Nope. I mean, we're kinda low on clues at the moment."
"What about the bots? Didn't we find anything about them? Like where they came from?"
"Hmm, I was able to pull the serial numbers off of them, but that's about it."
"Well, can we at least find out where they were made? I mean, you said that they were straight off the production line, right? So maybe whomever modified them was there, or at least we might be able to find some kind of records of where they were shipped, or who bought them."
"That's assuming that whomever bought the company didn't destroy them or that the investigators didn't take them."
"Well, what other options do we have? Wait around until they attack again?"
"No. Well, I mean, yes, that is an option, but I reject it. I've never been one to sit around and do nothing while my enemies attacked."
"Except with Holloway."
"Bitch. Fine, you're right, but there wasn't anything I could do in that case, was there?"
"No. But there is one thing."
"What?"
"The fact that we could find the serial numbers and they weren't filed off, might mean this is a trap."
"Wasn't this your idea?"
"Yeah, but I'm just putting it out there that this might not be a good move."
"Well, it's the only one we have, so as soon as we're done here, let's get going."
