The headache Roland had spent the better part of the day ignoring had grown into a dull throb by the time he excused himself from Zed's company. The doctor had given him an ever growing list of medical supplies they were running low on as well as impressing upon him the need for a non-claptrap assistant. Roland had just nodded and told him that he'd work on it; the same response he'd given everyone else making demands all day. Jaynistown didn't have the resources to support its sudden influx of people - what else was new.

Roland wished more than anything that he could disappear for a little while. It's not like everyone's problems wouldn't still be there by the time he got back. Running around at everyone's beck and call had given him a newfound appreciation for what Helena had to put up with. It also explained Helena's appreciation for a stiff drink. At the moment, he could definitely go for one.

Roland tried not to look too enthusiastic as he skirted around the edge of the town square on the way back to his room. He had just reached the doorway of the building when the sound of a vehicle rumbling up outside of town stopped him in his tracks. Looking back over his shoulder, he realized his mistake as he locked eyes with an irritable looking Marcus walking through the gates. Shit. Resigning himself to the encounter to come, he resolutely met Marcus halfway across the square.

"I'm gone for a weekend delivery, and you guys manage to ruin the entire town!" Marcus blustered as he approached. "I thought Helena kept you all around so that kind of thing wouldn't happen. Where is she?"

In the mayhem of their escape, he'd forgotten all about Marcus. In spite of everything, Roland still hadn't done a proper headcount of who had made it out yet. Probably because he wasn't really familiar enough with the townspeople to know. That had been Helena's territory. Still, he owed Marcus an explanation, even if he didn't feel like talking about it. "She's dead."

Marcus seemed to deflate at those two words. "Oh. I… I see. What happened?"

"Hyperion attacked the town," Roland said. "You saw the result."

"You know, I didn't actually think they were serious. Evict the whole planet? Pah - it's ridiculous."

"Tell me something I don't know," Roland sighed and glanced away, wishing the conversation would end already. It had been that kind of day.

Roland was just about excuse himself when he caught sight of a child in the distance watching them. He recognized the singed pink dress of the little girl before she ducked out of sight around a corner. It wasn't the first time he'd caught her spying on him today. He'd thought about approaching her a couple of times, but other things had kept him occupied. Besides, Roland wasn't sure what he would've said to her even if he did. Dealing with kids wasn't a skill he'd picked up, traumatized ones even less so.

"Listen, Marcus, can we talk later? I've still got things I need to take care of," Roland said vaguely as he made to turn away.

"Now wait one minute," Marcus insisted. "What am I supposed to do about my lost merchandise?"

What did Marcus expect him to do about it? Roland was hardly in the business of looting corpses anymore to replenish his stock. "Just be glad you weren't in there with it."

"This is going to ruin me!" Marcus called after him as Roland walked away.

"I'm sure you'll have plenty of business soon enough if New Haven was a taste of what's to come," Roland tossed over his shoulder.

Roland had just begun the slow trek back to his room, when he caught sight of that little girl following him again. Well, if she wasn't going to come to him, he'd go to her. Walking past the entrance of his building, he turned the corner and lounged against the wall. He didn't have to wait long before she nearly ran into him in her attempt to sneak around the corner.

"What are doin' there, Tiny?" he said bemusedly at she stood frozen before him like a skag blinded by headlights.

"It's Tina," she corrected. "And I'm not doin' anything."

"Well, Tina, it looks like you're following me," he said.

"I wasn't," she shrugged and toyed with the frayed edge of her dress.

"So, what were you doin'?" he crossed his arms.

"Nothin'."

The two of them stood there for a long moment in silence as Roland struggled with what to say. He wanted to ask her how she was coping, but really, there was no good way to ask how someone was coping with having their parents blown to pieces on top of them. "Are you getting enough to eat?" he asked instead, and Tina rocked on her feet with a nod.

"Do you have a place to stay?" Again, he was treated with another nod and he wished she would give him a real answer.

"Is someone looking after you?" This time, she shook her head and he felt guilty he hadn't checked up on her earlier. With everything going on, it just slipped his mind. "Okay, why don't you come with me and I'll see about finding someone to take care of you."

"Nuh-uh," Tina finally broke her silence. "I can take care of myself."

"A'ight," he held up his hands disarmingly. It was far too common to see kids left alone on Pandora. The combination of extreme violence and hard living meant that orphaned children were a dime a dozen. He tried to avoid thinking about the fact that he'd probably created more than a few himself. She was better off living where he could keep an eye on her than wandering the wastes like the rest of them. After all, even bandits came from somewhere. "You let me know if you need anything."

"My puppy," she said shortly.

"Your what?"

"Enrique!" she said impatiently. "You promised we'd go back and get'm."

"Is that what this is about?"

"Yeah," she said with a roll of her eyes. "…and I was bored. Zed kicked me out after I tried to play with his claptrap."

Enrique was probably doing fine considering the amount of corpses left in New Haven. Roland wasn't so sure about bringing a skag into town that had acquired a taste for human flesh. "It's not safe to go back there yet."

"But you promised!" she said in a voice so earnest that Roland seriously considered changing his mind… for about half a second.

"Just give it time," he assured her. "Don't you worry 'bout it."

Tina looked like she was about to argue further before she got cut off. "There you are," came Lilith's voice as she rounded the corner. "So this is where you've slipped off to. I've got Mordi and Brick ready to hear this brilliant plan of yours and I'd like to do it while Mordi's still sober." She paused at the sight of Tina and added, "Oh, hi."

Tina didn't respond, and worried the edge of her dress once more. If Lilith was surprised, she didn't show it. "You playing babysitter now?" she raised an eyebrow at him.

"Just to an entire town," he said. "Don't know how Helena ever got anything done."

"With a lot more yelling and threatening than I imagine you're doing," Lilith smirked. "Now c'mon, we gotta go."

Roland ruffled Tina's hair as he followed after Lilith. "You take care of yourself, Tiny."

"It's Tina!"

"I know."

As he and Lilith made their way inside, Lilith remarked, "So, another female admirer, huh? Anything I should be worried about?"

"Depends," he shrugged. "How d'you feel about kids?"

As the sun started to set over the distant horizon, Nisha couldn't help but admire the view. The rolling grassy hills and sheer cliffs of the Highlands made for a nice change of scenery from the metal cityscape of Tartarus Station. Hell, she'd even seen a river trickling through the hills behind the construction site. It was a sharp contrast to the endless wastes of the Dust she could just make out in the distance. The locals said that Pandora was moving into its winter cycle, but it sure as hell didn't look like it from here.

From her perch on the cliffside, Nisha could see the quiet town of Overlook spread out on the bluff below. Her feet dangled off the edge and she watched the tiny pinpricks of townspeople as they wandered around like ants. Behind her, Nisha heard the turn of a page as Wilhelm perused a magazine while he lounged on a pile of crates he'd turned into an improvised chair. Taking in this view had been the most exciting thing she'd done all week.

Their time had been spent traveling to different Hyperion sites playing guard dog for Tassiter. Now that Hyperion's robot army had been pulled off the table, it fell to its much more human employees to pick up the slack. Things were spread thin and it was starting to leave people on edge. The only bots still available for menial labor were the non-combat models, which meant there was an over abundance of claptrap units - as if her life couldn't get any worse. Sadly, Jack's plans to dismantle the product line had died with him. Yet another thing to resent Timothy for.

The past week had been the longest she'd spent without killing someone in years and it was starting to make her itch for some action. Of course, Wilhelm didn't seem to give a shit. It was beginning to annoy her how little of a shit he gave. For being such a hardened killer, Nisha was starting to wonder if the mercenary hadn't gone soft. He certainly seemed a little too content riding this gravy train to nowhere.

Nisha stood up and dusted herself off before wandering back to Wilhelm. "You planning on getting up sometime today?" she said. "You look like an old lady in a hair salon."

"Don't think I'd look good in a perm," he muttered absently at another turn of the page. "Besides, I only cut my hair with a combat knife."

"Yeah, looks like it," she snorted before nudging him over for some room. "Another day of doing... nothing. Doesn't it bother you?"

"I'm not doing nothing, I'm getting paid," he corrected and flashed her a page of the magazine. "Check it out: Tassiter's decided to bankroll a few upgrades for me."

Nisha glanced over the assortment of cybernetic arms that dominated the page. The information detailing each one could have been in a foreign language for all she understood, but the price tags were pretty clear - and very long.

"I'm good with my body, thanks," Nisha shrugged. She'd never understood Wilhelm's fixation with dismembering himself for a few shiny parts.

Wilhelm spared her a lingering look. "Hmph, I bet you are."

She wasn't about to correct him. Nisha had no illusions over how attractive she was. The stares people had given her for years was proof enough of that, and Jack had certainly liked the view. Still, she didn't think she'd bother getting an 'upgrade' even if she was about as attractive as a skag's rear end - either end, really.

"What's the point of that shit anyways?" Nisha nodded at the magazine. "Who needs an arm with a gun in it when you can just carry one? Your arms look like they work fine to me."

"Yeah, well, looks aren't everything," he said and patted his cybernetic knee. "I didn't get my leg blown off or whatever. My bones have been wasting away since the day I was born. By the time I was ten, I must've broken more bones in my body than most people do in a few life times. No cure for it, and treatment just keeps it from getting worse. If your body kept breaking down, I figure you'd feel differently about replacing it."

"That sucks," she said, and meant it. Growing up crippled like that would've been a death sentence. Her family never could have afforded the treatments and she wouldn't have been able to leave home when she did. She'd sooner put a gun between in her teeth than stay with them any longer than she had. "So, what about your eye?"

Wilhelm's beard twitched up in a grin. "I got it 'cause it was cool."

"Now that's pointless," she laughed. "If it ain't broke, why fix it?"

He folded the magazine over his leg. "Look around. You, me, those claptraps you hate so much: we're all machines. I'm just upgrading for better parts. Are you telling me it wouldn't be cool to explode people when you punch 'em?"

"Pfft - my parts work just fine without explosions," she disagreed before leaning back and tilting her hat down over her eyes. Wilhelm knew by now that this was her way of shutting down a conversation, and the moments dragged on where she tried to fight off boredom with sleep. It wasn't like anyone would care.

"So, what're you gonna do when we get paid?" Wilhelm said after a while. This is the most he'd heard him talk in, well, ever. He must've been as bored as she was; he just hid it better. "Once this is over, you'll have one helluva vacation fund."

"As if we're not on vacation right now?" Nisha scoffed. "Fuck Tassiter and fuck his money. You know exactly why I'm here."

"Still hung up on Jack, huh?" he said with a note of amusement. "Little unprofessional if you ask me."

"I wasn't," she tipped her hat up to glare at him. It annoyed her to no end that Wilhelm wouldn't shut up about that. It also annoyed her that he was right. "Are you telling me you're fine with sitting around catalogue shopping?"

"If Tassiter pays me to sit, I'll sit. If he pays me to kill, I'll kill," Wilhelm shrugged and flipped another page. "Unlike you, I don't enjoy it."

"You're so boring," she sighed. No wonder his only friends were a couple of drones. Not an ounce of initiative between them. "Let's ditch guard duty and go hunt down the Vault Hunters ourselves. Think about it: if we kill off the Vault hunters, what else does Tassiter have to worry about, bandits?"

Wilhelm set down the magazine once more. "Say the two of us do go off and kill 'em. What if Tassiter suddenly decides he doesn't need us anymore? Like you said: after that it's only bandits. Doesn't help my job security any. You plannin' on paying for my Fistomatic X3000?"

"Think of the bonus," she sat up. If money was his motivation, there was plenty up for grabs. "There's a hundred million on Timothy and Angel, and you know Tassiter would pay for the rest. Wouldn't you rather get paid now instead of sitting around and waiting to get paid later?"

"Y'know, there's a bit of an 'if' in there," he said. "Sure, I think we can probably take on the soldier, the sniper, and hell - even that bruiser. And it's not like Timothy would put up much of a fight. But I don't like my odds against against two Sirens. I can't shoot what I can't see and that other one is gonna make Wolf and Saint useless."

"And you still think mechifying yourself is a good idea?"

"That's why I haven't gone through with it yet. I'm waiting on Tassiter to finish those countermeasures Jack talked about," he waved away. "So, do you really think we can win all on our own?"

"I'd rather try than do nothing and wait for them to recover from the beating they took," Nisha reasoned. "This is the best chance we'll have and Tassiter's wasting it."

"Hyperion took a beating too, or did ya forget how they're so short on people now that their bots are out of the picture?"

"I haven't forgotten shit. We were there remember?" she snapped back. "Or at least, we got to watch. This could've ended at New Haven if he'd just let us fight."

Wilhelm's stood up with a slight hissing sound as the pneumatic pistons in his leg adjusted themselves. Any trace of humor was gone from his face and Nisha was pretty sure she was about to get an earful. She was starting to regret bringing this up in the first place.

"Maybe. Or maybe we would've been killed like the rest of 'em," he sighed. "The point is, I don't feel like taking big risks for no profit. I didn't live this long by making dumb decisions. If you wanna go get yourself killed, that's on you."

Nisha slid off the stack of crates and her hand settled over her storage deck. Was he just gonna let her walk away? Tassiter didn't seem too keen on the idea before. "Not gonna try to stop me again, are ya?"

"Be my guest," he gestured towards the horizon "Only went after you before 'cause Tassiter didn't want Angel dead. Something tells me that's not his priority anymore."

"Fine, you keep playing watch dog, I've got some blood to spill," Nisha brushed past him. "And don't expect me to share any of the reward with you," she tossed over her shoulder.

"Just don't get yourself killed out there," he called to her retreating back. "Getting caught up in your feelings only ends one way."

Nisha couldn't be bothered to spare him a parting shot and made her way through the labyrinthian sprawl of buildings towards the fast travel station. With each step, the stupor that had engulfed her mind over the past few days began to fall away and she found herself thinking clearly again. This was what she was supposed to be doing. She wasn't some trained dog for Tassiter to order around, she was a hunter and she knew her prey.

As the console lit up at her approach, Nisha found herself confronted with the first question of her plan. She scrolled over the list of locations available as her mind picked over possible places the Vault Hunters might have escaped to. They had plenty of wounded and they'd only left New Haven with one vehicle. They wouldn't go anywhere near Hyperion forces, and they wouldn't come back to New Haven. Not that they could anyway since its fast travel network was still offline. If they were still in hiding, then they had to be somewhere in the Rust Commons. Of course, there were no fast travel stations there other than New Haven's. That left her only one option.

Nisha smiled as she highlighted Lynchwood. Not that bad of a place, actually. Nice ambiance. Maybe after she was done with the Vault Hunters she'd take Wilhelm's advice and vacation there for a while.

Angel's backside had long since gone numb from the constant rattling of the truck. With Tannis claiming her seat on the way back, Angel had been forced to choose between bouncing around in the back of the truck and riding in the turret seat. She'd taken the latter and had come to regret the decision. The turret didn't offer any means of protection against the dusty winds and she'd been forced to duck down, eyes watering and jaw clenched tight with every bump on the road.

Angel hadn't been much for conversation either being that she'd get a mouthful of dust for the trouble. Not that she really minded. In an effort to keep her mind off her rear, she focused on trying to make out Tannis' voice fading in and out of the wind as she looked over the documents Timothy had given her to browse. Luckily for her and Timothy, Tannis thought out loud.

"This information you've given me seems to be woefully incomplete," Tannis complained. "While I do enjoy the colorful depictions of destruction and violence, this Jack is awfully thin on the details."

"Yeeeah, he was a little paranoid there towards the end," Timothy said.

No kidding. A peek over the lip of the turret had revealed Tannis leafing through a stack of papers instead of the datapads her father usually preferred. He'd made of habit of keeping everything digital so that she had easy access if he ever needed help. It was only the last month of his life that her father had stopped asking for her input. Then again, who knows how long he had kept the construction of the planet destroying laser on Helios from her. The whole thing was enough to leave her feeling slightly paranoid as well.

"So, did he leave any info on how to control the 'Warrior' thing?" Timothy said, and Angel could hear the impatience in his tone.

"I'm afraid he was as vague on that point as he was on everything else," Tannis clicked her tongue in annoyance. "This Jack fellow seems kind of stupid all things considered."

Angel couldn't help but take offense to that. Her father had been a brilliant programmer and a talented engineer to boot. It's just that he had kept most everything in his head and only wrote his ideas down when he needed to. That, and Eridian archeology wasn't his specialty. But, she didn't think that Tannis would care for the correction and she wasn't sure they could've heard her over the wind anyway.

"I actually theorize that controlling the Warrior might be easier than it sounds," Tannis went on. "Contrary to popular belief, while Eridian technology is highly complex in its engineering, it's usually simple enough for any idiot to utilize. You and your Vault Hunter friends should have nothing to worry about in that regard."

"That's uhhh… that's good to know," Timothy said. "Okay, so if we know where the Vault's at and you have the Key, how long you think it'll take to open this bad boy?"

"While your naively optimistic approach is amusing, I'm afraid that's just not possible," Tannis corrected. "I may possess the Vault Key, but it's currently uncharged. Unless this Jack person also planned on creating a time machine, you have a hundred and ninety-seven year wait ahead of you."

"Woah, I don't remember that part. What do you mean charge? What's the problem here?"

"Vault Key is something of a misnomer in this instance. It acts more akin to a battery than an actual key," Tannis explained. "Activating a Vault takes an immeasurable amount of power and these keys provide that. However, that power isn't limitless and it takes two hundred years to build up enough charge to activate a single Vault. As my own key was used three years ago, you're out of luck unless Jack also had a way to provide the nearly unfathomable amount of energy it would take to charge it faster."

This hardly would've been news to her father, Angel mused. They had to time the opening of the Vault perfectly last time - to the expense of the Vault Hunters. How had he planned to get around that? They didn't have two hundred years to wait. In the wake of Tannis' information dump, Timothy had gone quiet, perhaps thinking of very same thing.

"Yeah, I don't remember seeing anything that could…" he trailed off before the truck clipped a nearby boulder, jerking Angel around in her seat. "Oh."

"I hope the whiplash was worth your moment of sudden clarity," Tannis said indignantly. "Perhaps you'd care to share instead of starring blankly ahead of you; it's very unbecoming."

"Naaah, it's nothin'," Timothy laughed off a little too forcefully. "I just spaced out trying to remember, that's all. Hey - so, how exactly do Vaults work?"

Tannis seemed overjoyed to launch into a long-winded explanation, painfully oblivious to Timothy's lie. Angel couldn't understand what had caused the sudden change in him, but she had the feeling that the answer was somewhere in her father's notes. The fact that he thought he could hide it from Tannis meant that it wasn't in the information he'd given her. Angel once again found herself wondering exactly how much information Timothy had pulled from her father's office.

Well, if he wasn't going to share, then she'd have to rectify that.

Angel ducked low as she could in the turret and smothered her arm beneath her jacket to hide the telltale glow. Within the breath of a second, she tapped into Timothy's ECHO device and was surprised to find that it had belonged to her father. Of course it was her father's, Timothy had been impersonating him for weeks after all. She tried not to give too much thought to the idea that Timothy had probably looted it from his corpse.

Waving aside the familiar protections was second nature to her at this point, and in a moments time, she was digging through the device's contents. Wondering if he'd maybe sent the information to himself, Angel checked the messages first. The files opened at a thought, and she was buried under the sheer amount of them. The largest file belonged to a conversation between her father and his girlfriend. Angel sifted through a few of them and opened one of the larger attachments to find a video of Nisha doing something that was almost enough to make Angel retreat out of the device. Quickly closing the recording, Angel decided to abandon their conversation in case her father had decided to reciprocate the gesture. Did Timothy know these were on here, and if he did, why hadn't he deleted them?

Out of nostalgia, Angel opened the files that contained previous conversations she'd had with her father and was morbidly drawn to their last exchange.

- Hi, Dad. I'm about to get into the special room you designed for my trip. I'll be offline until I get there so I thought I'd send you one last message before I left. I'm really excited to join you at the station. I know you've been really busy lately, but I hope you can make some time to catch up when I get there. Maybe we can watch a movie, what do you think? Anyway, just bored and looking forward to seeing you soon. -

- Hey there, Pumpkin. Daddy's excited to see you too. You'll love it here. Your new room is great and I even got 'em to put in a window for ya this time. You'll have the best view on the station. Y'know, a movie night sounds pretty good after all the messes I've had to clean up here lately. Let's make a date of it. See ya soon, Kiddo. -

Angel sighed at how normal their last exchange had been. No 'I love you' no… nothing, just her father's usual endearments. It all seemed so bland. Then again, their conversations had never been overly sentimental. She'd hoped that their last real conversation together might have been more meaningful, but she supposed they had no way knowing that he would be dead before she arrived. It saddened her to think that her first week at the station had been everything he promised and more without him.

Closing out the messages as a dead end, Angel scoured the rest of the files. No matter where she looked, there was nothing to be found. Backing out of the device, Angel came back to reality to find Tannis still lecturing away unabated. Angel squinted against the dusty winds and glanced down at Timothy to make sure he hadn't noticed anything. By his occasional monotone sounds of agreement, she didn't think he was paying much attention to anything at the moment. She felt slightly guilty for breaking into his ECHO device like that, but he had promised that they wouldn't keep things from each other anymore.

Her mood sank as this only confirmed her suspicions. Timothy only kept hard copies of her father's notes and that meant they had to be be in his storage deck. She'd have to find a way to get it from him and see what exactly he was hiding. Of course, his storage deck happened to be accessorized within his belt buckle, so her chances of getting a hold of it were pretty much zero.

Great.

A/N: Yeah, so Vaults work just a bit different in our story, but it's not like we're diverging much from canon. Or that canon really gives us a solid explanation for them anyway. We're just clarifying things in a way that makes sense and might expand more on the subject later. Also, fast travel stations in our story aren't nearly as common as they are in the game. Kinda pointless to put one in the ass end of nowhere, so we're just sticking them in high traffic places that make sense. Anyway, that's pretty much it. Thanks for reading!