So... I pumped out chapter 3 really fast, as a result, it felt a little rushed and sort of dived right into the physical aspect of a relationship. Judging on the feedback, it was well recieved and that puts me at ease. Here's Chapter 4 everybody.
Chapter 4 Begin.
External Perspective
All throughout the Crimson Raider HQ, the sounds of the final moments of Angel's satisfaction could be heard, greatly confusing everyone.
"Damn! Is that Scooter watching his smutt tapes again?" Axton asked, his eyebrow raizing with intrigue.
"That should be the last thing on your mind, loverboy... Maya's far enough away as it is... show some self control and she might let you closer..." Lillith said with a mild smile as she walked past his door towards the briefing room.
The commando just stared blankly at the woman as she strutted past, his confusion too great a quantity to allow him to stare at her ass, let alone come up with a snappy retort. She laughed softly, looking back the empty minded man behind her.
"Esta Loco?... Is that damned mechanic that shameless?" Salvedor asked as he lazily rolled off of the battered couch in the center of the HQ, narrowly avoiding hitting the floor in his drunken stooper. With a grumble, he pushed himself up and onto his feet. He stumbled over to the fridge, taking out a Rakk Ale and popping off the cap without even batting an eye. He made his way up the stairs and into the briefing room and dropping heavily into a seat as he took several large gulps of his drink.
"I knew that guy was a perve but, holy crap!" Gaige said with a loud interjection, stepping out of her room, running diagnostics on her digistruct divice. Without looking up from her work, she sat down quietly next to Salvedor, ignoring everyone until she'd finished.
Meanwhile, under the base...
"Remind me to cover my mouth next time... I'm pretty sure that everyone upstairs heard it..." Angel said, blushing a thick, cherry red as she rolled off of Zero and into a seated position at the end of the bed.
"Of course, and to be honest, they did hear you. Your voice was 150 decibels; this cave stifles up to 100 decibels. Everyone up to thirty feet from this epicenter heard. Though it would be very muffled." Zero commented, beginning to put on his suit.
"Thanks for that. At least all of Sanctuary didn't hear... *Sigh*..." she grumbled, grabbing the under clothing to her suit, putting it on.
Several minutes passed as they got completely dressed, save Zero not putting on his helmet.
"I didn't really get to tell you before, but you are quite different from most men... Not just in appearence but in personality... I was attracted to you since the first time I saw what you were capable of..." Angel said, blushing again, her eyes looking away. "...Some part of me just knew you weren't the person that Hyperion made you out to be. I mean... you did do those assassinations, but that was just business... I could tell you didn't enjoy killing..." she continued, stepping over to him, placing a hand on his cheek.
"I thank you. Although, I do... I enjoy killing... But only if it's a challenge... And only if they can defend themselves... I detest killing the innocent as well..." he replied, starinng into Angel's eyes.
"I suppose that's enough then... as long as you're not a monster..." she giggled, stepping away from the inhuman assassin. "What are you, by the way?" she asked, glancing back at him as he put on his helmet, the locks clicking into place and the internal pressure resetting.
"I don't know in truth... Surely not human, though..." he replied, his modulator changing his voice back to its normal, metallic sound. He then walked over to the door, pushing the chunk of garbage away, the outside light almost blinding the young siren. She flinched to avoide being completely blinded by the Pandoran midday light.
The two stepped out, standing just outside of Scooter's garage, staring at the side entrence. Zero began to walk toward the opening, taking Angel's hand and pulling her gently behind him.
"Use your phase shift to cause a distraction a to allow you to walk in through the side door behind me. I will make him believe that his garage is haunted, Scooter has always enjoyed practical jokes... Plus this way, he will recieve you better..." Zero said, releasing Angel's hand.
Zero then opened the door, sprinting in, jumping off of the catwalk and landing mere inches ahead of where Scooter was standing, fiddling with a remote of sorts.
"Holy piss sugar! Zero! Warn me when you're gonna do that shit! I almost crapped my pants!... That was awesome!" Scooter shouted, waving his arms in surprise.
"Thank you, Mechanic/ But I came for a reason/..." Just as he began the final line, the remote lifted out of Scooter's hand and began to disassemble in mid-air. "...Ghosts in your garage..." he finished, feeling rather childish for using such an obvious excuse. However, being the gullible man Scooter was, he believed his every word, beginning to panic.
"Holy Jesus Juice and Titty crackers! My baby's possessed!" Scooter shouted, cowering beneath his desk, holding onto his wrench for dear life.
"I can fix this." Zero said swiftly, pulling out his blade, watching as Angel decended down the stairs to the catwalk silently. "Don't move..." he said to Scooter, taking a combat stance and walking toward Angel. He then used their Psychic link to speak to her.
'Throw some large pieces of equipement around... This way, he'll think I'm fighting and won't want to come out form under his desk... Then I want you to teleport behind me when I tell you to...' he said, rubbing her shoulder, pointing for her to walk back up the stairs. She did as he told her, lifting a car and throwing it into a wall, the pieces also being thrown when they broke off. Zero cut a half finished vehicle out of the air, slicing it into two pieces that split and embedded themselves in the wall.
"God damned, Spirit suckin' ghost sombitch! This's my garage! I'm a feed you to Salvedor and burn his crap to get rid a you!" Scooter screamed, standing up from under his desk and running over to a control panel, pressing a button. With a heavily mechanical humming, five, massive laser turrets digistructed on the walls and cieling, beginning to fire blindly. Angel ducked for cover to take the time to try and hack the turrets, never getting the chance as they soon focused Zero and he cut them down, one by one in Deception.
"Dmnit, Zero! Why in the name of Pandoran pussy would you break mu turrets!?" Scooter shouted angrily before Angel hit him upside the head with a remote.
"They attacked me." he said calmly, shaking some oil off of his blade as it began to boil. "Anyway, the ghost/ She is not really a ghost/ She is an old friend." Zero then destructed his blade, returning the hilt to his waist and snapping his fingers, signalling Angel to flash in.
In a huge shockwave of phase enrgy, Angel disappeared and reappeared several feet behind Zero and walked up and hugged him on the shoulders, giggling sweetly.
"HOLY SKAGSACK! It's that Hyperion girl!" Scooter shouted, ducking back beneath his desk.
"My name is Angel. It's nice to meet you in the flesh." she replied, walking over to where he was cowering, sitting in his chair and rolling it away. She rolled over to Zero, taking his hand and laughing when he complied with her playfulness and pushed her along as he walked over to Scooter's desk. "And Zero here is my fearless protector!" she chimed in again as he effortlessly cut through the desk with his blade.
"We need a favor/ An allaby for my friend/ An explanation..." Zero said mennacingly, picking Scooter up by the collar and displaying an angry smiley face.
Five minutes later in Crimson Raider HQ...
"So it really was Scooter blasting his porn again?" Axton asked, confused.
"Indeed, commando/ The mechanic's unruly/ Disgusting as well..." Zero replied, tossing Scooter onto the floor and walking over to an empty chair and sitting down.
"Y-yeah! It was me! I did it, alright! I love porn!" Scooter shouted under obvious duress. At this, Zero leaned back in the chair, reclining in a way that was very unlike him for several seconds before hopping up into the air and landing on his feet.
"Well... That was strange... Never seen you in such a good mood, Zero..." Maya commented, sitting forward in her chair.
"New developments/ One of our old friends is back/ To aid us again." he said walking over to the balcony and holding out a hand. A bright light began to glow above the roof of the base as all of the electroncs began to spark and glow. The white light faded after a few seconds and a hand reached down from above view, taking Zero's. He pulled the hand down, dragging the person after.
Everyone's eyes widened when they saw exactly who it was.
"Hi, everyone..." Angel said, a mild blush on her face as she looked around the room.
"W-weren't... you..." Axton stuttered, speechless.
"Yes, I did die that day... But I had to fool all of you in order to fool Jack... So when you all came to kill me, I loaded my DNA into the New-U network so I would re-spawn somewhere Jack would never look for me..."
"We had to kill Jack to get him off our trail... Where did you hide from him?" Maya asked, her eyes almost as cold as usual.
"In Liar's Burg." Angel replied simply, her grip on Zero's hand tightening, further confusing everyone.
"Well... Zero thinks you're okey... Considering he usually kills anything that touches him without permission..." Gaige said hesitantly, smiling mischievously. "Isn't that right, Axton?" she continued, glancing over to the still paralyzed commando. Zero remained silent, displaying a smiley face.
"So... not to be rude..." Mordecai began, pausing to take a swig from his drink before continuing. "...But why are you here now?" he finished, wiping his chin.
"Well, I was watching you all when you took Jack down and I saw the map of all of the vaults." Angel began, her kind eyes steeling when she paused. "...One's on Promethia." After she stopped speaking, the room was silent, all were speechless. About a half of a minute stretched on in agonizing silence when Lilith broke it.
"Whait a second... There was no point of reference, no guide, nothing to tell you what you were looking at other than the planets! How do you know what planets you were even looking at?" She asked, her eyes no longer confused, they were now filled with a feeling of suspition at the young girl.
"When Jack died, I siezed control of the Hyperion corporation... Didn't you all realize the engineers and soldiers stop firing at you? That was me... And the fact that you're seeing less and less of them? That was me too... Or the fact that Opportunity was actually opened and no longer even mentions Jack?... Because that too was my doing... If you all missed all that, it's not my fault, you're just oblivious." Angel replied, her voice growing hard and calculating as she rattled off explanation after explanation. "Oh, and Gaige... I left you more than enough time to back-hack that signal... you should have been able to follow it back to a Hyperion relay." She said in a quiet but mennacing voice as she turned to her. "Maya and Lilith... You're sirens! You should have picked up on my energies, at least yesterday when I teleported into Sanctuary! For god sakes, Zero's not even a siren and he picked up on my energy before I even arrived! ...And you, mister 'fearless leader'... you didn't even realize that Zero was missing for half a PANDORAN DAY!" Angel shouted, her eyes glowing white with fury and her wings beginning to materialize.
"Easy, Angel..." Zero replied, using his free hand to pull her by the chin to look into his vizor as he holographically produced a frowny face. Angel's eyes grew empty as she stared and her mood changed. Her powers faded away and she relaxed, turning back to the others.
"...So... I came to tell you all that now that Hyperion is receading into a Lesez-Faire policy of just producing arms and building cities, other corporations are going to come after you for the vault key." Everyone's faces turned deathly white save for Zero who just dispatched an exclamation point.
"Good to see you... Now... Just how many of these corporations are gonna be coming, Hyperion?" Brick asked, cracking his nuckles as he walked in, not even batting an eye at the supposed dead girl in the room.
"Good to see you again too, Brick. And to answer your question, all of them. Even the crippled Atlas corporation is creaping out of the woodwork for this one..." Angel replied, waving a hand over the main terminal, showing the influince of the corporations over the galaxies. Brick hesitated for several seconds, looking at the hologram.
"Ha! Now that's a real fight!" he said after inspecting the sheer size of the groups involved.
"So aside from telling us that we're now ivolved in a full scale war with an entire galaxy, is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?" Axton chimed in, eyes wide and face more pale that Zero's.
"Well... Zero and I are dating..." Angel added, laughing at the reactions of everyone in the room. Everyone accept for Scooter who was just slinking away from the group and already had his suspitions. Gaige looked at her, babbling nonsence as Angel walked her over to a chair to relax for a while. Everyone else stared in bewilderment at Zero as he took Angel's hand when she returned to his side.
"She was here for less than a day and you're dating her?!" Lilith screamed, her eyes glowing with power and rage. She walked over to Zero, raizing a burning hand to him.
"Easy there, Lilith/ The relationship sprouted/ From a commitment." Zero said in a calm voice.
"And what commitment might that be, snake?!" Lilith demanded, taking hold of Zero. Her hand passed through, it was his hologram. "Argh! Damnit!"
"To protect Angel/ Love her like Jack never did/ And grant her new life." Zero's voice echoed throughout the room, startling everyone.
Lilith's fiery wings faded away and she huffed, her anger subsiding as she sat down in a chair with a heavy thud. By that time, Zero stepped out of Deception, standing before everyone silently. He walked back over to Angel and wrapped her in his left arm, standing against a wall, holding his siren gently.
"So now that the anger is all done... What do we do about this war? Because we looked pretty doomed..." Axton asked casually, cracking his neck nonchillantly. He walked over to the terminal and began to inspect it slowly.
"...Actually, now that I look at the facts, it looks like we're royally boned, not just doomed..." Maya chimed in, leaning over the table next to Axton, teasing him slightly with her femanine whiles.
"Seems that way... Angel, any suggestions?" Lilith sighed, forcing herself out of her seat and walking towards the table to stand over it next to Maya.
"Actually yes... And I believe it's one that you all will approve of... Provided we can make it happen..." Angel said with a light grin, stepping away from Zero and up to the table in between the other two sirens. After several seconds of priviate council among the sirens, Lilith and Maya both turned to the youngest siren with shocked eyes. All three of the sirens returned their gazes to the rest of the party, the elder two stepping back, directing everyone's attention to Angel. "We're going to ransack Atlas' data reserves and find Roland's DNA. Then we're going to bring him back to life."
End Chapter: Revealing Secrets.
And so there it is... Chapter 4. I'll be sure to keep up as best as possible with future chapters but I can't offer any promises. It may be a while before the next one is released, so be prepared to wait.