Angel awoke sluggishly to the uncomfortable sensation of her hair sticking to her skin. Freeing her legs from the borrowed blanket, she shielded her eyes from the sunlight pouring into the open windows. She tried to roll away from the offending light, and found that sleeping had done little to relieve the ache in her body from the previous day's events. She felt like she could keep on sleeping forever, if it wasn't for the slightly rancid smell that permeated everything around her. She had stumbled in last night too tired to care, but now with all her senses kicking back in, it was becoming impossible to ignore.

Stretching out the soreness of her limbs, her eyes fell on Timothy sleeping across the room, his hand lightly resting on the rust colored gun at his side. Angel couldn't say what time he followed her to bed since she had fallen asleep to an empty room. Unnerved by the image of her father's stillness, Angel ignored him for the time being and tossed off the ratty blanket.

The room was sparse, yet cluttered. Sand piled in the corners of the room that seemed to have been hastily swept aside among other random articles of trash. There wasn't much in the way of furniture, although someone did have a large pornographic collection stacked neatly in a milk crate. Angel gave it a wide berth on her way to the sink in the corner of the room next to a toilet that hadn't looked like it had been cleaned in… ever.

Shuddering at the thought, Angel quickly pried the knob on the sink and prayed for water. The groan of the pipes and dribble of murky brown rust informed her of the hopelessness of her cause. Wiping away the filth of the knob on her pants, Angel sighed. This meant she had to go to the only water source she knew worked, and that meant crossing the street. Not a prospect she was particularly enthused about.

After allowing her eyes to adjust to the brightness outside, Angel tugged at the clothes sticking to her skin. Every inch of her was slick with sweat and she wondered how she had managed to sleep through the morning at all with the rising temperatures. Living all her life in climate controlled rooms hadn't prepared her for the shifting extremes of weather on Pandora. It hadn't prepared her for anything, really. Scanning her eyes down the sand-covered street for danger and finding none, Angel ventured across the wasteland that was the battlefield from the night before.

Her tiredness and the darkness had made it easy to ignore last night, but now Angel had to face the carnage Timothy had left behind. Looking down the street, she could see streaks of blood leading out past the buildings where she assumed scavengers had dragged off bodies during the night. Sucking in a deep breath to avoid breathing in the stench of death, Angel kept her eyes up and away from the ground. Focusing on the garage, she took small steps to keep from stepping on... bits. The bodies had been torn apart from the massive gun on the back of the truck and she was forced to tip-toe around the gore. Just like the night before, she could feel the sour taste of bile rising in the back of her throat at the scene.

Finally reaching the garage, Angel let out the breath of air she'd been holding. The inside of garage had remained largely untouched by the nightmare outside and she allowed herself to breathe freely. The truck was once again parked inside and Angel tried not to let her eyes linger for too long on the blood smeared tires. The rest of the building was filled with spare parts and supplies for maintaining the vehicle. The heavy scent of oil mostly succeeded in drowning out the smell of blood and decay from outside.

Last night had been something of a blur after the ride back into the encampment, but Angel vividly remembered the water pump in the back of the garage. And most importantly, the fact that it worked. In her hurry to quench her thirst, she hadn't listened when Timothy had warned her not to drink too fast, and she could still make out slight stain of vomit from when the water had come back up. This time, Angel pumped the handle and took small sips before washing off the sweat from her face and neck. Thankfully, the water was actually clean, aside from the slight taste of rust.

However, her momentary relief was short lived as an all too familiar voice called out, "Angel! Angel, you out there?"

Hearing her name called by Timothy left an uneasy feeling in her stomach. What should have functioned as a term of endearment, now only felt like a mockery. "I'm in the garage!"

Timothy sauntered in moments later, nearly slipping on some gore in the process. "Woah, yeah that won't wash off easy," he laughed as he wiped his boot on the sand. "Sooo, how's it goin'?"

Angel was astounded by the fact that he could be so disgustingly cheerful as he walked through the monument of slaughter he'd created. "How can you be so… so okay with this?" Angel gestured to the massacre at his feet.

Timothy glanced down with a shrug. "I dunno. I ahhh… I try not to think about it too much."

Angel stared. "How can you not?"

"I tried to kill them; they tried to kill me. I walked way. Someone was gonna die," he said matter-of-factly.

Her stomach turned at how nonchalant he could be at killing all these people. "That doesn't make it right."

"Welcome to the Borderlands, Kiddo," he drawled until breaking away with a sigh. "Look, out here, right and wrong don't apply. The only thing that matters is who's left standing. That's how Pandora works. You think the Vault Hunters you're trying to find got where they did without stepping over a mountain of dead bodies on the way? Don't kid yourself: they killed plenty of bandits just like this."

It's true, Angel mused. She wasn't blind to the killing the Vault Hunters have done in the past - more often than not, under her own direction. It was one thing to give the order, but it was another thing entirely to see the results for herself. At the end of the day, this really wasn't any different from the Vault Hunters. Then why did it bother her so much?

"If you're done lecturing me, I need an hour to wash off and get changed," Angel said at last.

"No, we don't have time for any of that. We scrounge what we can and then we're out."

Angel gestured down at herself. "But I'm filthy. Why do we have to go right way?"

"Hey, being a hero is dirty business," Timothy snorted lightly. "But seriously, look next to your feet, Kiddo."

Ignoring the jab, Angel glanced at the floor unsure of what she was supposed to find. "What am I looking for?"

Timothy crossed the garage floor and tapped his foot on an oil stain. "That's not from our truck and there's room enough here for two. I don't feel like hanging around until the other one gets back. So, we're just gonna take what we can find and go."

With that, Timothy made his way back out into the graveyard outside, knelt over a bullet-riddled torso, and began to pat it down. How can he stand that smell? "Uh… what are you doing?"

"Looting..." Timothy didn't bother looking up. "Unless you can magic up some bullets for me."

Timothy was severely misinformed if he expected her to cheerfully join in and start corpse robbing at his side. "I am not going near that."

"Of course not, you're going to go scrounge up some food – preferably of the canned variety. I don't trust anything else these guys were eating. Sooo, yeah. Load up water and anything else we might need in the back of the truck; I'm going to gather some weapons and ammo."

"You already have guns."

"We need to get money somehow."

Nisha pulled up to the wreck of the transport ship and hefted herself over the side of the runner. Tipping back her hat to take in the scene, she highly doubted anyone had managed to walk out of it in once piece. Dug into the sand on its side, rips traced the side of the hull where the outer skin had crumpled from the impact. Peering into the gaping maws, she could make out the sand covered floor of the cargo bay within. She activated her ECHO device and a streak of light cut into the darkness of the ruined ship's interior.

Swiping her hand past her hip, a revolver phased into her hand. Gingerly stepping past the shredded metal, Nisha swept the light around the cargo bay. Finding nothing of interest, she continued down the silent corridor. That skagsack had better not be dead. If anyone was going to end his miserable life, it was going to be her. A quick death would be way too good for the likes of him.

Nisha had barely tolerated the Double for Jack's sake. Every time he opened his mouth, she wanted to drive her fist into it. His incessant complaining was that much worse coming out of the mouth of someone who was so much better than him. Who the fuck was afraid of heights anyway? For all of Jack's insisting, the Double hadn't been much use on the field either since his combat capabilities weren't exactly something to get wet over.

And that most of all was what Nisha couldn't wrap her mind around. How the hell had that little shit managed to kill Jack? She was almost tempted to believe that Tassiter was just pulling the whole thing out of his ass. She had even tried contacting Jack over the ECHO, but hadn't had her call patched through. Still, there were too many details that stood out to ignore. Her encounter with Jack that night may not have seemed strange in of itself – in fact, it was kinda hot – but the fact that he kept dodging her advances afterward did. Jack had never been too busy when she came calling before. And why the hell would Jack send her and Wilhelm to Pandora's surface in the first place? Any idiot could have killed those bandits.

It annoyed her to no end that Tassiter was probably right. After all, if he really had tried to replace Jack, then Tassiter would be a corpse. The man was even less likely to be able to kill Jack than the Double had been. And that's what pissed her off: Jack wasn't supposed to die like this. A man that powerful, that ruthless, that hot, wasn't supposed to die at the hands of some nobody. They'd never even known the Double's name, they just called him 'Jack' because… well, what the fuck else were they supposed to call him? He didn't even deserve to share the name. All he deserved was a very painful death and Nisha hoped he was still on the ship licking his wounds so she could give him one.

Nisha swept her gun over the cockpit to find it empty. Strange, by the look of the damage around her, she was expecting at least a body. Pacing towards the front of the cockpit, nothing else seemed to be out of the ordinary – at least, for a crash. Glancing up towards the seats, she finally found what she was looking for. The seat belts on two of the seats were undone. An unpiloted shuttle shouldn't have undone seat belts. Leaping clear of the ground, she easily hefted herself into the seat. Bingo. Though the screen in front of her had been shattered beyond any recognizable state, the dried blood on its surface spoke clearly enough. That Bastard had been on the shuttle for sure.

Dropping back to the ground, Nisha scraped away at the sand creeping up the surface of the deck until she found what she was looking for. More drops of dried blood were scattered over the metallic surface and Nisha didn't bother to conceal her grin.

Good. I love it when they run.

Tassiter replayed the scene in front of him for the sixth time in the row. The footage of Lawrence's escape left too many questions in his mind. The holograms he had used to escape Nigel as well as his capability for invisibility were both pieces of technology absent from Hyperion's patents. Apparently, John had been keeping even more things to himself than Tassiter had known. But the most perplexing question of all, was the identity of the young woman accompanying him.

Tassiter had already crossed-referenced her face against the employee database and had found no matches. If she wasn't an employee, then who the hell is she? In the footage, the young woman had called the impostor 'dad' multiple times and he certainly treated her like a child. However, John didn't have any children. Of this, Tassiter was very certain. Perhaps some kind of mid-life crisis adoption? But that didn't add up since she seemed a little too old for that. Maybe the whole thing was some sort of fetishistic role-play? He wouldn't have figured John for the type, but then again, the man had been visited on many occasions by the skanky cowgirl. That much had been clear enough from digging through the footage.

Perhaps the other person who had met her would have a better impression. Tassiter reached across his desk for the intercom. "Ms Andrews, would you please come into my office?"

He'd considered terminating the secretary after her aid in helping the impostor escape, but ultimately, it was more effort than it was worth to replace her. Besides, Megan was no threat to him. To a certain extent, he even admired her loyalty. It was certainly a rare trait within the company. Perhaps he could turn it to his own use.

The new office doors noiselessly slid open. "You wanted to see me, Sir?"

Tassiter swept his arm in front of his desk. "If you could have a seat, I have a few questions for you."

John might have had horrendous taste in decor, but this certainly didn't spill over to his personnel. The secretary was an expectantly attractive blond, and surprisingly professionally dressed compared to the other people John kept around. The woman nervously fidgeted in her seat and flipped her hair over her shoulder in an attempt to keep it out of her face.

"Ms Andrews, may I ask how long you've been employed by the company?" Tassiter eased into the conversation.

"About eleven years," came her prompt reply.

"Ah, you must have started here quite young," Tassiter noted, and she nodded in response. "And I'm sure you would like to continue working here, correct?"

"Y-yes, Sir."

"Well, as you may have noticed, this station is undergoing some changes," Tassiter continued. "With your experience, I'm sure that you could continue to prove a valuable asset to the company."

Megan sat a little straighter in her seat. "I believe I will, yes."

"Of course you will. Now Megan – do you mind if I call you 'Megan'?" Tassiter was treated to another nod. "Wonderful. Then the first way you can demonstrate this, is by answering a couple questions about your final interaction with Jack."

Megan's small fidgets froze for a moment before replying. "I already submitted a report, Sir. I had no way of knowing that Jack was the reason for the lockdown."

"Yes, but I find reports so… impersonal, " he waved off her efforts at justification and attempted to lift the corners of his mouth into a disarming smile, but found it difficult from the lack of practice. The result could have easily been mistaken for a grimace. With a press of a button, the still image of the young woman in question popped up between them. "No, what I'm interested in is the identity of Jack's companion."

Megan looked surprised. "You mean the girl?"

Was I not obvious enough? "Yes, the girl. What can you tell me about her?"

"I don't really know anything. She seemed very young – kind of shy. There was something about the two of them though. They looked… close."

"What do you mean by 'close'?"

"You know: close. B-but not like lovers close, more like family close..." she trailed off.

That certainly matched what Tassiter had seen about the two of them in the footage. However, if that was the case, that would mean whoever this was most likely didn't know that John was dead. Considering that the shipping date of the container the young woman had arrived in fell comfortably before the probable time of John's death, she couldn't be someone of importance to Lawrence. And yet, that just made it all the more stranger that he had willingly chosen to take her with him.

"And Jack never spoke about her?"

"No, never. But you might want to ask Nisha about her. She was close to Jack too, but the other kind of close."

It looked like he would need to talk to the skanky cowgirl again. Oh joy. "Thank you, Megan. That'll be all for now."

Megan excused herself with a brief nod and exited the room – probably slightly faster than she should have. She wasn't dumb and that was more than he could say about many of the station's inhabitants. She also had a surprising amount of class, definitely more than the next person he was about to speak to.

Sighing his displeasure, Tassiter hoped that Nisha would bother answering his call. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long for the call to patch through before her obnoxious voice called out over the background roar of an engine, "The hell do you want?"

Skipping the pleasantries, Tassiter got to the point. "I have questions and I need answers."

"Here's one: go fuck yourself."

Tassiter reined in his annoyance. "Perhaps another time. Now if you're done with your inadequate attempts at language, you might find something of use."

"Go on."

"I believe your quarry – I assume you haven't caught him yet – may not be traveling alone," he began.

"Who the hell's with him?"

"A woman – somewhat young. I'll send you a picture later on. She was apparently living with him for the past couple of weeks. Given the liaison you and John appeared to be having, I was hoping you can tell me who this person might be."

"Bullshit," came her favorite response to everything. "Jack wasn't fucking anyone else while I was there. I made sure of that."

"And yet for two weeks, she was there," Tassiter drummed his fingers impatiently. "Now, I have reason to believe that their relationship might not have been sexual in nature. Which leads me to the question: did John ever mention having a daughter?"

The roar of the engine was the only sound that came from the other end as the harpy remained uncharacteristically silent. "A daughter?"

"Yes, a daughter. His offspring, his spawn, the fruit of his loins – whichever you can comprehend. Did he have one?"

"Of course he didn't have a fucking daughter. I woulda known."

"Well, she repeatedly called the impostor 'dad.' So unless you were also John's 'naughty little girl', there can be no other explanation."

Tassiter deliberately turned the volume down through the several second long tirade that followed. When the multitude of insults and 'fucks' finally abated, he restored the volume in hope of a real answer.

"I don't give a fuck who she is. If she's with him, then she's dead too," Nisha said at last.

"I see your feelings for John died with him." Except anger. That one most definitely remained. Tassiter could care less whether or not John's 'daughter' met the same fate as her father. One less thing for him to deal with. Besides, paying out John's life insurance would have been expensive anyway. "Good luck in your hunt."

Nisha didn't bother with a response and the line went dead. After the fruitlessness of his call, Tassiter decided he needed good news. Selecting a different extension, Tassiter called John's personal quarters.

It was the bulbous face of an engineer that answered: "Yes, Sir?"

"What's the progress on opening that door?"

"Almost done, Sir. We'll have it open within the hour," came the response Tassiter wanted to hear.

"Excellent, I'll be on my way." Tassiter removed himself from his chair and straightened his already immaculate suit. Soon, John's secrets would belong to him.

The average person would probably be amazed at how well you can tune out the smell of dead bodies after you've been rifling around in them for awhile. Not that Timothy had much to show for it since the mini-gun had been effective at its job and ruined most anything useful. A few ammo clips, some crumpled bloody bills and a single working pistol. He wasn't exactly swimming in loot. The bodies of the bandits he had gunned down with the SMG on the other hand, had proven a much better trove. Two assault rifles, an SMG and a couple of shotguns now occupied his storage deck for sale later. A grenade module had also been clipped to his belt and a shield stuffed into his pocket. Not too shabby all things considered.

Timothy also noted with a small sense of glee, that Jack's fabled Weapon of Doom had lived up to the hype. Looking at the bandit's corpses, it was making a way bigger holes than it should for a gun that size. What was weird is that all the wounds had a strange, purplish… sludge around them. Repeated attempts at poking it had offered little in the way of answers. Instead, Timothy removed the clip to look at the bullets and found nothing of interest: just regular bullets. As a last ditch attempt, he turned on his ECHO device to take a look at the actual manufacturer information.

Highlighting the gun in question, its information card held nothing of value. Where a normal one might list specifications provided by the manufacturer for the weapon, this one only listed a string of text: Personal Defence Weapon (EXPTYP-2457: MK1-SLG). The text itself meant nothing to Timothy, but the added all capitalized note at the bottom – most likely Jack's – was much more straight forward: BITCHIN'.

"Bitchin' indeed," Timothy agreed.

Figuring he had his fill kneeling wrist deep in gore, Timothy dusted himself off and headed back towards the garage. Trying not to trip over the bodies piled in front of the door, he made his way inside just as Angel was hefting a milk crate onto the back of the truck. The rattle of its contents was enough to remind him of the dull ache in his stomach. Oh, yeah. I haven't eaten in forfuckingever.

"What'd ya manage to find?"

Angel picked out a can and wrinkled her nose at the label. "'Skag Chow'– is that even meant for people?"

Given the nature of Pandora, it was one of those grey areas Timothy wasn't so sure of. "Is that skag chow as in 'made from 100% free range skag,' or skag chow as in 'feed this to your pet skag' because one of those sounds a lot less appetizing."

Angel scratched away some rust on the label. "Not sure. It just says it's apparently 'good fer yer innards.'"

"Well, food sounds good for my innards right now, so I'm game if you are." Timothy washed off his hands and sat down on the edge of the truck's bed. Picking out one of the rusted cans, he tried not to think too hard about the amount of rust that might have made its way into the contents.

"I'm not."

"You realize we're at least another day away from civilization sooo... trust me, you're game." Timothy peeled back the lid on the can and tried to ignore the fact that he was about to eat some unlabeled meat. "Pinch your nose and try not to think about it too much – or chew."

With a reluctant sigh, Angel pulled herself onto the truck. Gingerly peeling back the lid of her own, she plucked out a chunk of meat and waited expectantly for him to take the first bite.

Bracing himself for the worst, Timothy took a bite and found it incredibly… tolerable. Sure, it was greasy as hell and tough enough that it would probably back him up for days, but he'd eaten worse things in his life. Forcing himself to swallow, he gave Angel a thumbs up. "Welp, it won't kill ya."

It seemed like that was all the confirmation Angel needed before taking a bite herself. Her features pinched at the taste, but she otherwise kept her comments to herself. They lapsed into silence for a few minutes, both too occupied with trying to chew it down. For all of her complaints, she actually managed to finish eating before him and daintily washed her hands at the pump.

"Hey, can I borrow your ECHO for the drive?" Angel said out of nowhere.

Timothy noisily sucked his fingers clean. "Maybeee, why do you want it?"

The two of them weren't exactly simpatico at the moment and he was more than a little nervous giving the tech wizard a way to talk to anybody without him knowing. The last thing he needed was for the two of them to get ambushed by anyone she may have contacted – Hyperion or her Vault Hunter friends. Neither would be particularly forgiving towards him.

Angel dug into the crate and tossed an ECHOsim game his way. "It's going to be a long drive and I have nothing to do."

Catching it, Timothy scrutinized the cover. Two scantily clad women were flying through space shooting at each other from the backs of dragons. "'Dragon Slayer 4: The Reckoning. It's like North Wind, with guns.' Seriously? What are you, a kid?"

"It's not like I had a selection," Angel huffed and crossed her arms. "And I'm not a kid – I'm twenty."

Timothy stared, disbelieving. "Really?" Wow, I really should've payed more attention to her reports. "Puberty really uhhh… really passed you by there, didn't it?" The empty can that came flying at him bounced harmlessly off of his chest and Timothy couldn't hold back his laughter.

"Yeah, well, you're old," Angel attempted to snatch the game back out of his hands.

"Nope, not really," Timothy kept playing his game of keep-away. "I'm only twenty-seven."

It was Angel's turn to be disbelieving. "But… but Dad was old! He was like, fifty-one!"

"Yeah, doesn't mean I had to be."

"At least I still look like myself," she snorted.

Ouch, low blow. "What makes you think I look so much different now? You don't know what I looked like before."

"Well, it was probably terrible. Why else would you want to look like someone else?"

All trace of humor disappeared from Timothy's face as he wordlessly handed the game back to Angel. Because being somebody – anybody–was better than being a nobody. Not that he was about to tell her that.

"Something like that," he mumbled. Timothy pushed himself off of the truck bed and made his way around to the driver's side. "You ready to go?"

Angel nodded wordlessly and followed. Climbing up into the passenger seat, it wasn't until Timothy backed up over the corpse-speedbumps did she say, somewhat meekly: "So… can I borrow your ECHO?"

"Yeah, sure," Timothy removed it and handed it over. "It's off though; didn't want anyone tracking us."

Angel slipped in the sim and powered it on. Swiping to the start up of the game menu, she paused. "You have a couple of missed calls."

Uh-oh. Timothy glanced over long enough to motion her to give it back. "Lemme see."

Angel passed it back and he eased up on the gas to safely check. Sure enough, Nisha had called twice during the night. There's no way she couldn't have heard what had happened to Jack at this point. It looked like some messages had been left for him and Timothy deleted them rather than hear about the impending threats of death. No need to get Angel worked up over nothing. Or at least, he hoped it was nothing.

Timothy passed the ECHO back. "You'll like the game, it's pretty good."

"Oh?" Angel powered up the game, distracted.

"Yeah, played it years ago. Watch out for the third boss, she's a bitch."

A/N: Hey there, we have a few notes for you guys today. Let's start with clarifying our reasoning behind a few of the character's ages. Jack has to be in his late 40's/ early 50's. We know this guy had to go through college, meet a wife, have a kid, and climb the corporate ladder. Not to mention the years that passed between BL1 and TPS. That shit doesn't happen fast. As far as Angel goes, she would have to be late teens, early 20's. We can also assume Jack had Angel around his late 20's/early 30's so it matches up.

Finally, with Nisha, all we really had to go with was the changes in her appearance and personality from TPS to BL2. Given her general attitude and her *ahem* colorful – yeah, that's the word we'll use – outfit in TPS, well she can't be that much older than Angel. By the time we reach BL2, Nisha seems to have matured both physically and mentally over her TPS character.

Next thing: slag. This isn't a thing yet. Since Hyperion at this point of time was still experimenting with slag, it's not an elemental type you'll find on normal weapons.

Last thing: there is no picture of Angel on Jack's desk for Tassiter to find because why would anyone go through the huge amount of effort to keep someone's existence a secret, only to ruin that by placing a picture of that person where anyone can see? Yeah, that makes no sense to us either, so we're nixing that.

Alright, well thanks for reading so far. If you have any questions or comments, leave them in a review or a PM. Thanks!