Arrows peppered the sand at her feet as they sprinted madly across the beach, Zer0's limp slowing him down to the point where she was left supporting him as so that he wasn't left behind and killed by the evil skeletons that were trying to murder them to death. She hadn't thought that this was the way her day would go when she woke up that morning but life, she lamented, was full of surprises. She didn't think the world would end and that actually happened too, so putting it all at the back of her mind and keeping one foot in front of the other was starting to feel like the best course of action currently available to her.

Maya didn't understand the science behind the skeletal archers dressed like something out of a medieval holotape, but she knew that arrows hurt and Zer0 was a prime example of arrows hurting as he cursed and hissed and snarled to himself with every step. The shaft that stuck out of his thigh quivered with each movement, and she couldn't gauge how bad it was until they stopped – but due to the fact that it was an arrow stuck in his thigh, she was assuming for the time being that it was pretty bad.

"We must keep running," Zer0 rasped as they scrambled over a pile of rocks. She didn't know where they were going, but the volleys of primitive projectiles that rained down harder than the actual rain kept her moving all the same. Up ahead she could see the tin-and-chain structure that she had noticed earlier, and to her horror she could now make out the armor-clad bowmen that lined the top like soldiers. "They will show no mercy. / Run, for Pandora!"

"Z-Zer0, I don't think we can get out of this by running," she gasped as she stumbled to a stop, even more winded than he was. She knew there was a reason that she didn't believe him when he said it would be simple, and they were barely out of the gate before being defeated not only emotionally but soon to be physically. The archers behind them were closing in, clearly pleased to have cornered their prey as they stopped firing and began chittering amongst themselves, their jaws opening and closing with several dry clicks and clacks. They were stuck now. "Why the hell didn't you just bring us directly to where we were supposed to go?!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry / It was really hard to see / With a smogged up mask," Zer0 told her, referencing to her blunder with the Rak Ale. She hoped that he wasn't being serious, because the idea that their current predicament was indirectly caused by her was a depressing one. "But no, by all means / Snark your way into your grave / while I try to think."

Maya cursed as they were quickly surrounded by more of the skeletons. Now it wasn't just archers, but several swordsmen had joined the fray as well with wickedly sharp blades that promised pain and suffering the likes of which she had never experienced before. She could see her terrified face reflected in the polished surface of the closest of the deadly instruments of bloodshed, and she quickly banished her fearful expression in an attempt to mask her absolute terror. No good to show weakness – gotta outplay them or something, she thought.

Zer0 had told her that they were to sneak across the beach and into the settlement to search for a new STI, but his plan had changed quickly when he had caught a glimpse of the skelemen that patrolled the beach like soldiers. Apparently he had seen them before – she did not know where – and the thought of being caught by them was one that he described to be of insurmountable horror and a promise to endless suffering. He had said they as bone men were naturally inclined to violate their victims in every sense of the word, and while she wasn't sure if that was true or not she did not wish to find out the hard way. Not only did she have provocative photos of herself on her Echo communicator, but she liked her anal rectum as it was – that was to say, unravished by cruelty and anything else.

She cursed herself for not thinking to bring a gun to-

"Zer0, I have a gun," she suddenly said, reaching down to her hip and feeling the comforting iron at her side. It was a Maliwan SMG – easily her favourite gun, and she had many – and it was chambered with thirty incendiary rounds, each big enough to punch through a War Loader. She couldn't believe she had forgotten about it – and didn't dare to imagine what would have happened had she not remembered. "I have a gun."

Zer0 looked at her with a tilted head, and she looked down to see that he too had a weapon of his own holstered on his other, undamaged thigh – a Jakobs revolver. She wasn't such a fan of Jakobs due to the lack of elemental damage, but she knew quality when she saw it; they just might be able to fight their way out.

But, she thought to herself as she surveyed the crowd that surrounded them, should they? Zer0 said they would be absolutely destroyed by the skeletons if they were caught, but how would he know it he'd never traveled through time and space before? What if they weren't assholes like she had thought, and-

Zer0 shot one of them in the skull with his gun. She didn't notice him drawing it until the shot rang out as a deadly report and the skeleton stumbled backwards, his cranium reduced to blood and bone fragments that went everywhere – all over. They were on his allies, the sand, some of it was on Zer0 and some of it was on her, it was incredibly messy and it stopped her train of thought cold as the echo faded.

The army of skeletons that surrounded them did not react at first, clearly shocked into silence by the display of cold blooded murder, and Maya felt a little more than just pity for them as one left their station to crouch next to the already cold corpse after it had dropped into the sand. What looked to be tears poured out of his eye sockets as he put a hand on the blood-soaked shoulder of his dead comrade, and intelligible mumbling began to circulate amongst the fantastical creatures.

"Sam… Sam…" the one skeleton that was kneeling next to the dead swordsman said, his voice surprisingly human. In fact, Maya was surprised that it could talk at all, and had assumed them to be incapable of speaking english, what with a lack of vocal chords. "Sam…! Oh god… Oh god!"

"What the fuck!" Maya hissed, snatching Zer0's gun out of his hands as the Assassin stared at his handiwork. More of the skeletons had begun to converge on the casualty like moths to a flame, their bone-white chins dipped in mourning as some of them removed their helmets and pressed their hands against their breastbones. As more blood and bone marrow leaked out onto the sands, she slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a gasp. It had been swift and brutal. At least they probably couldn't even feel pain. "Seriously. That was so uncalled for."

"They can't feel pain. Probably."

"He's dead…! He probably died in indescribable agony due to his chronic Hyperalgesia. Poor Sam…" another skeleton said, shaking his head sadly. "What do we tell Yvalta? His kids?!"

"I say we don't."

"They deserve to know, dammit!"

Maya felt sick as she threw the revolver in the sand, wiping her hand on her pants afterwards. She didn't want to touch it after watching it used to take such an innocent life – it was quickly becoming apparent that these sentient creatures were not bandits, as bandits rarely ever married and never ever actually remembered who their kids were – well, that one was a lie but at the same time not completely inaccurate either.

Zer0 took a step towards the tightly knit group of skeletons, an exclamation point on his visor as he lifted a hand towards them, as if to touch one of their hands or arms despite the distance that was between them. Blood and marrow had spattered a pattern across the face of his helmet, but she thought that was probably the last thing on his mind as he examined the bone fragments that were sticking to the hand that had fired the gun. She wondered if he could even feel remorse – the only time she'd ever seen something close was when Roland and Angel had died back-to-back, like a horrific marathon on TV. Whatever he was feeling, she noticed, mustn't have been too good, since his shoulders slouched and his gaze turned back towards Sammy the deader skeleton.

"Don't pin this on me," he said, looking around and trying to find someone to meet his gaze. He didn't sound pleased as no one locked eyes with his mask, and his tone was one of regret and bewilderment as when he spoke. "He pulled a bow on me first! / Shot me in the thigh!"

One of the skeletons stood up, tears in his sockets as he faced the still bleeding Assassin with his big empty eyes. The red light that was present in all of their eye sockets were dimmed and sad looking, and he pointed his sword at the Vault Hunter with a tip that shook unsteadily with anger and pain. His voice was nasally from the damaged nostril holes that looked to have caved in partially, and it made Maya cringe a little when he talked.

"Sammy didn't shoot you, you son of a bitch! That was me – I shot you! I did it you fucker! I'd do it again if I could!" he screamed, his helmet falling off as he leaned forwards as if to carry his voice and rage through the air with a better signal or something of the like, Maya wasn't a poet and neither was the author, don't judge. "You hear me, you fleshy freaks?! We're gonna take you to Skeleton Jail assholes," he said breathily, evidently overjoyed by the prospect, "And we're gonna violate the living hell out of you – I'm gonna post the pictures all over the Echo Net, and then I'm gonna-"

There was another crack as Zer0 shot the skeleton mid-speech, this time in the femur with yet another revolver that he had gotten from somewhere.

"How many guns do you have?!" Maya demanded, taking this one as well from his grasp as the body dropped like his friend's had.

"Oh my god they're going to kill Kent too!" one of the skeletons screamed, holding his bow over his head as if to protect himself from any possibly incoming bullets. Zer0 might have shot this one too if Maya hadn't seen it coming, taking a third gun out of his hands before he had the chance to fire. She hoped that was the last, but she doubted it – he had a lot of fucking pockets, she noted. "He shot Kent for no reason! Why don't we have guns, oh god please-"

"He was armed, angry / would have stabbed me in the ass / got my STD," Zer0 defended himself, and Maya sighed as she realized modern day speech was prone to using acronyms to shorten long names regardless of how they sounded. That was the world they lived in now, and she couldn't change a generation no matter how hard she tried. How sad. "The choice was not mine."

"Kent's sword is melted to his hand!" the same skeleton that spoke before said, his head bowed towards the sand. All around them, skeletons were dropping to their knees with their hands over their skulls in a sign of defeat, and up on the tin wall behind them bows were being cast over the edge. "He can't put it away – it got stuck to him when one of the orcs set off a bomb near one of our camps, and he stopped it from causing damage to his kids by putting it in his rib cage!"

Maya's guilt intensified and an ellipses appeared on Zer0's mask. Her day was getting even worse, and she hadn't thought it possible.

"Well that is stupid. / I guess the Orcs killed Kent, then. / Nothing to be done," he told them simply, snatching his gun out of Maya's hands with a respectful nod in her direction. She wanted to close her eyes tightly as he began pointing it around – daring them to move wordlessly like he was holding up a bank or something – but found that she couldn't due to the fact that this was what a coward would have done. She would have tried to put together a plan to disarm the Assassin promptly after this realization, but decided to put it off when he did not shoot any of them immediately. A zero flickered to life on his visor, and she instead went over to examine Ken. The skeleton was, she noticed, twitching and trying not to move too much as blood flowed from his leg. Perhaps playing dead was one of their natural self defense systems – this not only made a certain amount of sense to Maya, but was so incredibly ironic she could taste the irony on her tongue while she patched the leg up; though the taste might have been some of the blood that she had unconsciously licked from the side of her mouth. Was probably a bit of Sammy, she decided. Tasted like a Sammy. "You can save yourselves. / I need a new STI / Do you guys have one?"

The skeletons began looking around at one another, mumbling quietly while she bandaged Kent's femur. She could hear some of the words that were spoken a bit too loudly, and the hesitance was causing Zer0 to thumb the trigger impatiently. She hoped she didn't have to Phaselock him – sparring with a man that may not be where you think he is was something that was incredibly hard to do, and from what she had heard, having him trying to actually harm you was much more than just unnerving; you were either a dead man walking or a captured one that was about to start talking. The man that had told her this spoke in very catchy rhymes, and Lilith had shot him after he entered a catatonic state of perpetual ranting to himself when he reached the word orange and became desperate to find a word that rhymed with it. She, out of curiosity, had later looked it up and found that the word Sporange was actually real. The more you know.

"Well mister, I don't much know what you'd want with an STI," one of the skeletons said as he stood up, reaching down for the buckle of his pants. Maya almost began to dry heave as he began undoing the clasp and prepared to take off his trousers – she fucking knew STI was a stupid and inconvenient acronym, and now Zer0 was about to figure it out too. Not wanting to see a boney willy, she screwed her eyes shut tightly and turned her head away. "But I do got one right here if ya need it."

When there were no gasps of shock or cries of horror or anything that she would expect, Maya opened her eyes to find that the Skeleton had indeed pulled down his pants. But, unlike a human, he did not have any junk to bump this story up to an M rating. Instead, he just had skeleton things. Maya didn't know and neither did the author, as neither were doctors. Instead, the skeleton had a fanny pack attached to his crotch, which was what had been causing the bulge she had been polite enough not to comment on mentally or verbally. She, needless to say, had many questions, but was simply too shocked to voice them as the skeleton opened the fanny pack.

"Now let me see 'ere… where did I put that gol darn Space Time Interface?" he asked himself as he rummaged through it. He looked up with a sideways glance at the two time and space travelers as he dug around in the pack on his crotch. "You two gonna keep staring, or you wanna come over here and help me look? It's a big bag you know."

"I… I-I'm fine here," Maya said as her words returned to her. The world was insane, and if she didn't stop gawking at every anomaly she would later realize that she would never do anything but gawk. "I'm sure you'll find it – it's not the biggest I've seen."

"Yeah, I know I know," the skeleton waved her off as Zer0 gave no answer aside from removing his finger from the trigger. "It's a hand-me-down, okay?"

Eventually the skeleton let out a triumphant grunt and drew a big computer chip from within his bag, and she wondered why he had it in the first place as he tossed it over to Zer0, who caught it with his free hand. Zer0's gun dipped as he held the chip up, examining it in the dim light of the beach with a smiley face being projected over the glass of his helmet. She assumed that was what he had been looking for, as he pocketed it with a nod.

"This is what I need. / You can put your pants back on / your fanny's showing."

"Nah, I'm good."

"For the rest of you," the Assassin continued, easing the hammer of his firearm into an uncocked position with his thumb but not lowering the weapon. She winced at her choice of words – uncocked was a dangerous term when surrounded by bone-men that were all lacking in genitalia, and she wasn't sure if it would offend them. "Throw down your arms and get lost / take Play-Dead with you."

Kent sat up and grunted, brushing Maya off as he was helped to his feet by his friends. He didn't seem too happy that his ruse had been seen through, and Maya wanted to tell him that he was probably the best fake corpse she had ever seen in an attempt to boost his confidence – not many people could say they were missing all of their internal organs and that their body consisted of human bones held together by what was probably magic.

Eventually the beach was almost empty and desolate after the skeletons had dispersed, and she was left alone with Zer0 and the headless corpse of Sammy the skeleton.

"...You just mugged a skeleton at gunpoint for the STI he was keeping in the fanny pack attached to his crotch," Maya said after she was sure that they had all retreated behind their tin wall. Her bones ached as she climbed to her feet – it felt like she had been like that for hours, and the Eridium must have been wearing off. Zer0 was already leaving, and she jogged after him while she talked. "That's what just happened. I can say that and for as stupid as it sounds it's the truth, isn't it?"

"Killed one of them too. / Today wasn't a bad day," Zer0 said, leading her back to where they had left the Space Time Distorter. She felt cold and numb, and it wasn't just the fact that the beach's winds were freezing cold – she was pretty sure that she was having a panic attack, and the world was quickly losing color. "Not great, but not bad."

She sat back down on her favourite rock when they reached their point of arrival, and watched as he climbed back into his Phone Booth Time Machine with the STI in hand. Sparks were still spraying lightly from where the tiny explosion had occurred previously, and without any grace he ripped the charred computer card off of the wall and threw it into the sand, where it exploded violently with a loud boom for no apparent reason. She gave no reaction to the detonation. "I want to go home. I don't care if there's a meteor hurtling towards it right now – at least death on Pandora is normal."

"Oh yeah… about that," Zer0 said slowly as he forced the STI unceremoniously against the wall where the old one must have been installed. The hesitance in his voice caused her to sit up straight, bringing her brain back to the world and waking her up again so that she could look critically at the Assassin as he worked. Whatever he was about to say, she instantly had decided, was not going to please her in the slightest, and it was obvious that they both knew it. "I must use grandiloquence," he muttered to himself as he looked away from her and focused on his work again. "Lest I break her brain."

"I can hear you, and I know what grandiloquence means," Maya said as he jammed what appeared to be random wires and cables into various ports on the Space Time Interface card. Her headache was coming back, and unlike the skeletons, this time it was out for vengeance. "What are you about to try and sugarcoat, Zer0? If you're going to say something, don't mince your words – I didn't come to Pandora because I thought my feelings weren't going to be hurt by-"

"There's no Pandora / Everyone we know is dead / there is no Santa."