Note: Here we get Sasha, Fiora, August, and the gang introduced. I hope I did them well. Remember this IS from Rhys' perspective, and I don't want him to be as openly engaging in having an interest in Sasha like in canon. I still plan for them to get together, but that will be a long time down the road. There is just too much animosity between their people's for it to make sense. You could go with the Romeo and Juliet approach, and have it fit nicely I imagine, but I'm not like that.

Chapter 4 - Let's Make a Deal

"Hola."

All I can do is stare for a long moment as a red eye looks down at me. It's a loader bot… a Hyperion loader bot.

What is it doing here? I have trouble thinking. My head is pounding, my ears are whistling, and the world is spinning. I close my eyes and try to not throw up.

I hear Vaughn screaming, and I look over to see a bandit grab the briefcase, only for Vaugn to be lifted up with it. He has himself handcuffed to the thing.

Oh, yes! That's why!

"Loader bot." I look to it.

"Si, senor?"

Is that a yes? I point to the bad guys who are in the process of recovering from shock. "Kill the bandits! Protect us!"

"Como desées! Voy a golpear a los infieles!" I have no idea what he said, but I think it means yes. Seeing as how his arm spun around to change from a hand to a gun and started shooting.

Loader Bot was the pynical of Hyperion engineering combined with mass production. He has pin-point accuracy and the best weaponary money can buy. Suffice to say, the bandits didn't stand a chance.

I wish I could say I felt remorse for them. I didn't. They were Pandorans. They were scum, bandits, criminals. There was no justice here, so I was left to do my fair share. All of these people would have been executed if placed before a jury anyway.

Besides, its what Jack would have done.

I allowed myself a moment to smirk before blood exploded in the air everywhere the robot aimed. It was a lot of red… I had never seen people's insides suddenly become outsides so easily.

All of my brovado disappeared and my eyes widened in shock as I came to realize probably the worst thing I could have learned… how easy it was for a person to die.

It's too easy. Way too easy.

Sure, I've always known. I've never exactly been ignorant or completely innocent. But its another to see ten strong men torn limb from limb from projectile fire in a bloody mess of organs, limbs, and blood in a matter of seconds. These were people stronger than me…

I felt nauseus and weak at the knees. I didn't feel guilty for ordering the robot to massacre a group of people who tried to kill us. I didn't feel guilty of having been involved in killing a bunch of barbarians and savages. What I felt was an overwhelming mortality.

The Pandorans down the street hid and returned fire on Loader Bot, and the robot took the hits gracefully. Dents appeared across his surface, but it returned fire easily enough.

A girly-scream reached me from a distant alley, and I felt a chill go down me.

Vaughn.

I ran after the voice. I sped my way into the alley. Loader Bot noticed my departure and sluggishly clambered after me. Unfortunately the alley was too small for it, and it said something in Spanish… I honestly have no idea.

Around the corner was another bandit. He aimed a shotgun up at me as I turned the corner, and for a brief moment I saw a kid as scared as I was. I ducked like a coward just as a shot flew over my head, and I tackled him. The gun went rolling across the ground.

Hovering somewhere between fleeing for my life and terrified for my best friend, I kinda did both. I ran from the kid in the direction of Vaughn's scream. I ducked from gun fire, leaped away from knives and machettes, and focused on running as fast as I could.

The whole town had gone mad! Gun fire was everywhere! This wasn't about a group of bandits going after a briefcase anymore, this was a city-wide murdering spree! There was no law! Nothing! And that showed itself more than I had ever realised.

I was a fool to have come down to Pandora. It was a world of barbarians and cannibals and madmen. Only a guy as awesome, as resourceful, and as brave as Jack could have tamed this wild land. I'm just… Rhys.

Before long I came to sight of a group of Pandoran holding each other at gun-point with Vaugn being held hostage by one of them.

On one side was the bandit-cook with an axe. On the other was some scruffy looking young man with a pistol and a…

My brain momentarily freezes at the sight of her. I had expected a lot of things from this place in terms of females. Perhaps a wrinkled witch with a boil on her nose, or a warrior woman with a six-pack on both biceps… but she was strinkingly… normal. Kinda cute actually.

Lilith rolls her eyes. "Typical male. No matter what is going on, you still have to stop and check out who you're going to bang."

"Hey!" Rhys defended himself, pouting. "My thoughts were entirely innocent. I was merely surprised to see a female here who wasn't a complete hag."

"Do I look like a hag to you?"

"Uh… no." Rhys admitted honestly.

"Then what was that point of thinking all of us here are?" Lilith demanded.

Mordecai sighed and mouthed, 'She's very defensive about sexual sterotypes.'

"Sorry. I'm just saying my impression at the time." Rhys muttered.

"Well, its stupid."

"Yeah? But its honest at least. I'm not hiding my first impressions here." Rhys returned.

Lilith glared at him and said nothing more. So Rhys continued.

"Rhys!" Vaughn yells in relief.

The guy with the axe turns and backs up to keep Vaughn between both the young guy with the pistol and myself.

And the young guy with the pistol shifts just enough to be ready to shoot me at a moments notice, and the girl pulls out an smg and aims it directly at me.

Yeah, I was stupid to think for a moment she was normal. She may look cute and less savage than everyone else, but she is just as lethal and uncivilized.

I skid to a stop and raise my hands up.

"CHICKEN!" A high-pitched voice behind me yells and the lil-psycho comes running at us.

"You better stop." The girl momentarily points at the dwarf and fires at his feet. I feel the bullets brush by my face. The dwarf-in-a-mask jumps under a barrel and starts barking like a dog.

I don't know if that was luck on my part or skill on hers, but if her aim had been centimeters to the right, she would have shot me in the face. I feel the overwhelming sense of fear, mortality, and powerlessness return. My knees want to furiously shake, but I force myself to stand.

Vaughn is on the line.

We stand in silence, all sides measuring the situation. The only noise made is the sound of distant gun-fire and other people dieing as the whole town goes insane.

My mind goes into overdrive. This is as dangerous a situation as I have ever seen. Not outright dangerous as before, but dangerous in how it could go either way so easily.

The only sounds uttered by us is Fido's barking and Vaughn's faint whimper of pain and terror. His wrist is twisted at an angle that doesn't look natural and he is covered in bruises and dirt and scratches.

"It's broken." Mordecai comments casually.

Well, if they aren't going to say anything, I might as well do what I can to take control of the situation. At the very least I need to buy time for Loader Bot to catch up and kill these people.

What would Jack do?

Jack would turn his enemies into his allies.

"Okay. Uh-" Everyone turns their attention to me. I still have my hands up. "Listen, this is all one giant misunderstanding. All we wanted was directions. Vaughn and I didn't want trouble."

"You're Hyperion. You bring trouble just by existing." The girl says with a snide smirk.

Damn, she's a total b****.

"Regardless." I lower myself a tiny bit like a short bow. Hopefully making myself less tall and more at their mercy will help appease them. "Lets not do anything crazy. We're all adults here. So let's talk."

"Sure. Just talk." The guy with the pistol says sarcastically. The girl chuckles and the axe-guy shakes his head in disbelief. Their guns don't waver.

"Hey, I know. Why don't we share our names? My name is-"

"Rhys. What do you think we are? Children?" The girl responds in aggravation.

I want to say, 'No, you're a bunch of uncouth, uneducated, uncivilized savages who believe in shoot-first and shoot-second.'

Rather I say, "No. I'm just trying to work things out. I came here to make a deal. All I want is my friend and the briefcase, and I'll be gone. I don't want to hurt anyone. If you want to show off your-" lengths… "skills, I'm sure it can be done when there are no more innocent bystanders."

"I would hardly call you innocent, what with calling down that robot." Axe-guy says gruffly.

"That was you?" The pistol-guy raises an eyebrow.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

The girl though, she glances at Vaughn and the briefcase. "How much is in that?"

Of course. She wants a damn cut. An angry ember sits in my stomach. How much more will this day take from me? I have most likely lost what innocence I have left, I will have nightmares for the rest of my life, I lost my promotion, I've had to bow and suck up to just about everyone in the known galaxy, my best friend is between an axe and a pistol, and now I have to lose a few bucks.

A few bucks may mean the deal will be canceled or I may be called out for being a cheat, cutting the buyer off short. But then, the buyer is most likely Pandoran. I would be doing the galaxy a service to be taking a jab at the scum.

"A few thousand." I lie.

"Heh…" The axe-guy smirks. "Too heavy to be just that."

I glare at him. Why did he have to open my mouth!

"Did you just lie to me?" The pistol guy asks, a bit too casually as he slowly turns the pistol toward me. I take a step back in fear.

"Ten-million! It's ten-million!" Vaughn yells.

The girl looks slightly surprised, but merely smiles brightly and lowers her gun. She nudges the pistol-guy's pistol up so he won't shoot me. "Hey, August. Aren't we supposed to be meeting with a couple Hyperion for a ten-million dollar deal?"

I look between them confused, then my eyes widen in shock as realization slowly comes over me.

August? The guy Vasquez was talking to?

Them?

They're the buyers!? They're the ones with the vault key? They don't look like Vault Hunter material. How did they get their hands on one?

Wait. Stop Rhys. You can use this.

I show nothing on the outside, but I see an opening. A wound in the situation. I smell blood. And like a shark, I go for it.

Nauseu hits me. Okay… perhaps a blood and shark metaphor is not good for today…

As Jack always said: Luck is where preperation meets oppurtunity.

I pull up on my store of fake confidence and chuckle. "You? You're August?"

"Yeah, so?" August asks me. He lowers his pistol ever slightly due to the girl's words, and I see his brain working.

"Dude, I'm Rhys and this is my partner, Vaughn. Vasquez sent us." I drop the name Vasquez as proof. "You know… for the 'item'." I slowly drop my hands and make myself seem relieved. "I had a name, but I didn't have a face to put to it. Sorry, I mixed you up. We were just on our way to meet with you."

Axe-guy looks between us confused. Vaughn still looks terrified out of his mind, but better. He looks relieved actually… and… trusting. I've never seen him that confident in me. With both of our lives on the line, I'm literally riding the waves, and he is letting me gamble with our lives.

I don't know whether to love my bro more and appreciate the open trust, or feel terrified of having it in the palm of my hand.

The girl and August both look at me skeptically, but in two different ways. August is measuring the situation while the girl is analyzing… me. She doesn't trust me.

That is just great, but then, I need just one person on my side here. So I focus my attention on August more than his little ***** girlfriend.

"I wasn't aware Vasquez would be sending someone else in his stead." August replies. "He never said anything about you."

I chuckle. "That's Vasquez for you. He may be fine with getting his hands dirty, but he won't get acual dirt on them. Besides, there is a chain of command. As chief of contracts, this falls into my lap."

"Does it now?" August puts his head to the side, and nods. "Alright. I'll bite, for the moment."

The axe-guy makes a run for it and drops Vaughn. Vaughn falls on his butt alive and well. August holster's his pistol and motions for us to follow. The girl eyes me, analyzing and distrustful, but follows after him.

Situation successfully difused. Victory.

My feeling of victory is momentarily ruined by the sound of gunfire in the distance, and I remember Loader Bot. I whisper into my arm, "Loader Bot, find somewhere to hide nearby. We're fine for the moment."

"Entendido! Voy a esconderse como una sombra por debajo de la oscuridad! Nadie sabrá de mi existencia!"

Right. What he said. "Uh… I'll miss you too."

I help raise up Vaughn off the ground and we follow after August and his girlfriend. He shows us to a building that acts as a kind of museum. The front door has a panel on it that reads, 'Mansion of Mystical Mysteries'. I scoff and shake my head. All we wanted was to find this place. The bandits could have saved everyone a bunch of trouble by just showing us where it was.

The sight of blood and guts returns to my mind in full force and I stumble under the impact. I struggle not to throw up. The one thing I have never ever done, purposefully, is take a life. I've hurt people. I've schemed and clawed my way up to where I am, but I have never taken a life. That is a level that I feel is reserved for someone as heartless as Vasquez.

But now I'm no better… Is it because its really just that easy that I had myself fooled into thinking only bad people killed and murdered? Or am I just as bad?

"Rhys, you okay? You're pale." Vaughn whispers.

Vaughn shakes from the adrenaline rush, but he is still concerned with me. I shake my head and plaster on a fake smile. "I'm okay, bro. Just glad you're okay."

"I'm… not." Vaughn looks down in regret. "I couldn't do anything… and people are dead because of us."

"No." I assure him. "People are dead because of themselves. They attacked us."

He frowns in thought, but I don't know if he agrees. Regardless, he drops it and follows after August, who is waiting for us at the far end of the hall. "Take your time." August calls after us sarcastically.

"Don't mind if we do." I smirk. I let my eyes glance around. Seeing the exotic items might help me get my mind off of what just happened. The dead people out there… the… moving on.

The museum is little more than an assortment of dead animal skeletons and portraits of dead figures in history. I briefly read the panels of the animals out of a mix of curiosity and caution, as I might need to have some idea how dangerous they are if any pop up in the next… I don't know. Five minutes?

The people marked as historically important though, are mostly people I recognize, but from a polar opposite view of what I'm used to. Vaughn stops beside me to look as well.

The first ones I notice are Vault Hunters, and they are declared as heroes. They went out and destroyed great evil, Handsome Jack and the like. I can't help but chuckle because their own crimes are glossed over. I wonder what Jack would think of how they have him in history here. Granted, I know Jack didn't keep his hands clean, but he did great things and tried to tame the savage land. While the savages are depicted as noble.

Not sure whether to think them ignorant or hypocrites.

"Hey! I'm in a museum!" Brick exclaims in awe.

"Not sure how I feel about that, amigo." Mordecai eyes the life-like statues. "And what you mean hypocrites? You really want Lilith to kill you or something?" Lilith is too busy glaring angrily at Rhys to say anything. Rhys leans back away from her, a bit scared he might be pushing it with the story.

"It's what I was thinking at the time." Rhys explains.

Vaughn winces when his hand brushes something, and I stop to have a look at him. His wrist is getting a purplish color and looks really really painful, but he is doing his best to have a firm upper lip about it.

"We will need to have this looked at when we get back." I say as I hold his wrist in my hands and look it over. "I would do something, but I ain't exactly a medic."

"Heh… I know." He agrees. "You break a toenail and think it ruins your whole figure."

"Perfection is a delicate thing to balance."

August's girlfriend rolls her eyes. I look at her out of the corner of my eye. "What's your problem?" I ask.

"Nothin'." She turns and walks off, but now I'm pissed. What exactly is her problem?

"If anyone should be having a problem, its me!" I growl. She just glances at me. "You about shot me!"

"I didn't." She replies easily.

"But you about did!"

"And I still didn't." She answers again in a sing-song voice, not even bothering to look at me.

I puff up in indignation. Hearing her self-righteous bullshit makes me angrier, "What if you had! You would have killed me! Then how would you and your boyfriend get the money?"

She tenses briefly, and stops to look at me and her eyes sharpen in anger. "Listen, I don't know what you want from me. You want me to apologize for NOT shooting you? Fine, I'll shoot you right here and give you exactly what you want. Or, perhaps you should consider the fact that I have been a crack-shot since I was SIX! I don't want to hit something, I don't. I DO want to hit something, I do. I didn't shoot you because I didn't want to, have you thought about that Mr. Hyperion Bigshot!" She punctuates her point by jamming a finger on my chest.

She is briefly confused by the fact that her tap has a metallic clink to it, but she still glares up at me, and I just step back. I've never had someone this angry with me in my face.

Holy Jack! Pandorans are emotional! Yeah, I had a problem, but she is like an inferno! She's a banshee! I have NEVER seen anyone act out like this at Hyperion! People there have respect, use their indoor voices, and at times lash out in anger by writing up reports or make rumors to give you a bad name or just backstab you on a deal.

This woman is now the scariest thing on Pandora. Like an explosion or volcano going off in my face.

Wait… she… she didn't shoot me because she didn't want to?

A couple of August's stooges walk over. One has a mohawk going and is well built. The other has a goutee. Can't say anything special about them otherwise. The skinny goatee-one asks. "Anything going on-"

"Shut up." The girl flips him a finger. She is still glaring at me.

"Oh, dude. That just aint right. Did she just do what I think she did to me?" The other stooge asks his friend.

"I think she did."

The girl ignores them. At this point I'm backed into the wall. "You at least had the smarts to bring armor down here!" She continues, "Because here I was thinking for a moment that a couple of Hyperion's coming down here unarmed meant you were ignorant, foolish, or just plain stupid! And at this moment, I'm leaning toward all three! So you got shot at… congratulations. Welcome to your first day on Pandora." She pats me on the shoulder hard enough to bruise, making me flinch, and she turns her attention to Vaughn, who is hiding. Her banshee looks disappears and in its place is… a nice girl with bright eyes? She smiles warmly, albeit untrusting. "As for you, I think I know someone who can help you with that. Come on."

Vaughn glances at me and nods meekly. "Yeah, uh- sure."

Vaughn follows after the girl and I just stare at them. My legs won't move. Holy Jack… that was… I can feel my adrenaline going and it leaves me shaking. My fight or flight senses are tingling, and its leaning toward the run-like-your-ass-is-on-fire area.

Lost a promotion to my arch-nemesis, shot at, playing a part in killing people in a very bloody manner for the first time, having Vaughn put between a gun and an axe, being shot at again, and now being yelled at by the loudest banshee I have ever met… I've had a bit of a bad day.

I sigh deeply from the stress. "What's your problem?" One of the stooges ask me.

"Just… having a long day." I reply. "Damn she was… Is she always that CRAZY!?"

The guy raises an eyebrow. "You don't spend much time around girls do you?"

"That was actually very well controlled compared to most girls I know." Mordecai comments.

"Is that a pass at me?" Lilith growls.

Mordecai says nothing.

"Whatever." I ignore them and follow after everyone. I'm alive. I can't trust them, but I made it. I beat Vasquez to the punch. Breathe in, breathe out. Center focus. Eyes on the prize. Seal the deal. Then get the hell out of Pandora and don't look back, and just consider it to be one gigantic nightmare.

Let's go.

I walk down the hall to enter a fenced off yard in the back. There's a table in the back and some kind of trailer car in the distance. August is sitting on the other end of the table with the case of his on the table, which I'm guessing from his protective stance and the security built into the case that it is the prize. Vaughn is over to the side with August's girlfriend and… some tall woman in a cowgirl hat and vest. She looks like your all-around cow-girl actually.

She also has Vaughn's bad hand placed between her hands, and is talking with him. Right before my eyes, she shows interest in things she manages to figure out his interests like a psychic, shares a common interest in them (albeit a bit ignorant), and Vaughn calms down. I stop for a moment to be sure I'm seeing it right. Vaughn is a scared hamster half the time. He has more morals than anyone I've ever met and is equally scared by everything. Numbers is his safety net. Calculation. Odds. He has spent every second on Pandora jumping at every shadow, pulled around, shot at, and had axes and blood put against his neck.

And she's made him calm with just a few words. Something about that sends warnings in the back of my mind. Not the Pandoran 'I'm going to be shot at in the next five minutes' warnings (that I admittedly don't have), but the Hyperion kind. I may not have seen the bandits coming, but I know a social-engineer-type hacker when I see one. I run my ECHOeye and scan her face. I will want to have her memorized.

August's girlfriend suddenly tenses, and I glance to her. She does her best to not look back at me, and I raise an eyebrow curiously. Have they never seen an ECHOeye before? I turn it off. Last thing we want to do is scare them.

Vaughn actually smiles and blushes a bit under her rabid attention and rubs the back of his head nervously. They're talking about video games now. *SNAP* Vaughn squeals. He clutches his now-back-in-place wrist and falls to his knees.

"There you go, all fixed." The cow-girl says with a reassuring smile. I almost chuckle. I should have seen that coming. She got him loose and unexpecting for her to snap his wrist back in place. Not exactly what I would call medical care, but it works.

"Are we ready to get this show on the road? You know, sometime before I turn fifty?" August asks from the table. He's aggravated. He is barely showing patience at us wasting time.

"Ready when you are." I nod. I glance to Vaughn. "Bro, you good?"

Vaughn pokes his wrist, flexes it a bit, even pokes it. He still winces, but he doesn't look like he is in a lot of pain. He rolls his shoulders and nods with a… semi-relaxed smile. (As relaxed as he will probably be on Pandora.) "All good."

"Gre- what now?" August sighs and rubs his temples. His girlfriend is whispering something with the cow-girl and whatever it is she says makes the cow-girl tense up rigid. Her eyes widen briefly. A normal person wouldn't catch it. Not even my normal eye did, but my ECHOeye did. I narrow my eyes at her again, warnings going off in the back of my mind. Something is not right here.

August's girlfriend steps away from cow-girl and smiles. It is warm and dangerous at once. If I weren't watching for it, I would even say open, but there is a hidden nervousness in her that wasn't there before. August catches onto it as well. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothin'…" Realizing she is caught, she changes her tune. "Just a feeling."

A… feeling. I share a glance with Vaughn, and he shrugs.

"What kind of feeling?" August grows more wary, but not towards her, towards the situation. My skills kick in and tell me this is not a direction I want this to go. This is bad-deal country.

"Are we basing a ten-million dollar deal on feelings here?" I ask with fake curiosity.

"Nothing personal, Hyperion. But I've learned to trust her feelings." August says with more respect than I would have expected, but my warnings are still going off. If anything, it's worse now. She has stupid feelings, and he is trusting in them. We're so close! "What kind of feeling babe? Good, bad?"

"Not sure." She gulps. "Bad, I think." August looks at her heavily and she takes a step back from the intensity of his gaze. He is not happy, but he is also not arguing with her. Not arguing with the shooty-feely banshee girl is not good in my book in the middle of a deal! My life is on the line!

"Hey, it's okay." I try to reassure her. "You saved our asses, and I realize I… I acted like a bit of an ass earlier, but I am grateful you saved our lives. So… Thank you." I surprise myself with the sincerity of the statement.

They all (except Vaughn) stop to stare at me. Boom. They weren't expecting appreciation. Time to keep the momentum going.

"I know this may not mean as much to you, as you all live here and endure this kind of day all the time, but for us… its special. It's a terrifying unknown, and we came here to make a deal. The fact that we were willing to come all the way here and go through things we have never experienced in our lives hopefully should prove our sincerity. The cash is real. The vault key is real. The deal is real." August's girlfriend gets more tense suddenly, and the warning flags in my mind go from yellow to red. Something is VERY wrong. Unlike her, though, I am not going on feelings. I'm going by facts.

Okay, maybe its part feelings.

Wait… where's the cow-girl?

The red-flag is officially blinking in multiple colors.

"Agreed." August nods. "You guys went through a lot of trouble to get this done, let's do it."

"Yeah!" Vaughn agrees.

He plops the briefcase on the table and goes to open it at August's insistence, but I slam my hand down on the lid first, and sit down. Back in my element. "I know how this goes. First, introductions of the parties involved, then you show us the merchandise, then we show you the money. Let's not complicate a simple system."

August gets aggravated, but he pushes it back and nods with impatience. "I'm August, and this is Sasha." He motions to his twitchy girlfriend.

"This is Vaughn, and I'm Rhys."

"Okay. There is also a third party. She… she's not here." August glances around.

Sasha speaks up, "I think she went to the bathroom or something."

Sasha Mc. Shooty-Feely is covering for cow-girl… My ECHOeye twitches, but I keep the instinct to turn it on down.

"Whatever, her fault if she doesn't get introduced." August waves it off. "I'm tired of waiting. She was the archeologist who picked up the merchandise."

Wait… Wait wait wait.

Archeologist? Aren't they supposed to be like… antisocial? I've encountered a few. Pandora is a goldmine for members of the scientific community who can afford enough protection or have the wits to survive. They all have one thing in common. They are odd. They have trouble with engaging completely with people. They lack social skills and have oddities. In fact, it is these people that make up a huge portion of the market on Hyperion for people to be taken advantage of and backstabbed specifically because of their lack of social understanding.

Perhaps some good ones will still have average social skills, but I have never seen a scientist who digs in dirt or jumps in holes or stares into microscopes with the skills cow-girl had to calm down Vaughn.

I don't like what I'm seeing, but I don't show anything. I'm fully in my element. I'm in control, or trying to be at least.

August turns his safe towards us and flips it open, and all of my preconceptions disappear under the sheer glowing brilliance of the sight. In one moment, it was all worth it.

A Vault Key.

"Whoa." Mordecai sits up straight. Brick rubs his eyes at the sight. Even Lilith looks amazed.

Rhys smirks, "Beatiful isn't it?"

"I'll be damned. They actually got their hands on a Vault Key." Lilith mutters.

Rhys frowns and sighs. "That's when things went wrong."

Sasha slams the safe shut and pulls it off the table away from us. August stands up, understandably freaked out at this move on her part. He's completely out of the loop, and she is very unhappy. Now I'm unhappy. I glare at her. She's not running away from it, but she is trying to keep it away from us.

"What is your problem?" I ask, barely trying to keep myself from yelling and being unprofessional.

"Sasha!" August yells anyway.

"I-I can't do this. I am uncomfortable with this situation. Not with them." She backs away from us.

You know what. Screw it. "Look, I apologized for being an ass earlier and I thanked you for saving our butts! What more do you want from me? Do you want me to get on my knees and beg!"

"NO ONE DOES THAT!" She barks angrily. "And ESSPECIALLY Hyperion ore monkey's who would rather blow up a small defenseless village than talk things through!"

For a moment, all I can do is look into her eyes. Of all the things I expected to see, pain was not among them. There is a lot of pain in her eyes, and she uses it to make herself angrier and angrier.

For that moment, all I can do is feel guilty. Perhaps Hyperion has left a few innocents out in the dust, but that's just how the crap goes sometimes. No system is perfect.

She continues yelling, "You people enslave entire country-sides to mine your precious oridium, leave orphans out in the dust, and steamroll right over them! Why should we trust a THING you say?!"

August tries to get through to her, but she is outright ignoring him. Her attention, her anger, is on me. I'm wearing an Hyperion badge. I was about to be promoted to a semi-high position at the Hyperion station. I have Hyperion tech in half my body. I bow and worship at the feet of the almighty Jack and have a poster of him on my cubicle wall. Jack is my idol and I want to be just like him. I am as Hyperion as it gets, just short of wearing a Handsome Jack mask and being baptized into the 1337.

I take a step forward and endear myself to her. "Sasha… Shasha, listen to me. I know you don't trust Hyperion, but I am going to be upfront and open with you here. You have zero reason to trust us." She scoffs in agreement. "But the fact is, Vaughn and I. We aren't like those murderous assholes. Today is the first day I have ever been involved with death, and you and I both know it was pure self-defense. In fact, we are here trying to get back at one of those murderous assholes right here, right now. This deal is a part of that."

"Oh? So the deal has an ulterior motive? Why doesn't that surprise me?" She shakes her head.

"The guy we are getting back at murdered his boss just today and is about to kill more." Namely me. Sasha blinks in surprise. I continue, "and you know the worst part? The dead boss guy was named Henderson. Horrible poker player and had a tendency to ignore paperwork, but he was an alright guy in my book. We'd hang out at lunch sometimes. He was my boss too. He was my friend."

Okay… friend may be pushing it. He was a decent acquaintance, and being on his good side gave me certain protections. But he really was an okay guy. I'm almost sad there weren't more of him on Hyperion.

I may not be big on feelings and mystical forces or magic or astrology or any of that wonky bull, but I feel a genuine connection for a brief moment. Err… perhaps that's overstretching it.

We have an understanding. That's more like it.

"So. Sasha, you know what? Take the money. Give us the key, and let us screw over one of the biggest jerks on Hyperion. Please."

Sasha hesitates still, but I can feel she is on the edge. Almost… so close.

"So you're saying this deal will be used to screw over a Jack wannabe?" She asks.

A part of me flinches. Yeah, I would say Vasquez is a Jack-fan like the rest of Hyperion, but I'm not a particular fan of how she phrases that. Jack is my idol too, after all.

"That's exactly what we're saying." Vaughn adds his input.

She hesitates for a moment longer before smiling. "Okay, I'm sold."

YES! Rhys one! Sasha Mc. Shooty-Feely B**** zero! Vasquez negative-one!

Sasha walks back with the safe, but now its August's turn to hesitate. "Well… wait. Just wait."

Must. Resist. Urge. To. Facepalm.

What now?

Sasha hands him the safe, but he doesn't put it back on the table. Sasha says, "August, everything's fine now."

August sighs and looks confused and unsure. "I mean, I don't know… If you have a feeling."

"Yeah, and feelings gone. I'm good. Let's make the deal." She replies.

August looks between her and us, rubs his temple, and sighs. "I dunno… too many complications have come up as there have been."

I stand up from the chair and walk around to them. "Hey, hey. Sorry if I sound a little aggravated now, but didn't she just say the feelings gone? It's all good."

August shakes his head with increasing levels of self-assuredness. "No, no. I'm sorry guys. I'm not dissing on your efforts, but I am not comfortable anymore with this. I mean… the deal was with Vasquez, not his lacky. Sasha has feelings I've come to depend on, and… you know what. You were right about doing this right. I think we should hold until things are square."

"Honey, we're here. The money is here. The Key is here. Let's just do it." Sasha gently urges him from his side as he walks away.

"No, I've made up my mind. I'll put in a call to Vasquz, and we'll do this right."

This cannot be happening. This… CANNOT be happening! It's all falling apart!

Admittedly, my first instinct when I lose control and panic is not my brightest. However, tackling the guy may have been the stupidest thing I ever did. I blame it on the pent-up frustration of having been at the bad ending to perhaps the worst day of my life.

It was like one of those slow-motion replays you see in sports. We all were stunned and watching the moment in a mixture of horror, confusion, and shock.

The safe fell from his hands and clattered across the ground. The lid flew open. The Vault Key flew out.

And it shattered on the ground.