The Adventures of Maya and Zer0

Maya was freaking out.

The Siren wasn't one to panic easily – she was often one of the most level-headed people you would ever know, and even though that didn't mean much if you lived on Pandora and anyone that could be considered levelheaded was usually also absolutely insane in the brain, she was actually pretty chill. She sometimes lost her cool – when she had put a bullet in Handsome Jack's brain, she had followed it up with several more bullets until Jack was left not only dead but considerably heavier than when he had been alive. But discounting those rare moments – which she would later come to consider not so rare as she and her life as she knew it descended further down the rabbit hole of intergalactic police chases and the assassination of space wizards that used space magic – she was likely one of the most sane people to have ever set foot on Pandora.

Maybe, she would later lament, it was her sanity that was making her panic uncontrollably. Maybe only a sane person could understand the horrors of the world that she lived in, and maybe only a sane person could panic because for the love of god Zer0 was not panicking and his sanity was definitely questionable.

What had happened, she might have asked herself if she hadn't seen it herself. What had started it all?

Well, it was probably when the world was going to end. That was a pretty good place to begin the tale.

I

It had been a cool night. The air was crisp, she remembered, and the soft breeze made her hair tickle against her neck as she leaned back and stared up at the sky. The Pandoran sky was beautiful at night – one of the few beautiful things about the wasteland where everything always wanted to kill you and devour your bone marrow – and the moon she knew to be Elpis hung over her head like a reminder of Hyperion's reign, with the hideous H-shaped space station hovering in front of it like a brand. Even with the station, however, she could appreciate the view. It wasn't nearly a good enough reason to stay on the planet and risk your life and limbs, but Vault Hunters never needed a reason for that, and she was a Vault Hunter now – a verified Hunter of Vaults, what with having opened one herself now.

Every once and a while she would think about why they weren't moving yet – why they weren't searching for those Vaults that they had seen back in the Vault of the Warrior. They had been numerous – she literally couldn't have counted them all if she wanted to, and the prospect of such adventures had left her trembling with anticipation; her unique upbringing had made any sort of knowledge or experience the kind worth pursuing. She had spent years kept away, and now her desire to explore had all exploded out at once and instead of following it all she was stuck waiting for the green light.

Lilith. Lilith was the reason they weren't on the move yet. Maya respected her fellow Siren – the woman had taught her a lot of what she knew, after all – but the wait was slowly killing her. Lilith was gathering information on the locations of the nearest Vaults, and her caution and triple checking had made the process incredibly slow; she didn't want what had happened with Jack and Angel and Hyperion to ever happen again. Maya understood this.

But it was so boring. You could only read the same books so many times, and when you lived on a planet where the amount of people that could read let alone write rose in negative correlation to the number of people that had killed a man before it was tough to find new reading material.

Star gazing – that was her new hobby. She could see the moon, she could feel the tug of the Vaults, she could barely stand still, it was awful.

Maybe it was a passing star that granted her her unspoken wish for adventure. Maybe it was a cruel twist of fate, like the lies spoken by a deceptive genie as they granted the wishes you never quite wanted but definitely asked for. Maybe some otherwordly force was messing with her reality as she knew it, controlling the world around her like a sick puppet master with a shitty sense of humor.

Regardless of what did it, she could never quite take her wish back. Not after it had been granted.

"Eridian tech," a voice mumbled from nearby, and she looked over her shoulder to find a lithe figure pacing back and forth in the control room. She had no idea where everyone else was – maybe drinking or playing games or watching Psycho Ball – but the room that was connected to the balcony was void of any movement short of the leather-clad figure that stalked around the table, speaking in a husky and synthesized voice. "A gate to new challenges / it cockblocks me so."

Maya smiled a bit as Zer0 spoke to himself in a series of quiet haikus, apparently unaware of her presence on the balcony. He looked to be thinking about something – she couldn't even begin to guess what, and she could hear his thoughts as he vocalized them with what he thought to be no one around – and eventually he grumbled something she didn't quite catch, before sighing loudly. She had never known the man to show much distress in all their time working together, and the sound was a new one to her ears – it was not just a bored or annoyed sigh, but an undoubtedly tired and worn down noise. She didn't even know if he could get tired, but he sounded so.

"Needs a catalyst. / A power source. Battery. / Perhaps a… stupid."

"Never seen anyone talk to themselves on Pandora before," she called out to him as he rubbed his gloved palm on the visor of his helmet, red hashes and exclamation marks and other random symbols flickering across its surface. He spun to look at her, symbols disappearing until only an exclamation point remained. "At least, not in haiku. Are you unwell? Stressed? Bored?"

Zer0 looked like he was debating something with himself as ellipsis flickered over his false face, before eventually he ditched whatever he had been doing and came over to stand next to her. Old blood stains speckled his armor as slightly darker patches amongst the somewhat discolored surface, and they became more apparent under the moonlight – he must have been doing a different type of work recently. She found this odd, as killing bandits had stopped being something that interested most of them a while back; they were weak and no challenge. Fighting them was pointless and repetitive, and to be honest it was a bit grating to kill a bunch of people for no reason aside from the five dollars in their pocket. Nowadays Axton and Sal were more interested in drinking themselves to the verge of death before being promptly revived by Doctor Zed and his mysterious needles – it was almost a problem, but Maya had learned long ago that alcoholism on Pandora was less of a problem and more of a lifestyle.

She didn't know what Zer0 occupied his time with at this point. She liked Zer0 – she was probably the second best sniper they had when discounting Mordecai, who was at least sharing first with the Assassin if not taking it completely – and they had ended up spending a decent amount of time fighting side-by-side in the wastelands. She didn't know jack about him, pardon her french, but he seemed like a decent enough guy when he wasn't slicing people in half or whatever. But after Jack, he had just kind of… dropped off the grid. Became harder to find.

"All of the above,"he said, peering over the parapet and down into the street. Sanctuary was coming up to its golden age, and she had a feeling that that was part of what was taking so long for them to go after other Vaults – Lilith wanted to stay and keep their home safe as much as she wanted to blaze new trails. "I am bored, Siren – so bored. / Challenge sings to me." He sounded a little bitter. "But my voice is gone. / I cannot answer the call / It's awful, Siren."

Maya snorted at the way he addressed her. Never Maya – unlike Axton and Sal, her name had the same number of syllables as what the bad guys called her. A Siren – no need to swap it out for her name, so he never did. She was offended once, but had come to accept that that was just the way he was. "I know how you feel. I can't stand this waiting around – we should be out there. Hunting those Vaults."

"We can fly so high / but adventure is still here," he said, and it surprised her. She didn't think he would say anything aside from perhaps a mumble of agreement. She looked at him, and found that his head was cocked ever so slightly – he was kind of almost looking at her. It was a weird feeling that ran up her spine as he did so; it was as if someone had walked across her grave. She loved that saying – she'd read it in a book and it had stuck with her since it felt like it was a very poetic way to describe being given a bad feeling so strong it made your skin cold. "On the other sides."

"The other sides?" She snorted, turning to look back over the street. People weren't looking up at them – hadn't for weeks. Excitement had died down and now their novelty had worn off – they were washed out. It wasn't a nice feeling, but until they got to those new Vaults it was one that she would bear on her shoulders. "Other sides of what? The planet? I was getting the feeling that no matter where you went, you'd just find more Pandora."

Zer0 sniffled at that, but didn't elaborate. He was quite the character, she knew, but that was somewhat weird even for him. He was acting different – very different.

"Maya," he said instead, using her first name for the first time she could remember. This peaked her interest and her ears perked up as she looked at him again, cautiously. His tone was graver than she had ever heard before, and it was somewhat unnerving. He was indeed acting different, and she was still getting that bad feeling. "Doom coming. / You must help me save the world / Or we will all die."

If Maya had been drinking something, she would have spit it out. Instead, she leaned over and picked a bottle of Rak Ale from Mordecai's box of nutrients and flipped the cap off with a flick of her thumb and an airy whisper of pressure being released. She took a swig as Sal had taught her to do. She spit it out as Axton had taught her to do.

A jet of the disgusting ale that some suspected might just be Skag piss mixed with cleaning alcohol spewed from her maw like the flames from the Warrior, spraying everywhere and coating the marksman's helmet in a thin veil of spittle and beer like it had started to rain disgusting Siren-saliva.

Maya had learned that this was something that people enjoyed doing for entertainment and occasionally recreational purposes, but she had never done it before outside of the one time when she was alone in The Dust with a barrel of Moonshine and a book labeled Lust and Sin, which for its name was filled with plot that she rather enjoyed. Now, however, as she stared at Zer0 and his muck-covered mask, she felt like she had done it wrong, and this disturbed her to some extent as he stared at her.

"Sorry," she apologized to him, trying to use her sleeve to clean some of the ale off of his helmet. To her disgust, it only smeared around and made her clothing stink like Skag piss and cleaning alcohol, and she soon gave up with a pat on his shoulder as compensation for her misdeed. It wasn't an all expense paid trip to Sev's dry-cleaner down the way, but it was all she could do for him as he wiped a four-fingered handprint down the glass. "Sorry! I took way too much of that stuff before spitting, got it all wrong. My fault." He didn't say anything, and she noted that his helmet now smelled like crap. How unfortunate – she'd have to find him a cloth or something after she finished explaining why what he had just said was absolutely insane and made no sense. "I just… what?"

"This world is ending. / Pandora will cease to be / Everyone will die."

"T-That's… That's what I thought you said." She sighed and set the bottle down on the parapet, leaning on it. She felt a bit drained now, and she didn't know why – it was crazy talk. How would he know? This might very well leave her with a headache, and that wouldn't be fun for anyone. "You can't just drop a bomb like that. It makes you sound crazy. Now let's back up," she said, "and you tell me what the hell you're talking about."

"The world is ending. / A comet will destroy it / we'll be turned to dust," Zer0 told her, more slowly this time as if that would make it easier to understand. She was beginning to feel a bit panicky now – the Assassin didn't tell jokes – and gripped the parapet for support. Yes, she could feel the headache coming on. "It's not a riddle. / We must leap through time and space / and not fucking die."

"Ignoring the last little bit," Maya said, feeling very ill now at the sudden and brutal delivery of the news. Perhaps he had thought it would be like ripping off a bandaid, but she might throw up now since she knew he was dead serious. "What about everyone else? Why me? How? How do you know? When?!"

Zer0, who for the most part was ignoring her mental breakdown and rapid hyperventilating, looked down at his wrist as a holographic watch appeared around it, floating like one of Saturn's rings.

"Twenty."

"Oh god oh god-" she began, forcing down her nausea. Her vision was beginning to swim a little, and all of this being delivered at once might very well kill her if she didn't begin to calm down. Where was a paper bag when you needed one, she wondered as she nearly entered a fit of dry-heaving. "Twenty what?" she demanded, "Hours? Minutes?!" This couldn't be happening.

Zer0 tilted his head, and reached into one of the many pockets on his sneaking suit without answering her question. She watched with wide eyes, her legs almost giving out under her while he drew a pair of keys from one of his many pockets with a cheerful jingle. The chain it was on had a tiny psycho mask on the end of it, and she realized it was kind of cute.

Suddenly the entire world was rocked as a booming thunder rolled through the sky, and to her horror she realized it sounded like a moonshot barrage. But when no missiles bombarded the city or its shield, she felt confused and looked up in the sky.

Soaring towards the planet of Pandora, and she could tell for it was growing in size by the second, a brilliant ball of flame had begun to engulf the sky entirely, blocking part of the moon out as it closed in on the planet. She was awed by its ninja-like appearance as she watched it quietly, aware of the murmurs of confusion and fear coming from the street below. It was rather strange that she hadn't noticed its approach, but now there wasn't anything to be done about it.

"Seconds," On his visor, numbers had begun to flicker rapidly, starting at twenty and going down at an alarming rate. "I can't leave. / Not without your help, Siren. / No time to talk now."

"W-What do I do?" she asked, feeling crazy.

"Follow me quickly," he told her simply, and he hurried into the control room.

With no other choice, Maya quickly followed him as he had asked her to, ever so aware of the rumbling that was growing louder and had begun to make the tables shake and the doors rattle and Mordecai's beer bottles roll across the ground. Blood stains ran across the walls, she noticed as they walked through the desolate halls of the Crimson Raider's HQ at a moderate pace. Idly, she couldn't help but feel that they were going at a rather leisurely pace for people running from the apocalypse.

When they reached the first floor, Maya actually threw up. She had felt it coming and managed to get to Tannis's garbage can, and her lunch as she knew it exited her body the way it had come in, overtaking the awful taste of Rak Ale that had been left in her mouth and replacing it with something at least equally disturbing.

Slumped against the wall and covered in more blood than which could be lost by a human being before they perished, a familiar figure clad in a black leather sneaking suit laid with his head lolled to the side, mask cracked and helmet rusted from a lack of proper care and maintenance. One of his hands was draped loosely over an old chipped sword, while the other had been put up to his forehead and had its fingers shaped in an L, reminiscent of the Loser sign Gaige was fond of making at bandits as they were torn limb from limb by her giant robot, Deathtrap.

When she was finished puking, she screamed and pointed to the dead Zer0 that was laying there, still as a corpse. She didn't really have words that fit well enough to describe her horror, so she just screamed and pointed. She didn't know how long she did it, but eventually a sharp slap from the not dead Zer0 silenced her screaming, and she was hurried along past the still bleeding carcass. "I don't want to talk about it," he said as he herded her along.

Eventually they reached their destination, or what she could only assume to be their destination.

Propped up in the middle of the room, a rickety old box of wood and metal stood alone and silent, appearing quite out of place in a room made of rusty metal and scrap. The paint was chipped away, but the exposed light bulb on the top still flickered on and off in a simple pattern as the rumbling continued to rock Maya's world like a salt shaker, and she realized she was going to die following around a madman.

"It's a box," she said numbly, her shoulders dropping as reality hit her hard. This was it. "We're all dead."

Zer0 pushed her aside and jammed his keys into the brass lock of the box, the glass window set in the old door rattling from the force in which he did so. When nothing happened he switched the key out for the other one that was on the ring, and the door swung open with a soft click this time. She didn't know what the other key was for, but didn't ask since dead people don't remember things.

"Come Siren," he said, taking his keys and stuffing them back into one of his pockets before climbing into the tiny box. It was tall enough to fit him, but also narrow like a phone booth or something – she didn't think there was enough room for the both of them, but when he waved her in she decided she didn't have much of a choice in the matter really. "Climb in. /It's bigger on the inside. / I lied. It isn't."

It took some shuffling and awkward groping about, but eventually the two Vault Hunters were fit snugly inside of the Phone Booth, and she was instantly hit with a wave of claustrophobia as he reached over her shoulder and pulled the door shut. She heard the lock click tight again, and despite the windows that she could see on the outside the inside was cool and dark, like a cave. She could smell the Assassin and what she thought might have been cologne mixing with blood, and she prayed to god that she didn't throw up on him as he fiddled with something in the dark over their heads.

"This looks about right," he said, and she decided he didn't know what he was doing after all. Maybe he could save them if he wasn't crazy or messing with her, but she told herself not to get her hopes up. "Won't see this world for a while. / Say goodbye, Siren."

"... What about the others?" she asked him, trying to get comfortable. It didn't seem to be possible, as every direction she shifted in she found one of his bony limbs digging into her body. "What happens to them, Zer0? Are they going to be alright?"

"Don't think about it."

4… his visor read 3… 2… 1

The entire box shook for a moment and she squeezed her eyes shut tight, and then everything was still and black.