(Opening Theme: Cry for the Truth by Michi TV Size)

-Sometime Ago on Pandora-

About two weeks had already gone by and so far they were making progress to get to where the Gortys upgrade was exactly. Each of them, Gortys included would sometimes take turns on driving the caravan, since the ride was longer than expected. Occasionally they would stop to spend the night, or just to stretch their legs since let's face it, no one wants to be cooped up in a caravan for so long. They would tell a little bit more about themselves to each other but Shadow still kept everything that was personal to himself like always.

Which would often disappoint Rhys, Vaughn, Fiona, Sasha and Plutia especially. Mion and Tracer on the other hand were the opposite from that; they were more than happy to tell a little bit about themselves with any chance they got.

It was already night among the frozen plains and almost everyone in the caravan were asleep. Sasha and Vaughn slept on the couch, while Mion, Shadow, Tracer and Plutia slept on the floor with sleeping bags that were provided. Fiona drove the caravan, while Athena leaned back against the wall with her arms crossed. Rhys stood in the back since he couldn't find himself sleeping. In fact for the almost the whole two weeks, he couldn't find himself sleeping at all, not even once.

Everything just seemed to bother him; with all that's been going on. Suddenly they have a bandit lord hunting them down, and possibly Hyperion as well, all of them wanting him and his friends dead, and he doesn't know if he should say if it's worse, but now him and Shadow both have stuck in there heads, an AI of Handsome Jack. He didn't know what to think anymore.

Speaking of Handsome Jack, he had suddenly appeared to Rhys as he does occasionally. "Hey there kid." He greeted, "Just checking in. I don't want to distract you from your victory laps now that Vasquez is dead. I'm also making sure of something… You haven't by any chance told Athena about me yet, have you?"

Rhys was a bit confused by his question. "Um… No." He replied, "Why do you ask?"

Jack sighed with relief before saying, "Because, if you do tell her about me, she'll cut your head off before you have a chance to explain yourself!"

Rhys's eyes widened in disbelief; Jack could tell by the look on his face that he had his doubts about that. "Seriously I'm not exaggerating!" Jack said to him, "The chick is crazy!… Plus she really, REALLY, doesn't like me."

Rhys seemed to have taken his word for it, much to Jack's satisfaction. "Okay look kiddo-" Jack started to say, but Rhys cut him off, "Stop calling me kiddo! Please!"

Athena had taken notice that Rhys was just talking to himself; although, obviously to her it seemed like he was talking to someone.

Curious she had asked him, "Who are you talking to?"

Rhys turned to her and stuttered. "Umm-uh-" He said, "Ha-"

All of sudden his robotic hand started acting on his own and slapped him at least five times across the face. He had realized that Jack was the one who did it; He gave him a look.

"Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry." Jack said, "But I really mean it, she's really gonna kill us. Hey what do you say, we go up the roof, huh sport? The nice warm, Vault Hunter free roof."

Athena gave Rhys a quizzical look, and was about to ask him something else; but all Rhys said to her before she could even speak was, "I uh-Suddenly need to go to the roof." And with that Rhys climbed up the ladder that was provided in the caravan. As Rhys opened the hatch and climbed on up, Jack appeared up on the roof.

"Listen you're probably gonna die, right?" Jack said to him, as he watched Rhys close the hatch, "And I'm not talking about Athena here, I'm just saying like in general. General sort of impending death."

Rhys sat with his legs close to his chest, "Okay…" Rhys said, understanding the situation to why Jack sounded a bit mad, "Is this about you not taking over my cybernetics?"

"Yeah! It's about that!" Jack said to Rhys angrily, "You trusted that floozy with a flashbang over your old pal Jack! I'm taking a little lack of trust here pal. What's going on? Tick tock… Why did you go with what's-her-nuts-plan instead of me huh? Your brain fall outta your head?"

"For your information, Fiona had a plan in mind that didn't involve shooting my friends!" Rhys said to him.

"Yeah?" Jack said to Rhys, "And that plan was what exactly?"

"Uh… Throw a flashbang and then sort of… Run in a random direction?"

"That's what I thought. You're lucky I took over Shadow's cybernetics and took over the drones, otherwise your buddy, or his buddy Mimi would've ended up being a coat rack!"

"Why do you care so much about what happens to us? To Shadow and Mion? I mean what exactly is your relationship with them?"

"Number one, that's none of your business, number two, I love your skull okay? It's shapely, well coiffed, I live in there. Well technically I live in both you and Shady's head, since I don't know which one of you will take me with you if either of you dies, trust me that's the last thing that I want. Seriously you put too much trust in Fiona's random improvising!"

Jack took a deep breath, calming down a bit. When he did, he said to Rhys, "Look, you don't trust me, I get it. But let me spoil the big secret about surviving on Pandora for ya. It's not about who's got the bigger gun, it's about teamwork. More than that, it's about compromise. If your old pal Vasquez had just given you and Shady the promotion, he wouldn't be dead now would he?"

"This coming from the dead guy." Rhys said.

Jack was silent at that, "Toche." Was all he said. He sat down and let his foot rest on the opposite leg, as if he was actually sitting on a chair. "Actually you know what?" Jack said, "Let's talk about that for a second. You know why I died?"

Loader Bot and Gortys were up on the roof as well, and were apparently listening to Rhys talk to himself since they couldn't see Jack. "Why is that guy talking to himself?" Gortys asked Loader Bot.

"He's going through some things." Loader Bot replied.

Rhys didn't have time to answer Jack's question, when Jack answered for him, "Because I didn't work with the people I didn't trust. If I'da just thrown stock options at the Vault Hunters instead of bullets. I'd be on a beach right now, doing disturbing graphic things with the local ladies. And if you can't learn to work with the people you wanna punch in the throat, then well-You're gonna die. With nothing but your pride and a fat hole in your sternum."

Rhys thought about what Jack was saying; he didn't want to admit it out loud, but he did point out a few things. About surviving on Pandora in all. Even though it's only been two weeks he could clearly see that Jack was indeed right about it.

"Well, if I'm gonna die." Rhys said, "I might as well die as the good guy."

"Oh is that so?" Jack said to him, "Cause' if you want, I can overload the neurons to your brain right now."

"Uh-uh, nononononono…"

Jack laughed at that, "I'm, I'm just kidding-I'm just messing with you, I can't do that. Or can I? Nah, I can't do that. I'm just being a dick. You wanna live, that's good, that's good."

Rhys looked off to look at the view as the caravan still drove. "I'm detecting some tension here." Jack said, "Which is a bummer. We should be pals, like Shady and me. You know I'm actually… I actually see a lot of myself in you."

This had surprised Rhys, when he heard Jack say that.

Jack continued to say, "I-I know I've done some kinda ehhh things, but we're a team here kiddo. And you can even ask Athena, or hell, even Shady… I always look out for my team. So I'm just asking you to trust me here."

Rhys-Not believing that he was actually saying this- had said to Jack, "I guess we can work together. For now."

Jack grinned at this, "You see? That wasn't so hard. I won't let you down kid, uh, Rhys. You just made a pal for life."

Rhys said awkwardly, "That… Sounded bad."

"Yeah, I just realized that sounded kinda ominous, like I was gonna kill you or something." Jack said awkwardly, "I didn't actually mean it… That way. My bad, but hey we're pals! Everyone's back!"

Jack snapped his fingers, realizing something, "Which reminds me, since we're gonna be stuck together with each other for the foreseeable future, I kinda wanna know where the hell we're going."

"You already know where we're going, we're following-"

"No, not like that general idiot. What is it you want out of all of this? Cause I wanna help you get it."

"...I… Come to think of it, I'm not really sure honestly. After all that's happened I haven't really thought about it."

Jack stayed silent; just thinking for a moment. He had said, "Well, when you've thought about it, just let me know, and I'll help you get it."

Jack stood up from where he sat, "Welp, this has been a good little talk. Maybe we'll talk later, oh and by the way, sorry about almost killing your friends, and taking over Shadow's head. See ya!"

With that Jack disappeared, leaving Rhys alone with Gortys and Loader Bot. Rhys couldn't help but wonder… Did he make the right choice in trusting Jack?

-Present; Somewhere on Pandora-

The group walked through the plains of the desert, as the sun had started to set over the horizon. They stopped in a certain area, and started to look around the place. "I didn't realize you two were getting all chummy." Fiona said to Rhys, "Are your best friends all just a bunch of assholes?"

Rhys didn't answer her question; hell he didn't turn to her to look her in the eye, the only thing she got was silence in reply. Fiona turned to look the otherway, honestly not knowing what else to say to him.

Before they could continue to walk, Shadow had said, "Hey, guys, can we just call it a night? Plutia's getting tired and we're not gonna get anywhere when it's dark."

Plutia let out a yawn and rubbed her eyes, "Mmm, so sleepy…" She groaned.

The Stranger looked, and couldn't help but agree. "Yeah, alright."

They had set up a fire to keep themselves warm from the cold. Rhys, Fiona, and Plutia slept while Shadow along with the Stranger stayed up, taking first watch. All Shadow did to pass the time was draw in the sand, and look to the night sky. There was nothing but silence around them; the only thing that was heard was the sound of skags howling in the distance.

"I'm curious." The Stranger finally said to the young teen, "What do you have to say in all this?"

"Huh?" Shadow said, "What do you mean?"

The Stranger clarified for him, "From what Rhys described, Jack seemed to have put a lot of trust in you, even if at times you didn't trust him. So what do you have to say it?"

Shadow heaved a deep sigh, "Now that's something a lot of people don't tend to ask me when they first hear about it. They'd just assume I treat Jack, like how everyone else treated him when he was alive."

"You knew him, when he was alive, and even after he died, you knew him as an AI."

"I didn't even realize I've known him for that long. I'll admit this one thing, he and I both thought alike of what we thought of what Pandora needed, but we had different ways of getting what we wanted, so I'll just leave it at that."

Shadow turned to the Stranger; Even though he couldn't see his face, he could already tell what he was thinking. He leaned back against a rock and asked him, "You know who I was before I worked in Hyperion? Don't you?"

The Stranger nodded his head, and replied, "I've heard stories about you. How Bandit Lords feared you, and how you helped people. You also had plenty of chances to kill Jack yourself, and yet every single time you came across one another, you chose not to do it."

"I chose not to kill him with good reason."

The Stranger sat across from him, using a rock as a chair, "I'll be the judge of that. Tell me what happened, when they found out about you and your life."

"Do I have a choice?" Shadow asked, before saying, "While we were on our way to get Gortys's upgrade, the caravan broke down. And I don't know if it was coincidence or not, but… The caravan broke down, near the place I once called home…"

(Ending Theme: Asterisk War Ending 1-I'm Waiting for the Rain)