Songs: Three Days Grace - Get Out Alive; Caesars - Jerk It Out
"Okay. Team meeting.We need to punch through that gate somehow. Cassius is our only chance of saving Mordecai, AND retaking Sanctuary." Lilith said to us as we all gathered in the little shelter that was now serving as our HQ. I was really looking forward to getting Sanctuary back. There were just so many memories in that place, we couldn't just give it up. Not like that.
"Tritanium's chunky stuff, Lil. Gonna take one helluva weapon, and what we got here ain't gonna cut it." Ellie replied and sighed. That sounded bad, but it was probably realistic, though. Fuck. I felt a wave of desperation surging over me as I glanced over at Mordecai. This just couldn't be it. It couldn't.
"Yo, Lilith - what about the Helios moonshot?" Mordecai suddenly chimed in. The moonshot? But how... Oh. That was a possibility and a pretty good one at that. That might just save Mordecai. And Sanctuary.
"Yeah, that could work. Bandit, you lived on Helios for a while. Think we can get the moonshot cannon working?" she asked, turning to Vaughn. He flinched a little at first and then nodded quickly.
"Oh yeah, totally! But just so you know, to get into Helios, you're gonna have to go through... The Burrows. Have fun! Don't die!" he answered. Okay, I had no clue what exactly was in the Burrows, but we would find out soon enough. Lilith sighed and then nodded slowly and heavily.
"I don't love using Jack's weapons, but if it gets the job done, I can live with it." she replied. Vaughn grinned at her.
"Ohohoho, man! This is exciting! Surviving the Burrows is a bandit rite of passage! Y'know what? If you make it through, you can be my Vice-Warchiefs!" Vaughn said to all of us, looking excited.
"Okay, let's do this. Nova, do you wanna go with them? I'd understand if you'd prefer to stay here-" Lilith started, but I had already made my decision.
"I'm going with them. All I can do here is worry about Mordecai, but if there is only a slight chance we can save him by fighting through the Burrows, then I'm helping you with that. I'm more useful doing that than sitting here and fussing over everything." I told her. I was still afraid I'd come back from the Burrows and find Mordecai turned into a plant, but we had to go and try our best to stop that from happening.
"Alright. Go ahead with the others then. Let's get this done and get Mordy back up on his feet." Lilith said to me. I nodded.
"I'll see you in a bit, Mordy. Don't die on me, you hear?" I told him. He gave me a weak smile.
"I'll do my best." he replied. I heard him coughing again, as I turned around to follow the others who were already busy digistructing cars. It hurt my soul seeing him like this and I knew I'd end up being a complete mess if I stayed with Mordecai and had to watch him get even worse.
"Hey, Nova, you wanna go in my car?" I heard Gaige shouting at me. It looked like Anouk was already sharing a car with Maya, so I nodded and jogged over to them. I was glad, Anouk seemed to make friends here on Pandora. That meant she'd have a way to get by in case... in case anything happened to me.
"You want me to drive?" I asked Gaige when I had gotten to her.
"Sure. I'm no good at driving and I'm not planning to learn it while we're doing important stuff." she replied and jumped into the gunner seat. I got in the driver's seat and started the car, putting on the booster as soon as I could. We had to get to the Burrows quickly, so we could get that antidote.
"You actually brought an infected soldier back to camp? Man, I keep thinking you've mined the idiot shaft dry, then you go and strike a big ol' vein of dumbass." we heard Hector saying over the ECHOnet while we were driving through the desert, slowly getting closer to the entrance of the Burrows.
"What an asshole." I said to Gaige, just as I heard Lilith let out a frustrated cry over the ECHO.
"He'll get his soon enough. Focus on Helios." she told us.
"Alright, so these tunnels are sacred bandit territory. And I'm totally breaking the bandit code by telling you how to get in. But, anyone who could tell 'em is already dead! So, just bust down that electrified gate, and you're in! The sandworms definitely won't escape probably!" we heard Vaughn's voice next.
"Okay, this looks like it. Of course there's bandits hiding out here." I mumbled as I parked the car behind some barricades.
"Gaige, hit 'em with the rocket launcher!" I shouted as her and grabbed my own sniper rifle, just as everyone else arrived. We were in a pretty good hiding spot and Gaige blasting the bandits away with a rocket launcher would probably distract them from me sniping them at the same time.
We quickly killed off the bandit hordes with the help of everyone else arriving. It was mostly Salvador who chose to run them all over in his car right when he arrived. The other few were greeted by a hail of bullets. I climbed out of the car that had a bit of smoke coming out of it now.
"So the secret door, huh? Should be behind that little wall there." Maya said while reloading her gun.
"Let's go then, before our car explodes." Gaige replied and ran ahead. We followed her and there was indeed a flimsy gate that had some electric sparks coming from it. Krieg ran at it with his buzzaxe and hit the door which promptly collapsed down to the floor. We all gathered at the cave entrance.
"Don't get eaten! Oh, and tell the sand worms I said: blqhngngnblaqaq. They'll know." Vaughn echoed us and chuckled a little.
"Off we go then." Axton said and crouched to get into the little cave. We all followed him and soon found ourselves in a small entrance way that led into some bigger caves. There were big vines all over the rock formations and it looked like the salad soldiers had already set up camp here.
"My hypothesis was correct. Hector is using your Vault Key to mass-produce the gas. Soon he will have enough to blanket all of Pandora to create his 'paradise'. But everyone on Pandora will die in the process! He's really got our test tubes in a centrifuge." Cassius echoed us as we made our way up a rocky path that would hopefully lead us through the Burrows and to Helios.
"Oh, so you got that video I sent then? Waiting on the reply." Tannis echoed back. I raised an eyebrow but didn't really think about it too much. I probably didn't want to spend any time thinking about it, if I was being honest.
We went down the other side of the pathway and found ourselves in a sandy place with lots of vines growing on it. The vines had pods on them and as we slowly walked through the area one of the pods broke open and an infected bandit fell out of it. As soon as he got up he came running at us.
"Shit, destroy the pods before they crack open, guys!" I shouted, as I started firing my SMG at the bandit that came running at me.
"Careful, sand worms!" Axton shouted at the same time. Great. Two problems at once. And all of Pandora might die, if we didn't kill this Hector dude. Brilliant. We fought Handsome Jack and all of Hyperion to get where we are now, just for a guy to take all that from us again. With plants.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Aw, doesn't matter. I've already won. Here's how this ends: Me, presidin' over paradise. You? Twisting your mutated limbs into a knot and dying alone like a sad pretzel. Point, Hector." Hector echoed while we were doing our best to destroy the plant pods while they hatched. Axton, Salvador, Maya and Zero were going after the sandworms while we were doing that.
"Where do we go now?" Maya shouted while finishing off a bandit that had just fallen out of a pod.
"Looks like we'll have to make our way through that jungle over there!" Gaige replied and pointed her gun towards a tunnel that was overgrown with vines and flowers. There was lots of glowing green pollen floating around in the air.
"Aw, shit, do we have to?" I asked.
"Yup, that's the only way. Hold your breath as much as you can." Maya replied. I sighed and reloaded my gun.
"Alright. Let's do this." I mumbled as we slowly made our way through the tunnels. It was really difficult to see, the only light provided being the light from our ECHO devices and from the glowing pollen. The air was hot and dusty and the paths through this tunnel had gotten so narrow, it was difficult not to panic. I felt like I was about to lose it any second. All I wanted to do was take a deep breath and start running out of this claustrophobic place. But that would probably end with me getting infected and eaten by some plant. Either way, I'd get myself killed.
"We're almost through it!" Salvador shouted. He had gone ahead of all of us and I could see him in the distance waving at us. I quickly made my way over to him, hitting a few rocks and plants in the process. I'd come out of this place looking like I was beaten up by a bandit mob if I continued like that.
We gathered around the exit of the tunnel and looked ahead. There was another big cave. Just in front of us there was a door that opened. We all quickly got down and only carefully looked out of our cover.
There was a bandit coming out of the door, his gun raised, as if he was looking for something. After he didn't see anything he seemed to be a little more at ease, carefully lowering his gun, but still looking around. That was when we heard a loud thump and something big jumped down behind him and knocked him out cold. It was none other than Brick.
"Hell yeah! Eat knuckle, shrub!" he shouted down at the lifeless bandit. We all got out of cover and came running towards him.
"Brick! Oh my God, is this where you've been hiding out, since you left?" I asked him and gave him a big hug.
"Hey, Nova, good to see you. Yeah, I've been out here most of the time. Was a cosy place before these guys showed up." he said to me and then turned to the rest of the group who were all happy to see him again.
"Yo, Slabs! I heard Mordy was in danger, and you were wrecking face to help him! I'm in. Follow me!" he told them.
"Brick, you're here? I know we haven't always seen eye to eye..." Lilith echoed, as we started following Brick deeper into the Burrows.
"Yo, Lilith. I got bones with your leadership style. But as long as Mordy's in trouble I'm on the team! Nothing else to say." he replied to her. God, I was never so glad that the two of them were besties. I still had no idea if we could manage this whole operation, but having Brick here made me feel a little better.
"Then I'll leave you to it - do what you do best, Brick." Lilith told him, while he smashed a psycho's head in. I wondered what exactly it was that had made Brick leave. Lilith didn't want to talk about it and neither did Brick, so none of us really knew what was going on there.
"Mordecai's been on my ass about getting a non-punching hobby, like gardening. Hahahahaha! But the jokes on him! 'Cause now, I get to do both." Brick told us while we were fighting through hordes of plant monsters. This would have been fun, if it wasn't such a serious mission. And if Mordecai was here, too.
"I got a green thumb and four green knuckles! Let's go prune some shrubs!" Brick kept saying as we found another whole camp of vine-freaks. But with nine of us now, we ploughed through them in no time. I don't think I even got to shoot any of them, before they were all gone.
"What now, Brick?" I asked him. He just shrugged.
"Saw some more shrub dudes up ahead. Nothing these weed whackers can't handle!" he replied and held up his hands. We went on ahead and started making our way through more and more infected bandits.
It was easy enough to get through them, but I was surprised at how many people were infected already. It was difficult to get an idea of how many people were living on Pandora, since you wouldn't really see most of them. Lots of them were bandits and would hide out in their camps. Then there were all the people living around the planet in all the small settlements. Many of them were killed by Hyperion and none of us had any numbers or any idea on how many people Hyperion had actually killed. And I mean, we all had killed our fair share of people as well.
We soon got closer to some sort of structure. There was broken glass all over the place, steel beams and big panels that probably were walls a while back were lying around all over the place. This had to be Helios. All of those parts looked very Hyperion. My suspicion was confirmed when we reached a door that had the Hyperion logo on it. Damn, that brought back some bad memories.
"Damn! Been awhile since we fought Hyperion, but you got no flab, Slab! Haha! More shrubs comin' at us! Let's mow 'em down!" Brick said to us. There weren't as many of them as earlier, so we could get through them really quickly again. There was a door that seemed to be leading into the space station, but it was blocked off by a shield.
"Brick, Anouk and I will go looking for the shield generators." I shouted over the noise of screaming psychos and bandits.
"Sure thing! Gotta meet her properly when this is all over!" Brick shouted back at me. I looked around me and saw Anouk jogging towards me, casually shooting one of the bandits in the head on her way.
"I'm here, looks like there's two shield generators. Wanna split up and look for one each?" she asked me, catching her breath as she got to me.
"Sounds good. I already saw one somewhere over there. You wanna look for the other one?" I replied. Anouk gave me a thumbs up and disappeared again.
The shield generator had been on one of the pillars around the place. There were a good few flower pods ahead of me. I quickly shot at them all until they burst open. At least that way there'd be less unpleasant surprises for me when I was done with the generator. I quickly ran over to the pillar and smashed the button to disable the shield, before I started shooting holes in the generator.
"Keep smashing!" Brick echoed.
"One of the generators is down, Brick. Coming back to the group now." I let him know, as I made my way back towards the door.
"I disabled the second shield, working on the generator now." Anouk echoed us, just as I could see all of them again. Just when I caught up with all of them, the shield was gone completely.
"Yeah!" Brick exclaimed triumphantly as he saw the shield disappear.
"Coming back now." Anouk echoed us.
"Careful, auto cannons!" Maya suddenly announced, just in time for us to see them get deployed. Shit. I started firing at one of them, hoping they weren't extremely tough. They shattered almost immediately. Only then I realized that with four guns pointed at each of them, the auto cannons were never going to last long.
"Good job everyone! But we're not done yet. Let's show these pricks whose planet this is!" Brick said to us before we all moved on into Helios.