Vaughn paled at the sight.

Him and Fiona had the longest to walk, with their point being on the other side of the town. Him and Fiona had entirely different ideas on how to get there. He wanted to circle around, be safe, and take his time. Most of all that would mean staying alive. Fiona said that going through the center of town was actually just as safe, since the hunters are more likely to pick you off at the edge of town than in the midst of it and start chaos, and it was a shorter distance (a necessary consideration with Vaughn's limp), and she wanted to get a general idea of the vibe of the town.

Vaughn backed away from the clearing into the alley and hid behind a crate. "I'm going to say we found out a bit of what is going on!" He whispered.

"We don't know anything, yet. They could just be visiting." Fiona frowned in thought, while observing the ongoing of the bandits. The emblems of their respective bandit lords were on their shoulder pads, torso, cape, or facial tattoo (tongue included), and from what she could see there were at least five different emblems being represented.

She didn't recognize them off the top of her head, but she liked the fact that she didn't see the irish clan, red-neck clan, or Crimson Raiders. The first two couldn't be within ear-shot of each other without gunfire going off, and the latter was too dominating and full of self-superiority to cooperate with anyone. Not that any other clan was much better, but the Crimson Raiders had let their victory over Jack get to their heads.

"Right. So bad people visiting bad people. You know what happens when you have bad people visiting bad people!? Bad shit happens when bad people visit bad people! I don't like bad shit!"

"Vaughn, your panicking."

"Yeah, I'm panicking! We've been walking and sneaking and seen a lot of bad people! I don't just mean your run-of-the-mill Pandorans who are a bit crazy and down on their luck, I mean the full-fledge bandits with allegiances to big bad bandit lords!"

"Vaughn." Fiona put her hand in front of his face to stop him. "Stop panicking. We're just seeing things and moving on. Now we have seen. Now we move on. Agreed?"

He nodded rapidly.

Felix may not be as nimble and spry as his girls, but he knew how to avoid being seen. He planted his device and sat in wait for the time to synchronize. He glanced at his watch: three minutes.

While he waited, he gazed out over the city. He saw the gatherings, the tension in the air. Something was going on. Something big. Entire sections of the city were given to the control of different bandit lords, temporarily. There were hundreds of bandits from all across Pandora.

And the money was in the middle of that.

Felix furrowed his brows and felt deep in his gut that something was going on. He had gotten them involved in something He couldn't say what. But it had to be huge. He knew this not only because of the multiple bandit camps meeting here, but the fact that he had been roped in to getting ten million Hyperion credits.

Ten million was a lot of money.

Originally Felix chocked it down to basic greed. August wanted to overcompensate for a lack of parenting (who didn't around here?) and Felix understood well the idea of aiming for the stars. Don't just settle for a thousand, hundred thousand, a million. Pft, that s just for people with low ambition. To August, it was ten million or nothing! Go big or go home!

But now Felix felt that perhaps, it was less of a childishly planned need to overcompensate and actually the foundation of something bigger.

Felix's watch chimed, and he set himself up to broadcast to the others. He went as far as to open his mouth while holding the button down when he couldn't utter anything more than a groan. His eyes were locked on something that surprised him. He forgot entirely to talk, or that he was broadcasting. All of his attention was on the man walking towards the center of town.

He didn't know the man's name or face, but there was no mistaking who he was with a suit and swagger like that. The Loader bot guards and polished black limo also helped give it away.

Hyperion.

"Felix, dude. If you are masturbating, I really don't care to hear it." Felix's receiver spoke in Rhys' voice. "Sasha looks like she is going to throw up. Or she is having a seizure. Or heart attack. Or all three."

Felix snapped his attention back to his handheld. "What, I wasn-?"

"Felix, gotta tell ya. That s disturbing." Felix heard Fiona's voice on the channel. He also heard Vaughn laughing in the background.

Felix growled and grew red in embrassment. "I wasn't I-"

"Sure, sure. You got the thing up and running?" Rhys asked.

"Yes. Felix over and out." Felix barked, threw the device, and couldn't be bothered to notice that it bounced on a bandits head, and the bandit punched his friend in the face.

"Kids these days "

"I don't care to hear it." Felix muttered as he sat down. Across the table from him he saw his girls, and the Hyperion slaves, had changed their clothes to adequately appear Pandaren. He expected as much from his girls, but it was a slightly smarter move from the Hyperions then they had shown so far. Either they were learning or they were following his girl's orders.

Now if only Sasha could look at him straight.

He barely recognized the taller Hyperion in his getup. The smirk and eye-patch gave it away. "Well, we didn't either."

Felix leveled an even glare on him, which made Rhys smirk wider.

"I trust you have triangulated the money's location?"

Rhys nodded, "Yep, its right here."

He threw up his cyborg arm proudly and created a holographic image from his palm, but the image was gritty. Rhys narrowed his brows in confusion and flicked his hand open and closed, changing the image repeatedly, trying to get it to work. At one point it showed an image of a car, Handsome Jack, an advertisement for penis enhancers, and an old fashioned cartoon character named Bugs Bunny, amongst others.

"Come on. Come on. No. No! No! Come on! What is with you?!"

"Got a problem there?" Fiona wondered.

Rhys growled to himself in frustration, continuing to try. "I don't know! Nothing's working right! Blasted droid screwed with my circuits pretty hard Finally!" He got the right image up.

It didn't escape Felix's attention that the other Hyperion and Sasha both looked very concerned with the continuing malfunction.

Rhys pointed to where a dot was blinking on the screen, and then an 'X'. "The briefcase is right here. And we are currently here. From what I've seen that would be the big mansion in the center of town."

"It s August's home." Sasha added. "Or was before he moved out."

Felix looked closely at the map. He chewed his tongue in thought. "That's to be expected. It is Vallory's mansion. Means security is tightest there Esspecially now. Anyone else notice the number of gangs prowling around?"

Everyone nodded. Vaughn counted off his fingers, "I think there were at least four groups?"

"Make that five." Felix muttered. He pulled out a picture and passed it down the table to Rhys. "As a fellow Hyperion, you know this guy?"

Rhys raised an eyebrow curiously, and picked it up. His eyes fell on the figure in the focus, only to widen in shock. "Vasquez?!"

"Vasquez!" The rest exclaimed, except Felix. He simply narrowed his eyes and growled.

"What is he doing here?!" Rhys barked.

"Good question " Fiona bit her finger nails. "Four bandit and pirate groups meeting Vallory, and a high ranking Hyperion stooge. Something is going on."

"I have a bad feeling about this!" Sasha said. She desperately looked between everyone. "First we just want to sell a con to get ten mill, then it blows up in our face, and soon we are going to be having a bomb going off in Vallory's face, and Guys, this is only getting bigger and bigger! Don't you think there comes a point where we have to say, 'we've done enough'? Lets just forget about it! We have no need for the Hyperions, so let them go and get out before things get bad."

"Based on what?" Fiona wondered. "It's not that abnormal for bandits to meet. They do things on the spur of the moment. The fact that a Hyperion is here does change things but we don't have any facts to base our suspicions on."

Sasha looked to Vaughn. Vaughn swallowed and looked away. Her desperation only grew as she looked to Rhys. She had felt something bad was coming, but now her feeling was reaching its climax. She was utterly terrified.

Rhys and her shared a glance, where Felix noted some form of understanding passed. Without saying a word they seemed to have an entire conversation. He held back his distaste for it, and left it in his heart to keep an eye on. Like Vaughn, Rhys looked genuinely sorry for letting her down.

Felix let that fact sit in his stomach. He had not tried to con his own prisoners, but were they both under the influence of Stockholm Syndrome? Felix let himself smile inside. His girls had taken control of the boys well.

"I'm sorry " Rhys whispered. "But we can't get our lives back without the money. And if there is one thing I'm not: it s a quitter."

"You can't seriously expect to be welcomed back on Helios after losing them ten million empty handed do you?!" Sasha cried. She looked frankly hurt by his not taking her side.

"No But there are many places out there." Rhys hardened himself and looked to Felix. "I know I am not in the position to ask this of you but in return to us helping you bag the ten million I want Vaughn and I off Pandora."

"Oh?" Felix put his hands together and leaned forward. "Interesting. So your refusing to quit by quitting?"

"Call it 'regrouping'." Rhys replied evenly.

Sasha gave up on Rhys and looked across the table to Felix. Felix hated letting her down, and were it just about the ten million well. "Sasha If it was just about the ten million, then I would agree. I know what I am about to say may not make sense from the perspective of a Pandaren or Hyperion but from the perspective of the man who raised both of you: our lives are not worth ten million dollars."

Sasha relaxed around the edges, and Felix sighed in regret. "But this is about more than ten million dollars now."

"No "

"Sasha, there is a bomb in there that no one knows about but the people at this table. At best, let's say this 'gathering' of bandits is just them on vacation and sightseeing. The bomb goes off in either Vallory's or August's face. If its Vallory, then August will hunt us down to the ends of Pandora because the boy is not stupid! If the bomb goes off in August's face, then it's not much better, and we have the bonus of you knowing you murdered your ex-lover."

Felix smiled gently. "I don't want you to go through that "

He continued, "Now at worst, this 'gathering' is the bandit leaders meeting to discuss something big, evil, and chaotic. Hell, they could be playing a game of dungeons and dragons for all I know. Or more likely poker. Also we add a big Hyperion to the mix. The bomb goes off everyone dies. While I won't deny Pandora is a land of never ending war, chaos, and anarchy there is established some semblance of structure by the fact that bandit leaders have risen up and taken control of their territories. Take away every bit of that structure and we are left with how Pandora was at its worst."

Sasha let her head drop. She was touched by his concern, something he rarely expressed, but she was scared all the more by the danger and idea that they were continuing to go in. She just wanted them to get out and escape. Rhys frowned.

Fiona elbowed her and giggled, "Come on, Sasha. This isn't like you! Besides, we don't know if it's all that big a deal. August probably is saving it for his mother's birthday and has it tucked away in her closet."

"A birthday would explain the gathering " Felix allowed.

"Ten million dollars, and all the trouble we went through, for a birthday present? Are you serious?" Sasha glared at Fiona, who just shrugged.

"That s the point. We don't know."

"So we're going after the money?" Rhys wondered. Sasha shot him a glare.

Felix nodded.

Vasquez gulped. Not that he allowed the gulp to be in any way visible or showing on his persona. Better to keep them guessing. Yeah. Totally keep the big guy with the gun guessing why he was there.

"Hey." Vasquez smirked. "You know why I'm here?"

The big guy at the door glared down at him, then seemed to consider it. "Where have I seen your face before?"

"Probably on your father while he was having his way with your mother. If you know what I mean."

"What?! Father was cheating on father?!" The guard grabbed Vasquez by the shoulder and yelled, "How could you cheat on father like that!?"

"Hey hey hey! Don't touch the jacket!" Vasquez barked. He pushed the man back and straightened up. First thing he did was fix his tie. "I was just screwing with you, idiot!"

The bandit looked down at him blandly and if Vasquez wasn't irked already, he would have thought the big guy was blushing. "I... I appreciate it. But I don't swing that way."

"Oh my gawd " Vasquez muttered. He put his face in his palms. "Just look at the freakin' VIP list! My picture is right there!"

The big guy looked up at the VIP list. "Oh! Whatta you know! That there is your picture! Hey, that's why I recognized ya! Well isn't that just dandy. Oh, perhaps I should just let you in."

"Thank you." Vasquez grumbled. The big guy finally seemed to have some damn manners. Vasquez went to walk by him, but the big guy put his arm out.

"Except how stupid do you think I am?"

"Wha-?"

"Father knows I don't read good! I don't know what those pretty symbols mean! And I'm not falling for it again! That there is a wanted list!"

"No, it s a VIP list!" Vasquez yelled. Yes, yelled. He was yelling. He had allowed himself to reach the point of yelling. This week was not one of his good ones "AND I'M NOT YOUR FATHER! I WAS SCREWING WITH YOUR HEAD!"

"My head isn't screwed in! Its nailed in!"

Vasquez genuinely didn't know where to go from there. After staring at the man big for several solid seconds, he grit his teeth together and hissed, "Get August. Daddy says so."

"Okay Daddy." The big man rang up August.

Vasquez couldn't have been any happier than to see the scumbag. August looked like he had a permanent glare going, and there was something dangerous about him. Vasquez had met him once before, and he was a bit of a push over. He had a soft thing for this girl, and he had this permanent smile going. Now that smile is seemingly replaced with a deep seated frown.

Oh well, not his problem. Girls were messed up.

"August, explain to this idiot that I'm a VIP."

"He's a VIP." August said simply, albeit coldly, and Vasquez felt a chill go down his spine.

"Oh! Okay, I'm sorry for confusing you daddy." The big guy smiled.

That earned them a surprised blink from August and Vasquez wanted nothing better to suddenly gain five metric tons of pure gold-plated muscle just to strangle the idiot. August looked between them. "Is there something I should know about?"

"Nothing." Vasquez replied coolly.

August nodded, saying nothing more as he lead the Hyperion. Vasquez, meanwhile, gave him glances out of the corner of his eye. He had only met the Pandoran once, but already there was such a deep contract with who he was that it set him on edge. There was something dark and unsettling in him, a rage barely concealed behind his eyes and his clenching fists.

At last they entered a room and were welcomed. Vallory, a very large woman with incredible strength despite her girth, sat at the table and smiled warmly at their arrival with all the grace of an alligator. Just for her to look at him made him want to shake in his boots, and sent a hateful spark into his heart. There was no one that he hated more than this vile woman. And that was not a statement to be taken lightly, he had a long list of people he hated, despised, disliked, and generally thought were beneath notice. Vallory ranked #1.

"Welcome, lad. Took you long enough."

"With everything going on Helios, departure took a little work, a little favor here and there, a few dollars in the right pocket." Vasquez replied gracefully. He struggled to make sure his contempt for her was carefully concealed, and in its place was fear. That he didn't have trouble showing. He didn't have to fake how much he wanted to poop from sheer terror, or the tremors, or the imminent nervous breakdown.

Vallory continued to smile ferally, "I'm sure."

"Is he what you wanted me to see?"

Vasquez noticed the speaker and felt himself pale in fright. There wasn't a single soul on Pandora who didn't know this woman. She was a legend almost equal to Handsome Jack himself. If Handsome Jack was the champion, the very incarnation of Helios, than this woman was the red-headed incarnation of all things Pandoran.

Lilith, the FireHawk of the Crimson Raiders.

"Sooooooo any ideas?" Vaughn wondered.

Rhys shrugged. Sasha stared at the ceiling. Fiona frowned. Felix stroked his chin. With the silence, Vaughn figured it was one giant 'no'. At least until Rhys raised his hand.

"Here is what we do. We sneak up to the building all ninja-like. We throw a magazine on guns away from the door. The guards chase after it like it s a porno, unable to resist its allure. Once inside we take out the guards one by one, steal their clothes, and walk up to Vallory like we own the place. Once we have her surrounded, we ambush her, gag her, hold her at ransom for her bounty, take the money, and use her as a hostage to get out. Once out, we high-tail it out of here and accomplish one final mission: finding the most expensive pub we can and getting completely and utterly wasted!"

Rhys' idea was met with silence. Not even the other patrons were making a sound. Vaughn could hear crickets chirping.

"No." Fiona said.

"Hey! You can't just say 'no'!" Rhys argued.

Felix narrowed his eyes, looking disappointed. "Boy, the ONLY part of that entire monologue that is accurate is the idea of us being wasted. We do this then the end result will be us being wasted by a hundred guns before we ever set foot in that place."

Rhys looked to Sasha for backup, and she just raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I'm sorry? You want backup? After taking their side earlier? That makes three counts of stupidity."

"What?!" He exclaimed in surprise.

"First, expecting me to just back you up after that was stupid. Second, expecting me to back you up with a stupid plan is stupid. Third, the plan was just plain stupid. Fourth, not understanding why I would say this means you're stupid. So make it four." She smiled darkly. "Or did you forget I'm a Pandoran b****?"

Rhys stared at her with his one uncovered eye. Vaughn could practically smell the gears turning in his head. Rhys didn't look angry or insulted, if anything he looked flabbergasted, shocked, confused, and a little hurt. Rhys opened his mouth to say something, but slammed his mouth shut just as quickly. After several extra seconds (whether it be considering his options or still trying to process what had just happened) he looked away and mumbled.

Vaughn himself was a bit surprised. Undoubtedly Rhys was too. They had met woman with aggressive and dominant personalities, but the way of getting back at someone on Helios was with the usual backstab or steal method. Or some other method that was financial and subtle and behind their back. It was also the first time a woman had openly proclaimed when she was a b****. Usually Vaughn knew them to smile, play nice, and hold it against you for the next twenty years.

Vaughn wasn't sure which was worse. Sasha was scarier but wasn't sinister.

"Point taken..." Rhys whispered.

Now Vaughn's eyebrows flew up in surprise. For the live of him he could not remember a time he had ever known Rhys to admit to being wrong or learn from some mistake. Usually it was the tactic to go on the offensive, troll them, twist things, turn things toward their favor.

"All the same, its not like any of you guys are coming up with ideas." Rhys defended himself.

Vaughn nodded. That was more like Rhys. For a second there he was starting to wonder if hell had really frozen over, if pigs could fly, if Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey was actually a half-way decent story, if Miley Cyrus had grown up, or Jack forbid! Elvis hadn't been abducted by vampires from Mars!

"That's because a decent idea needs time." Fiona groaned. She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling, much like how Sasha did. The resemblance was striking. "You just pulled that out of your butt in a few seconds."

Time... Vaughn flinched.

They didn't have time.

Vaughn would be the first person to run, to hide, to admit it a good idea not to go and do something dangerous, but the bomb wasn't just dangerous for the Pandorans, it was dangerous for them. They would be targeted. The moment the bomb goes off the bodies would start piling up.

Flashes of images from several days ago came to him. When they had first come to Pandora to find the Mystical House of Wonders they had been attacked. Vaughn remembered seeing the bodies bodies everywhere. He had been dragged, beaten for a short while, and held hostage against a big guy's chest whose axe was literally dripping blood.

Worst of all, though Rhys did his best to hide it, Vaughn could see in his eyes that he had lost a piece of himself.

And it was all about to begin again

Vaughn gagged as the sensation to vomit hit him. Covering his mouth, he ran out of the building. Fiona and Rhys jumped up on the alert, but Felix motioned them back down saying he looked like he was just going to vomit outside. If he doesn't return quickly, then they would worry.

He wasn't wrong. Vaughn found himself kneeling over a pool of his own stomach contents minutes later. The images of blood had not disappeared, but there was nothing left in his body to gag on.

Vaughn coughed against the burning sensation in his throat, leaned back against the wall, and remembered. He remembered why they had come here and all they had suffered. Their captors were decent, especially considering the norm for Pandorans, and for that he was grateful.

But Vaughn could not handle the thought of everything happening again. He wouldn't be able to handle it.

No! Vaughn would not let it. He wouldn't let Rhys lose more of himself, and though he wouldn't go so far as to call the Pandaren's friends he recognized a debt. They went out for his bro with him. They knew Vaughn would go out with or without them, and they helped him. (The fact that it benefited them wasn't a factor to him.)

With that thought Vaughn focused. He wasn't strong. He wasn't brave. He was a coward. But even cowards have their strengths. It takes a smart man to run, to evade, to plot, and to win without ever fighting. And if there was one thing Vaughn recognized about himself he was smart.

Vaughn left the confines of the alley and looked around. He saw the natives and looked at himself.

The equation didn't fit. He didn't look, smell, or act like them. He needed to make the equation fit.

Vaughn returned to the alley, found a trash bin, and rifled through it. He pulled out a pair of pants covered in holes and one sandle. He wanted a shirt, but without one the last thing he needed was to wear a Hyperion issue jacket. He took off his shirt. With nothing on his bare-chest, he covered his chest with his arms briefly before remembering himself. He needed to complete the equation. He looked similar but it wasn't enough.

Vaughn gulped and leaned over his own vomit. "One man's trash is another man's potpourri I suppose " Closing his eyes, he slammed himself down. He suppressed a gag as he felt the sticky fluids on his chest. He rolled around to his back, he spread it on his pants, and put a handful in his hair.

Taking a deep breathe, Vaughn set his face and left the alley.

He knew where the briefcase was. He had practically memorized the map. In his mind he removed the people, the trash, the wooden buildings. Rather he saw it all as a schematic. He saw figures and calculations and graphs.

He compared himself to the people around him, and he saw little physical difference. He was small for a man, being rather about the average height of a girl, but being small here didn't seem to matter. All around him were midgets and dwarves. They were not the dwarves and gnomes of fantasy land, but the literal people called dwarves for the fact that their body stopped growing taller at an early age.

He knew he had the smell down. Vaughn could barely stand himself right then. He felt if he smelled his own armpit, or just lifted his arm, he would pass out. He was covered in dirt, grime, and with his own vomit smeared in his hair and clothes. After having just left a pub, he also detected a faint hint of alchohol on himself.

The equation was becoming equal, but it wasn't there yet.

Vaughn needed to act like them. Unfortunately, this would be his weak spot. Human interaction was not exactly his calling card, so to say, even before coming to Pandora. He left the negotiation and human involvement to Rhys. Vaughn knew himself to be a coward, scittish, and more comfortable around numbers, equations, maps, graphs, and computers. In short he was your typical basement-confined nerd. Complete with a treadmill machine back in his office, a fridge full of beer in his room right next to the ybox720 machine, and a Handsome Jack brand pinball machine.

It was while Vaughn was considering how to resolve this little setback that he failed to notice a certain screeching. It sounded like a train steadily getting louder and louder.

chickenchickenchiCKENCHICKECHICKEN

Until it was too late.

"CHICKEN!"

Something hit Vaughn in the face, wrapped itself around his head, banged on his skull with tiny fists, threw his balance off into nearby people and walls, all while screaming, "CHICKEN!"

"WHAT THE ****!" Vaughn cried into the stomach of his tiny attacker.

He clawed at the little guy, thrashed around, twisted, turned, and after bumping into a wall proceeded to bang his head, and the guy wrapped around his head, into the wall. For some messed up reason this made the little guy think it was a game.

"Stahmph Haumphing Haigh PHACE! (Stop humping my face!)" Vaughn yelled. His words were muffled by the little man's stomach and just after yelling and breathing back in, he realized he couldn't. He was suphocating on a Psycho midget's filthy belly. His efforts to claw the midget off redoubled and his movements became more chaotic.

Pulling deep from within himself hidden muscle and untapped strength, he plied the psycho from his face and gasped for air. He gave a silent prayer of thanks to all the gods of air for making it and to himself for keeping up a daily routine of exercise before laying his eyes on the squirming midget in his hands that was reaching for him like a screaming child demanding candy.

"You are a piece of work aren't you?" Vaughn huffed. He didn't have the patience to deal with this and after nearly dying a stupid death like suffocating to a psycho humping his face, he was uncharacteristically angry. "Wait " Vaughn growled. "You re the same little shit that nearly killed us before!"

"CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN!" The midget squirmed and reached for him.

It made sense Maybe just maybe after the axe-guy had run off August had assimilated the gang? From what Vaughn knew, a leader who ran on Pandora was a back to be shot. There was a chance the axe-guy was still alive and leading this group, but something in Vaughn's gut told him otherwise. He had never been one for gut instinct, but he also wasn't blind to the potential it had from people like Sasha. Even if the others were skeptical, he couldn't deny Sasha had been right at every turn so far about everything she had felt coming.

Vaughn was a guy of logic and of numbers and of odds. He didn't have gut instinct, but the odds told him August had assimilated this group.

A plan formed in his mind, and Vaughn allowed a self-punishing chuckle rise from his throat. It was a plan that would allow him to exploit this, allow minimal involvement on his part, and literally walk in like he belonged. "Okay this could go very bad. Or very good Or very very bad."

First he would need to experiment. So Vaughn slowly set the psycho down on the ground. The instant the psycho's feet found surface it launched itself at Vaughn. Vaughn cringed and stepped back, but forced himself to not flee. He closed his eyes in momentary fear and froze.

The psycho made contact with his leg and nothing. Vaughn very slowly opened one eye and looked down at the midget humping his leg like a dog.

Well it was an improvement. At least it wasn t his face. He could live with this considering what he had just gone through not two minutes earlier.

"Okay, lets see if his plan works." Vaughn whispered. "Come on, little guy."

He tried to pry the guy off his leg so he could walk and the midget wrapped itself tighter around his leg screaming, "MINE!"

"That is my leg!"

"CHICKEN LEG!"

Vaughn really didn't like where this was going. Either the midget was claiming dominance over his foot or thought it was edible. Either way was equally likely knowing where he was.

Vaughn pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed while the midget happily hung onto his leg like a tree-hugger to a spruce. The shit he had to put up with "Let's go little guy "

Vaughn then proceeded to walk. The midget sat on his foot and clung to him like Vaughn was his favorite uncle or something. "Whee! Go chicken!"

Vaughn rolled his eyes and marched towards the gang hideout where Vallory had the money. He had strong legs despite his size and occupation, so hauling the little guy wasn't difficult. He weighed no more than a child and proved to be more of an emberassment and awkwardness than a stumbling block.

When the building came in sight, Vaughn marched on. He subtlely (or rather failed an attempt at it) surveyed the building exterior and caught three cameras in which he could be seen. There was a very large, very muscular, very fat man standing in the doorway with a pistol on his hip and an angry scowl on his face. After dealing with the midget, Vaughn was as aggravated as he ever recalled being, but he pressed on with his awkward march.

"Pet the chicken... pet the chicken..." The midget rubbed Vaughn's leg. His hands were reaching a bit too high, and Vaughn had to clench his fists to keep from not making a scene. Vaughn was tired, he was filthy, he stank, he had to deal with the indignity of digging through trash and having a midget hump his leg, he was angry with himself for constantly being afraid, and he was angry at life for putting him in these situations. And if he really really thought hard about it. He was angry at Rhys. If Rhys had waited one more day, they wouldn't have been here. They would have won.

He was done with this place. He wanted to get the money, get back to Rhys, and leave.

Unknown to Vaughn, his aggravation and tension had bled into his face, and he looked as angry as any other Pandoran. So when the guard stopped him, Vaughn glared hard enough to make the man step back. Vaughn growled to answer the unspoken question, "I'm bringing this little **** back. Apparently you let him out, idiot. August won't be happy if he disrupts everything."

The guard took a look at the midget, recognized him, and simply nodded.