Songs: Desert Noises - Dime In My Pocket; The Kills - Bitter Fruit

"Yeah, but if you had no choice, which one would you rather be locked in with? A skag or a bullymong? And no weapons." I asked. Tina, Brick, Mordecai and I had gotten tired of playing cards and had started a session of "Would you rather?" to pass the time, since nothing ever happened.

"I'd prefer none. Why would I be dumb enough to get locked up with either of them and NOT have a gun on me?" Mordecai replied.

"It's just hypothetical, Mordy."

"Yeah, what she said." Tina agreed with me.

"I think I'd rather be locked up with a skag. Skags can be friendly. Sometimes. When they're puppies. And they're easier to punch when they're not friendly." Brick said. Tina nodded with a pensive expression on her face, as if she was an expert on the topic and was in some sort of scientist expert panel.

"What about you, Tina?" I asked.

"Bullymong. They're fluffier." she answered right away. Brick raised an eyebrow and Mordecai just sighed.

"Tina, you... you know a Bullymong's way more likely to kill you?" Brick said. Tina shook her head.

"Nah, son. Bullymongs are awesome. They'd never try and kill me. Not if I kill 'em first." she replied.

"Tina, that's not how it works. That's not how any of it works." Mordecai told her. He looked like he was done with raising kids for the rest of his life. And to be honest, Tina could be a handful.

"Oh yeah? Then how DOES it work?" Tina replied. Mordecai took a deep breath and was about to launch into a long rant about survival, when the ECHO console started beeping. We all looked at each other. This was unusual. Nothing ever happened, since Jack was gone, so we were surprised someone was calling.

I went over to the ECHO console and saw that it was Scooter calling. From Hollowpoint. Okay, now that was interesting. Athena was in Hollowpoint. Scooter had been at the Death Rally and apparently the people Vallory was after were in that Death Rally. If Lilith was right and all of that was somehow connected, then maybe Scooter just had some news for us. Or maybe he just wanted to chat. Everything was possible at this stage, really.

"Hey Scooter, what's up?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I might need a lil' help down here..." he said and started coughing. That didn't sound good.

"Help with what?" I wanted to know.

"Bring some health vials, if ya can, aight?" he added and then disconnected. I raised an eyebrow at the console for a while, trying to make sense of what I had just heard. Had Scooter gotten in any trouble?

"What was that about?" Brick asked.

"Uh... Scooter said he needs some help. Come on, Mordy, let's go. And take a few health vials." I said quickly. I really needed to get out of HQ, I was bored to death. If I stayed there any longer I'd probably go insane.

"Hey, why ain't we goin'?" Brick wanted to know.

"Well, someone needs to stay in HQ and watch over... stuff." I replied and grabbed Mordecai's hand.

"That cool with y'all? Yeah? Okay, bye, see you soon!" I said and quickly ran down the stairs with Mordecai in tow.

"Alright, alright, we escaped, now what's up with Scooter?" Mordecai asked, once we were outside of HQ and on our way to Pierce Station.

"He said he needs some help and sounded kinda beaten up. That's all I know. Oh, and he's in Hollowpoint, so things might get interesting." I told him. We had reached the Fast Travel Station relatively quickly and I started putting the code for Hollowpoint into the terminal. It wasn't really that popular or the code would have been saved at some stage. Thankfully, I still had Scooter's location on my personal ECHO device.

"You mean the same Hollowpoint that Lil was on about?"

"The very same one." I said, just before we dematerialised and appeared again in a dark and barely lit alley. It felt weird that it was that dark, until things stopped spinning and I remembered that Hollowpoint was literally in a cave.

"Okay, looks like Scooter isn't far from us. Wonder what happened to him."

"Yeah, it's not like Scooter to get into trouble like that. Only thing would be with the Zafords, but he never asks for help with them." Mordecai said and shrugged. It was true, Scooter asking for help without specifics was pretty unusual. When he had beef with the Zafords he'd usually get that sorted himself.

"I guess we'll see. He should be over there." I replied and nodded towards the door of his garage. As we walked in, we saw a caravan standing there. It looked pretty neat, as if it had just been fixed.

"Scooter? You alright?" I shouted.

"Yeah, over here." he replied. We walked around the caravan and saw Scooter leaning on a desk. He looked like he was beaten up not too long ago.

"Oh shit, what happened, Scooter?" I asked and walked over to him. Mordecai handed me a health vial and I jammed in Scooter's veins.

"There were... these two guys... looking for the girls who left the caravan here. The ones that won... the Death Rally." he told us.

"Hold up. Start from the beginning." Mordecai said.

"Okay, so... I was just preparin' all them numbers for the new proprietor an' all, when that chick walks in, lookin' to get her caravan fixed. I recognized the caravan, 'cause I was at the Death Rally and I knew she was the winner. Turns out her prize money was stolen, so I gave her a sponsorship contract and was gonna fix the caravan for her. So her sister comes in an' we get the caravan here an' all and then there's these guys comin' into my workshop, askin' me about 'er and showing me this poster of 'er." he started explaining. Mordecai and I looked at each other. This sounded pretty interesting. Probably didn't have anything to do with Athena, but interesting nonetheless.

"What happened then?" I wanted to know.

"Well, they knew I was hidin' 'em an' I didn't tell 'em anything at all. So they tried to get sumthin' out o' me beatin' me up. But I ain't sayin' nothin'." Scooter answered with a proud smile on his face.

"Where are they now?" I wanted to know. Scooter shrugged.

"I dunno. Told 'em they should lay low for now, they said they had a place to stay for now. So I s'ppose that's where they are. Didn't ask too much, ya know?" he replied. I nodded. Of course he'd try and protect two girls that just turned up on his doorstep. I was wondering who was after them, though.

"You still got the poster around here?" I asked.

"Might be lyin' around somewhere. Hey, thanks for checkin' in and bringin' me the health needle. Didn't have any left myself and I couldn't jus' leave the workshop, ya know?" Scooter said.

"No problem, Scooter, we were bored out of our minds at HQ anyway."

"I found the poster." Mordecai suddenly chimed in. He held up a poster of a young woman with short hair and a pretty distinctive hat on. Her name was apparently Fiona and she was a con artist. That's at least what the poster said, but how true that was, was another question. I had never heard of her before and it seemed like Mordecai hadn't either. We were interrupted by some noise coming from the entrance of the garage.

"Aw, man, is that them again? You guys better hide or sumthin'." Scooter said. Mordecai nodded, as we moved behind one of the many shelves.

"We'll be right here, if you need us, Scooter." I told him quietly.

"Who's there?" Scooter shouted and walked over to the entrance. I looked at Mordecai and shrugged. I had no idea what to make out of all of this.

"Might be worth a shot to see what's going on." Mordecai whispered.

"Guess so."

We looked through the gaps of the shelf and saw two men in the garage. They seemed to be arguing with Scooter about something. One of them was small and was wearing massive glasses, the other one looked like some corporate employee and... oh shit. There was a Hyperion logo on his shirt. Those guys were Hyperion.

"Mordy! They're Hyperion. The fuck are they doing here?" I asked quietly.

"I dunno, but I sure hope they aren't gonna try anything funny." he replied.

"I already told you Hyperion sum'bitches once: BACK OFF." we could hear Scooter shouting at them.

"Ah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. I promise. That's our ride." the tall one said.

"Like hell, man! I know the women who dropped this van off and you sure as crap ain't them!" Scooter replied. I had to hold back a laugh. I had never seen Hyperion guys try to TALK their way out of anything.

"Well, okay, not OUR ride, but-" the small guy started, but was interrupted by a very angry Scooter.

"Bein' Hyperion was your strike one, man. Now you're lyin' to ME? IN MY GARAGE?! That's like, at least 4 or 5 more strikes right there."

"Are you guys trying to steal our van again?" a female voice from further away said. Probably one of the two women Scooter had mentioned. We couldn't see them from where we were and I got the feeling we should probably get out of here soon.

"HA! I knew it." Scooter replied, sounding very happy with himself.

"Ohmygawd, can you please explain to this guy that we're friends?" the tall one said, sounding pretty exhausted.

"No way these girls'd 'sociate with no Hyperion d-bags." Scooter chimed in.

"Oh, okay. Come on - we're not douchebags."

"I know... you're dick bags."

"Friends is a little much. I'd call it what it is." another woman said.

"Which is?" the tall guy asked.

"A temporary alliance."

"Aw, that really hits the heart. I appreciate that, Fiona. These are my temporary allies. Can I get in the damn van, please?" the tall guy said, as he and the other one walked over to the van.

"Alright, well if you say they're with you... I guess I can believe that, man. But if you ladies get in any trouble you just call, alright? Or, y'know, you don't have to be in trouble to call, man. If you just wanna chit-chat, or if you find a restaurant you really like, or... Y'know, way b- but the trouble thing, that too, that too." Scooter babbled on.

"He got you with that?" Mordecai whispered to me. I sighed.

"Oh, shut up, Mordy. Let's not mention how we ended up together, because it's not really much more romantic." I replied.

"Scooter, you are... awesome. This is incredible. You do amazing work." the woman called Fiona said.

"Oh, yeah, thank you. Thank you... haha." Scooter said. As they drove out of the garage an actual loader bot jumped onto the back of the van. How the hell did we not notice that thing before?

"Be sure to stop off at my many Catch-A-Rides if ya need anythin'. I've got 'em poppin' up all over Pandora." Scooter shouted after them. We crawled out of our hiding place and walked out to Scooter. Looked like everything had blown over and we could head back to HQ. I felt a little guilty for leaving Brick and Tina alone for so long.

"You're headin' out, too?" Scooter asked us, as we walked up to him.

"Yeah, you still got paperwork to do and we can't leave HQ alone all night, you know? We might wanna let Lilith know about this, though. She might be interested in what's going on." I told him.

"Yeah, sure. Take care, guys." he said and headed back inside the garage. Mordecai and I walked back towards the Fast Travel Station quickly. I looked back to the garage, because I just got a feeling that there was more to the story than we knew. And when I looked back I saw someone standing on top of the garage.

It was a woman with a hood over her head and something round and glowing on her arm. I nudged Mordecai and gestured towards the roof of the garage. He looked back and just then the silhouette moved away quickly.

"What was that?" I asked.

"That... That was Athena."