Roland stared at his glass, still half-full with watered-down rakkale. His twin sister had already finished her second glass and was working on her third. He had been quiet since Riley had left, instead letting his vivacious sister chatter on about whatever her short-charged attention span wandered to. She hadn't mentioned it, but he knew that she had been to the fallen heroes' monument. She visited it frequently, and he could sense the sullen sobriety that it instilled in her underneath her bubbling and buzzing exterior.
"Angie," he said softly, cutting his sister off from her theories on how Dr. Tannis would have had sex with her long-lost lover Clork. He reached out and held her tattooed hand. Their matching green eyes met, and he could tell that she knew that he knew what she was really thinking about. He smiled at his sister, his built-in best friend. "We're our own people, Angie. We don't have to live up to anything but our own plans for the future."
Angel withdrew her hand and put it in her lap, staring down at the swirls that marked her as what she was. Of course he brother knew what was bothering her. They were silent for a moment. "Remember when we were kids, Rolly, and you would color in my tattoos with markers if I fell asleep before you?" She asked, a soft attempt at changing the subject, hoping that her brother would understand it was something she wasn't quite ready to talk about yet, even with him.
He let her have the victory. "And remember when I really wanted that remote-control Buzzard for my birthday, and Mom and Dad gave it to me, and I was so excited that you got excited too and shorted it out on accident?" She grinned and rubbed her tattooed arm, remembering that day.
"I used to spark a lot when I got excited. You know, Mom still keeps candles in her study, just in case." Their mother had decided her life's purpose was to gather all information on Siren history and heritage, which involved a lot of transcribing old texts and ECHO interviews. She had made a study in their house to work from, but relying on electricity for night work was a risky gamble when your young daughter was an untrained electric witch. An excited or angry baby Angel would often short out the electricity of the house and other houses nearby. Sometimes neighbors would joke that Angel should be hooked up to a generator to help power Sanctuary, to which her mother would savagely reply that this Angel would never be used as a tool. There was another silence, followed by a small sigh. "You'll know as soon as I'm ready to talk about it, Rolly."
"I'll know before you tell me, Angie."
"I know." She looked back up at her brother. "Speaking of things I know, and probably things everyone know…"
"If you start about Riley, I'll tell Dad you're the one who broke that bottle of expensive whiskey last month."
"I just wanted a taste, I didn't know it would be that strong!"
"So you just dropped the bottle?!"
"I'll tell him you're the one who got skag guts all in that old antique shotgun and gummed it up."
"That was you!"
"Dad doesn't know that!" They were laughing. Angel's peal was cut short by a gross snort, which caused Roland to laugh even harder. "Dammit, Mom! Why'd I have to get that trait of yours?!"
"You got her cool Siren powers. The universe had to even that out somehow."
"Yeah, well, at least I got the Siren powers. Riley didn't get that from her mom." The laughter trailed off and Angel turned her focus back to her hand. "She's really the lucky one, though. Being one of six in the universe is kind of a lot of pressure to do great things." She traced a swirl with her other hand. "And then on top of that I was named after a hero. And then on top of that our parents are heroes. And here I am, turning off people's computers because I think it's funny. How worthy of all that legacy."
"Hey… Mom doesn't really use her powers all that much anymore," Roland said, trying to take his sister's mind off of her existential dilemma.
"Yeah, but at least Mom's got a purpose. She's gathering like, all known information about Sirens. And that turned into basically building Sanctuary's library."
"We're still just kids, Angie…"
"We're nineteen, Rolly."
"That's still really young, Angie." He leaned over to hug his sullen sister. "We have so much time to figure out what our purpose is. Do you hear me? Ours. What we want. It's our destiny. It's not some cosmic script that we were born to act out, okay?" She didn't respond. "Okay, Angie?"
"Okay," she repeated softly.
Roland had never been as bothered by the layers of legacies that swaddled them. He was a galaxy-class sharpshooter; he had been sniping since he was a child, spending hours and hours practicing aiming, correcting for wind, calculating Coriolis effect. He had a passion and a purpose, a drive, a goal that was his. Maybe that was his lifeline. Angel, on the other hand, was much more whimsical, picking up hobbies and abandoning them with great frequency. She had no real overarching goal or purpose, unlike her dedicated brother. Roland knew that his sister just hadn't found that Very Important Thing yet, and he was pretty sure that would solve a lot of her insecurities regarding the matter; but he did understand that she had an extra blanket of legacy on top of her, her Siren heritage, an identity that he could never fully understand. He could imagine the extra pressure that would add to a young woman already feeling unworthy of both her parents' accomplishments and the legend of the martyr she was named for.
As the twins left the bar, he asked if she minded making a detour to Marcus Munitions- he still needed guns to salvage parts from to give to Riley. She didn't mind. Maybe buying a new gun would help her mood.
"No refunds," was the timeless welcome as they entered the subterranean shop. "Well, if it isn't some Vault Kids."
"Hi, Marcus," they chorused.
"I need a steady Vladoff," Roland reported. "That's all I care about, is the stability."
"Well, then…" A long, shiny sniper rifle was tossed onto the counter. "This one is steady as a rock," Marcus said. "Not a lot of damage, though. So no one wants it."
"That's fine." They haggled about price for a minute, and soon Roland held his new gun.
"I want…" Angel thought for a minute. "To shoot a lot of flaming bullets really really fast."
"What else would a Siren want but a Maliwan SMG?" Marcus muttered to himself before disappearing into the back room. "Have you ever even touched a gun that wasn't made by Maliwan?"
"Why would I want to?" was the cheerful reply.
"Whatever," Marcus grumbled, returning. He placed a SMG onto the counter. "This one is-"
"Ohhh, SubMalevolent Grace model!" Angel grabbed the gun and weighed it in her hand. "A Maliwan classic. I want it." Whether it was the glowing tattoos or the blossoming bosom, Angel never had to haggle with Marcus for as long as her brother. They were soon back on the Sanctuary streets with new purchases in hand.
"Angie, mind if I get one of your old Maliwans to scrap? It's for one of my sniper rifles," he explained, knowing his sister didn't want to be complicit in doing a favor for Riley. "I need a Maliwan effect charge to make it do elemental damage."
"Tell me the purpose, and I'll decide your element," she replied with a flourish of her gun-wielding hand, much to the dismay of those passing by who had to duck away from the barrel.
"Well, I was gonna take it out and bullseye skags in the Highlands-"
"Electricity, good choice." Angel's tattoos glowed faintly as a small spark ran down the spirals from her shoulder to her palm. "The best element, to be sure."
"Mom would disagree," Roland reminded her.
"Whatever, Mom can take her caustics all day." She closed her hand over the spark in her palm and the glow subsided.
They were at the center of the city, underneath the towering statue of Roland's namesake, Roland the Soldier. "You can wait here," Roland the second told his sister, gesturing to one of the many benches. "I'm going to take this to the garage. It'll go faster if you don't come with me."
"Don't spend the whole day trying to take home garage garbage, Roland Ezra," Angel said with mock severity, arms akimbo in mimicry of their mother when she would speak sternly to them. Her brother rolled his eyes as he loped away in the direction of the garages. "Garbage, garage… huh, only a letter off," she muttered to herself. "I'll have to remember that one."
Roland knew that if he took his sister with him to the garages, Riley would just ignore him while she and Angel verbally assaulted each other. The only real chance he had of interacting with the pretty mechanic was if he was without his biological partner. He clutched the Vladoff sniper tighter as he imagined what kind of conversation they could have. Maybe Riley would even ask him to bring her more guns to scrap for parts. Then he could see her even more often. It would be like they worked together… partners.
He practically floated on that thought all the way to the city's edge, where the original garages still stood, unchanged by the city's massive growth. The door opened onto a metal catwalk, under which the sprawling garage floor was filled with the city's mechanics, each working on projects at their benches. Riley's work zone was furthest from the ladder that connected the entry catwalk to the smooth concrete floor. Roland quickly scurried down the ladder and navigated his way through the hustle and bustle of the oil-stained figures whose banter and laughter mixed with the clanging of metal and whirring of machinery in an organic-synthetic aria. He slowed as he approached Riley's bench, again tightening his grip on the sniper rifle, this time for support as he neared the tall redhead, clad in a stained green jumper. Riley hadn't even looked his way to see him arrive, but as soon as he stepped past the invisible barrier that demarcated her personal workspace, she whirled to face him as if she had known where he was the entire time. This was her kingdom, and she was acutely aware of everything in it, down to the smallest wingnut.
"Oh, nice rifle," she said excitedly, wrenching it out of Roland's hands before he could even stutter a greeting. "Nice scope," she muttered to herself, peering through the viewfinder. "Mag size isn't too bad, either… I can use these parts for some of these other projects." She turned the gun over in her hands, running her trained hands over each piece. "Kicker ain't too strong, but that's okay. Everything else is still good enough to salvage after I get the stabilizer. Hmm…" she continued her tactile evaluation as she trailed off, lost in thought. Roland was too entranced by her pretty pale hands dancing across the metal to interrupt the scene in front of him. After a long inspection, her attention returned to the world around her, and she noticed Roland still standing there. "Do you, uh… need something else?"
"N- uh, I mean, well, uh, hey," he stammered weakly.
"Uh, hey," she returned, before placing the rifle onto her workbench among a few more disassembled guns. "Did you, uh, want to put in a charge, too?"
"Oh, well, uh, I can get one by tomorrow," he explained. "I just, you know, wanted to get this to you as soon as possible."
"Oh, okay." There was a long silence in which Roland didn't know whether to leave or stay. It was a good five minutes of him standing there awkwardly before Riley made up his mind for him. "So… you know the Abandoned City, right?"
Of course he knew the Abandoned City. Once called Opportunity, it was the site of the battle where both his and his sister's namesakes laid down their lives during the Hyperion Wars. During that time, the city had been rampant with Hyperion's Loader robots, digistructing continually to protect Hyperion's intended "paradise". After the Hyperion tyrant who started the war was killed at the second Vault, the Crimson Raiders attempted to rout the city of its mechanical guardians, but the digistructing program continued to spew out Loaders. Even Gaige, a Vault Hunter famed for her prowess with machinery, had been unable to halt the program. Unable to halt the spawning of the robots, the Crimson Raiders, along with the mechanical knowledge of Gaige and Scooter, had fashioned a sort of reverse shield to bubble Opportunity in, which prevented the Loaders from exiting the city's premises. Without a way to stop them from digistructing, the city had been left alone within the shield bubble for the last twenty years. Still abandoned except for the robots, today it was referred to as the Abandoned City, if it was even referred to at all. A haunted relic of heroes gone too soon.
"Well," Riley continued. "I've been thinking about it a lot. About that unstoppable digistructing. What kind of program allows for an essentially infinite digistructing of materials? If I could get to it, crack the program… think about what that would mean for Sanctuary. An infinite supply of materials. We could apply it to Crimson Raider weaponry- like how those gun turrets digistruct their ammo supplies? But those programs only allow for a finite number of bullets and it overheats really easily. If I can get at the Opportunity program, if I can figure out how it allows for infinite production, I could make guns that literally never run out of bullets, don't even need a cooldown time." Her golden eyes were wild as she got more and more excited. "It's fucking fascinating, is what it is, I could do so much with that program."
Roland was taken aback by the wild vigor that had taken over Riley. He had seen her get excited about her machinations, but he had never seen it to this fervent extent. She was almost foaming at the mouth. It took him a few beats to collect himself. "So…"
"So I need you to help me sneak in to the Abandoned City. I need someone who can shoot to cover me. You know none of the Crimson Raiders or Vault Hunters, even our parents, you know none of them would let us do it, much less help us. They'd freeze our fast travel access and basically ground us in Sanctuary." She grabbed his shoulders, and Roland found that the feather-soft hands were really just his imagination as the rough vises clamped tighter. "I need to get into that fucking city, Roland."
What could he do? Say no to the girl he had been pining after for years?
"O-okay, Riley. I'll do it."
trashlady: my fucking babies. there are a few more vault kids I haven't introduced yet, because, well, this is only chapter two. their parentage is a lot more obvious, though.
trashlady: the story essentially is told from the viewpoints of angel2 and roland2. so, we won't know what riley's fucking problem with angel2 is until she actually says it. well, you won't. i already know. but you get the picture.
trashlady: is it getting any clearer who fucked who to make these three babies? please keep guessing i love the attention.
trashlady: if you have any comments at all about the story please tell me. what do you like? what don't you like? should I stop doing something? should I continue doing something? please talk to me I am lonely
trashlady: one final note, I can always give you challenges slash ideas for borderlands fanfiction. if you're into that kind of shit drop a line.