Songs: KMFDM - Rules; Placebo - Every You Every Me; Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
"We headed back to Moxxi's after that and met up with Jack, Roland and Lilith. The plan was for us to head up to Helios first via Fast Travel and for Lilith and Roland to follow us. The thing was we ended up at the other side of Helios, but we still stuck to our plan: get to the command center, shut down the laser without damaging it and save the moon. When we tried to get to the command center the path was blocked, so we had to resort to trying from Jack's office. We had to get a Claptrap to open the door for us, and it took an eternity. But we somehow managed to meet up in Jack's office, all of us, and since the Claptrap that got us into the office died, we needed to find another solution to get through to the Eye of Helios." Athena continued her story.
"What happened to Gladstone?" I wanted to know.
"I'm getting to that part. He contacted Jack, told him he was trapped in R&D with his team, so Jack sent us down there to rescue them. Jack figured that Gladstone and his team could get us to the Eye of Helios. In hindsight, that might have been the only reason why he wanted to help them. We got him out and went to get all his teammates while he went up to Jack's office to meet up with him. While all that went down, Jack's boss called to tell him he wasn't fired anymore, which might have made things a little easier, had it been decided sooner."
"Yeah, well, you all met up at Jack's office then, didn't you? What happened next?" Lilith asked impatiently.
"Jack was getting suspicious, because he still couldn't get access to the Eye of Helios, even though he disabled the jamming signal. Gladstone offered a few explanations, but Jack seemed to get hung up on the theory that there could be another traitor on Helios. We all got to the office and finally met Lilith and Roland who had fought their way over from the other side of Helios. The research team shut down the defenses to the laser and we were ready to go, but Jack wanted to 'talk'. He told the scientists that he would get them an escape pod to get them off the station. Got us to push the button. Turned out to be the button to seal an airlock. And he... Jack decided to vent the airlock because he thought one of them might be the traitor. It was... it wasn't good."
"There! That's when you should have known!" Lilith exclaimed, shaking her head. Athena sighed and decided not to comment on that.
"After that, Roland and Lilith stayed behind to defend Jack's office, while we went to the Eye of Helios to disable the laser. Most of us were shocked by what we had just seen, others... not so much. I could understand his logic, but I figured I'd finish the job and then be done with it."
"Even after the airlock, you still worked with Jack." Lilith said.
"As did you. Elpis had to be saved, regardless of how horrifying jack's decision might have been." Athena replied sharply. It did make sense... in a way. I probably wouldn't have known what I would have done. To me it would have been pretty frightening to be trapped on that space station with Jack. Then again, maybe I was imagining Jack scarier than he was at the time.
"Continue." Lilith mumbled, after there had been a heavy silence for a while. She had started pacing again.
"We had to climb through some of the access tunnels to get to the Eye of Helios and to be able to shut down the laser. In the meantime Moxxi came up with a plan. She told Jack that Zarpedon probably rigged the laser up to blow the whole station to pieces. She offered to get down the laser, so Jack sent her the blueprints. She told us to go to the Eye with Jack and she told Roland and Lilith to go to the stations reactor. We almost got blown up trying to get to the Eye of Helios, but we got there eventually. So did Jack. I asked him what powered that laser, but he didn't really answer the question. Should have made me more suspicious, really, but we still had a job to do."
Athena took a break, catching some air. I held up the bottle of water and she nodded slightly, so I went up to her to give her something to drink. From what we've heard I doubted Lilith could be too mad. It all made sense, in a way. Plus, she was just as involved in the whole thing, as Athena. At least until now.
"Thanks. We tried to shut down the laser remotely, but Jack got locked out, so we had to go in and shut it down manually. Zarpedon tried to keep us out at any cost, even put up a force field to shut us out, but we disabled it with Moxxi's help. Well, Lilith did, because she shot the right thing by chance. Once we got in, there was a huge electricity field protecting the laser. We had to wait for the laser to fire and then run through it. It was all for nothing, because Zarpedon had locked the door leading to the laser from the other side, so we had to take the long way around."
"Jeez, why even build a laser like that? When did they think they were going to use it?" I wondered.
"Yeah, that's... I don't know. Once we got out of the elevator, Zarpedon was waiting for us and we had to fight her. Twice. First time we killed the power suit, second time Zarpedon herself. She told us the Vault was already open, that she had seen what was in it and that the power within it would trigger some chain of events." Athena continued her story. I raised an eyebrow.
"What chain of events?"
"We never found out, because Jack shot her, before she could finish talking." Athena answered and did her best to shrug. Which was difficult with her hands bound behind her back.
"Yikes. Anyway. You got to the eye eventually, didn't you?"
"We did. Jack's plan for the thing seemed to be to wipe out entire bandit camps without any friendly casualties, although I doubt that would have worked well. It turned out that the Eye of Helios was actually powered by the Eye of the Destroyer. Moxxi gave us instructions on how to shut the whole thing down. Or that's what we thought she was doing. We did what she said and the eye started acting really weird, but Moxxi told us to keep going and that everything was fine and nothing would happen to the eye. When she told us to reboot the laser, Jack started freaking out and said he'd rather reboot it from his office, in case something went wrong. So that's where we all went after that. We tried to initiate the reboot sequence, but it didn't work."
Athena shot Lilith a death glare, but Lilith looked back at her with an equally threatening stare.
"We had actually managed to create a singularity, somehow. Because Moxxi wasn't helping us and neither were Roland and Lilith. They were betraying us and trying to kill Jack. The rest of us would just be collateral damage. But it didn't work. We survived it and so did Jack. And we still had our actual job to finish. Finding the Vault. Jack was angry, said he'd deal with all of you in time and told us where to look for the Vault. After surviving your attempt on our lives, we headed to Zarpedon's refinery site to look for the Vault." Athena continued with a sigh.
"Why? You'd already saved the moon, why not just leave?" Mordecai asked.
"I was hired to find a Vault - I don't leave jobs half-finished. That, and Lilith attempted to murder me. If she wanted the Vault, I wanted to stop her."
"Yeahhh - sorry I tried to kill you." Lilith said sheepishly.
"No, you're not." Athena replied.
"No, I'm not."
"So, Moxxi tried to kill Jack? She never told me that." Mordecai said, sounding pretty surprised at that.
"She's got layers. Like an onion made of boobs." Lilith commented.
"I'll never be able to get rid of that mental image." I replied.
"Moxxi plays her cards pretty close to the chest." Brick added.
"Which is saying something, given her cup size." Lilith said. We all started to laugh, which earned us a bewildered look from Athena.
"Do you want me to finish the story or...?" she asked. Lilith cleared her throat and nodded quickly.
"Yeah, yeah, continue."
"Jack's plan was pretty simple at that stage, really. It was to go down into the Vault, find whatever was inside it and use it to kill all of you. We made our way to the Vault, had to fight an RK5, which was almost impossible to destroy. But we got there eventually. Jack got really riled up about the Vault once we got down there. Lilith warned us to get out of there, but Jack was just on about how much he'd enjoy killing all of them once he was done with the Vault. Before we went into the Vault, he said something about weird readings, but said it was probably nothing."
"Yeah, that was me." Lilith chimed in.
"How'd you follow them without getting noticed?" Mordecai wanted to know.
"I... actually don't know. None of the guardians attacked me for some reason. It was like they WANTED to let me through." she answered.
"This is where we fought a Vault monster called the Sentinel. It was... rough. But we killed that thing as well and Jack could teleport into the Vault. There was a small Vault icon lying around and he noticed it and picked it up. Then he got lifted up into the air all of a sudden and placed on some sort of throne and he was screaming how he got it and how he understood everything now. And that was when Lilith came in, punching the Vault icon in Jack's face and leaving right after. He got up and his face was burned, one of his eyes was blinded, and he was more determined than ever to kill you all. And that is when the hero who saved us on Helios died. That was when I left Handsome Jack's employ." Athena quietly finished her story.
"You regret teaming up with Jack?" Lilith asked, still pacing back and forth, more nervous than before.
"Yes. Now do what you will." Athena answered. Lilith nodded.
"Kill her." she ordered.
"What?!" Mordecai blurted out.
"NO!" Brick protested as well.
"Lil, don't!" I said. Damn, this wasn't what we all risked our lives for. Athena was clearly sorry about what she did.
"If it weren't for people like her, our friends might still be alive! Ready-" Lilith replied to us and looked back at the Raiders who got ready to fire at Athena.
"This ain't us, Lil! This ain't YOU!" Brick shouted.
"FIRE!"
"No, Lil-" I screamed, but I stopped when I saw the bullets falling down to the floor in the middle of the air.
"What the hell?" Lilith mumbled. Someone... something very alien looking appeared, basically out of nowhere. Kind of looked like one of the Eridian guardians Tannis had been talking about.
"Now is not the time for bickering, Vault Hunters. War is coming. And you will need all the Vault Hunters you can get." the guardian said. We were all just staring at him, not sure what to say.
"What... what's that mean?" Lilith finally asked, but the guardian said and disappeared again, as quickly as he had appeared to us.
"The hell was that?" one of the Raiders said and aimed at Athena again. I rolled my eyes and walked up to him.
"Put that thing down." I said, as I was passing him. He looked over at Lilith, looking for some sort of confirmation from her.
"Nova, what are you doing?" she asked, as I went over to Athena. I had no nerve to explain myself to her right now.
"Promise you won't try to kill us, Athena? I'm gonna have a word with Lilith and Brick's gonna have an eye on you. You can tell your story to Tina again, if you feel like it." I said to her.
"I won't try to kill you, if you don't." she replied. I nodded.
"Good."
With that I cut the rope the Raiders used to tie her up. When I was done with that, I saw Lilith glaring at me. Oh dear. This would be a long evening, judging by how angry she looked. This wasn't the first time Lilith was angry with me, but it was probably the angriest she ever was at me.
"WHAT the HELL are you DOING?" Lilith demanded to know.
"Lil, let's go back to HQ and talk this over. You're in no position to give any sort of fair judgment right now, you're gonna need some time to think this through. Brick is going to look after Athena until then. But we can't keep her tied up like that. She's our prisoner and not some animal."
"Thanks." Athena said quietly, while Lilith was still shooting daggers at me. After a while she turned around without saying anything and walked back towards HQ. I sighed and followed her.
"You gonna be okay?" Athena asked.
"Yeah, she's gonna scream at me for a while, but she'll come around. Don't worry. She's got a lot on her mind lately and I don't think she's the most stable at the moment. Mordecai and I will talk to her and then she'll hopefully be reasonable." I replied.
"I hope so, too, because if Lil doesn't come around, she's gonna have you shot first, with the mood she's in." Mordecai commented. I sighed.
"I know. I know. Let's go and get this over with, then. Brick, you alright with watching Athena for a while?"
"Sure. Make sure Lil ain't going all crazy on you." he said.
"Don't worry about me. We'll manage this somehow."