Note that I do not own Borderlands or anything related to it (although I wish I did) I only own the OCs in this story

In the humid highlands of Pandora, a modified technical was driving through the land almost unopposed.

'Almost' the person inside thought. They looked in their mirror to see a bandit technical, packed with Psychos, and Bandits, chasing after them.

And with a sigh, and a frown appearing on their face, they turned off of the road and slowed the vehicle to a stop.

The Bandit technical followed suit and parked on the road instead of turning off. They soon began disembarking while the person in the other technical instead stayed inside their vehicle.

As the bandits disembarked their vehicle one of them (most likely the leader) began speaking.

"Come out with your hands up and your weapons holstered and maybe we won't skin ya alive" they said. Chuckling to themselves after, clearly not intending to fulfil their part of any bargain.

'Fine by me'. the person thought as they got out of their technical facing the bandits.

Five in total, three bandits, and two Psychos… too easy.

"Good, now drop all of your money at your feet" The bandit leader shouts out believing they were giving in.

Not at all.

And as the bandit leader got closer intending to rob them with force, only then did they strike.

With a flash they struck, Pulling out a sword from their back and with a flash sheathed the blade in the bandit's chest before withdrawing it. The other bandits were stunned for a second, and in that second they crossed the distance and struck a Bandit across the chest Killing them.

And the other three began attacking.

The bandit began shooting at the figure with a Rifle, which the figure dodged out of their line of fire, and struck one of the Psychos charging her cutting them in half, the other Psycho attacked them from behind with a buzzsaw, which the figure avoided by bringing up their sword to parry it, before kicking them away and decapitating them with their blade in one fluid strike.

And before they could charge the last bandit, the bandit shot out another volley that would have hit them dead centre.

Would have if they didn't bring up a shield just before the bullets hit.

And the Bandit began spraying bullets until the telling 'click' of an empty gun sounded out. As they began reloading the figure wound up their arm and threw their shield at the Bandit's head, and with a 'crack' their head snapped backwards and they collapsed to the ground.

As the shield flew back onto the figure's arm, they moved their hands to their black and white hood and pulled it down revealing Purple hair, and blue eyes.

As Athena got back into their vehicle continuing to her destination, she wondered just how she got here again.

Money. She had heard that word in such a negative context recently that the previous allure of it instead left a sour taste in her mouth, instead of a pleasant one.

After the fight at the Vault of the Traveler she and Janey got married, and began planning to move to a more civilised and peaceful planet.

And that's when the problems began to appear.

A ticket to get off of Pandora cost in the tens of thousands, which despite everything Athena and Janey had saved up they were still short quite a sum. And until this job, Athena thought it would have taken at the very least a couple more years worth of low-paying, low-risk jobs to save up enough money to get them both a ticket off Pandora.

Until she got an echo from an unknown number asking for her to do a small delivery run which paid absurdly high.

Never mind said delivery run was to download some weird program onto her new echo (she wasn't going to download some suspicious program onto her actual echo despite what the job asked for) and plug it into an override panel at the gate of Opportunity.

She felt a frown as she remembered where she was going.

Opportunity. Jack's last piece of Hyperion that still Wasn't overrun by the wildlife or Bandits (although there wasn't much of a difference at this point, as bandits were practically a part of the ecosystem now). A place that held practically nothing in regards of importance.

Which was exactly why she was weary of this.

What did this person want with the useless data of one of Hyperion's greatest failures.

Other corporations sprung to mind as some sort of case of corporate espionage but at this point why even bother? While Athena didn't keep up with what was going on in the galaxy the destruction of the number 1 leading company is something pretty major- especially when she used to work for said company. And since Hyperion was in no state to pose much threat to any of the corporations there wasn't much of a strategic reason she could see for this job and why they wouldn't use their own men to do this job instead of an infamous former Hyperion mercenary.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts Athena noted that she was approaching the bridge to opportunity right now.

As she arrived at the bridge to Opportunity she noticed there was no echo port nearby to connect to the city. And without one she wouldn't be able to plug in the echo to download the data-

Right as she thought that her echo (not the one she was using for the job) beeped.

She pulled out her echo and saw she had a message from the client.

'Do not walk across the bridge as it will trigger the security system. Instead, go to the first pillar on your right at the gates of the bridge'.

As she reads the message she can't tell whether she's more glad that she doesn't have to make some elaborate plan to get inside the city and get to an override panel, or concerned that right as she was thinking about how to get to an override panel she gets a text telling her how to get to one.

How about both… ok maybe more the latter than the former at the very least.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts she gets back to the mission at hand and so she does as the text instructs as she gets out of her technical and walks over to the first pillar on her right.

As she gets close to it she notices how instead of the plain sterile white it once was it now is covered in graffiti, and the same for the other one, although that one seems a bit worse for wear considering the fact that it looks like the whole thing had been hit by a car or something a while ago leaving half of it crumpled into itself.

And with a bit of strength she pulls the panel right off the pillar exposing a small panel underneath, and some wires surprisingly untouched by any of Pandora's native wildlife.

She pulls out her Echo (not the one for the client) and begins echoing to the client what she needs to be looking for here.

'Look for a maintenance override jack, I should be able to access the city's data from there'

Well, that's useful to know but I didn't even echo him yet and he still managed to know exactly what she wanted to know.

She looked around trying to find someone looking at her or something but no nothing sentient in all directions around her.

As she found nothing she decided the client must be watching her from a distance or something. But that just leaves more questions why isn't he here himself, is there something going on here she doesn't know about, or is it that he can't be seen here himself…

After a minute or two of looking around and seeing nothing, she concludes they must be watching her from the hills and mountainous terrain of the highlands. A good tactical spot she must admit but one that's blatantly obvious as where else could this person see her from and be able to hide from her gaze except the city itself, which if the client could access they wouldn't have needed her help in the first place.

Eventually after neither finding nor hearing anything from her mysterious client, she begins looking for the maintenance override port.

As she dug through the electronics of this panel she began to reminisce about back when she was still on Elpis after leaving Hyperion's employ she would spend time with Janey breaking apart electronics together, and how she would fail at learning the nuances of being a mechanic and how Janey would only take that as an encouragement to try to teach everything to her- even the most minute of details, so she could help her with her job. She felt a small smile appear on her face at those memories.

But quickly it fell off her face as she remembered how that was all probably just to keep her home and away from the dangerous missions she was constantly on, which every time led to her trying to keep her at the garage for just a while longer trying to keep her away in hopes she just forgot, until one day she came back with a pretty serious wound across her waist from a massive Kragon (not to far from Janey's garage now that she thinks about it) which lead to her putting her foot down and demanding she stop going on such dangerous missions all the time.

Soon after they left Elpis and moved to Pandora hoping for a better life (away from the increasingly Hyperion-controlled moon), and began settling down on Pandora for the time being, with the plan being to ease out a safe life in Hollow Point. That plan quickly failed as an easy living was impossible down on Pandora and so they made plans to leave hoping to make enough money to leave. Janey wished to buy a garage to repair cars and try to replicate some of the vehicles on Elpis down on Pandora while she turned to her old ways of doing things hoping to get them out faster… and to try to escape from the Crimson Raiders who were hunting her.

Eventually, the Crimson Raider issue was solved after a job went sideways but Janey found out and put a stop to her "delivery jobs" and declared right in front of all of Sanctuary she was going to marry her and was going to murder them all unless she was released.

The image even now still makes her chuckle. Janey loaded down to the teeth with guns and ammo loudly declaring that unless Athena was released she was going to murder them all and have their wedding on their corpses. Luckily by then, the whole thing had been sorted out and she was let go- well after a couple of days of explaining her story to the other vault hunters.

And as she shook herself out of her thoughts she finally found the Hyperion override Jack.

The port was a small standard Hyperion black and yellow override Jack designed to only be able to plug into a Hyperion echo device, a project Hyperion attempted to market on Pandora during Jack's time to phase out the old DAHL echos. However, they never caught on, most likely because Hyperion was invading Pandora at that time and Hyperion only sold them to their employees and "civilised" Pandorans, which was practically none of them in their eyes.

While she thought, she pulled out the echo she was using for the job and a small black adaptor. The adaptors for Hyperion tech were made after Hyperion pulled back off Pandora by Scavs and the crimson raiders, and were designed to allow them access to former Hyperion caches of supplies, and even bases until they realised the security was still very much active and without the proper authorisation codes were going to stay that way, so they left those places alone letting the wildlife have the run of them.

As she pulled the override Jack from its spot, she carefully plugged it into the echo's adaptor.

A couple of seconds after she plugged it in, she saw the electronic lights in the panel all light up for a second when before they were all off, even the broken box opposite her was now sparking with emergy, and it seemed like in the distance the city was a bit more alive than it was before.

Right before she was about to tear the echo out- consequences be dammed, she didn't want the turrets to be the next thing turning back on, the sparking and lights all stopped and went back to how it was before.

As she was standing there on high alert ready for a security alarm, with turrets appearing to shoot at her, but instead there was nothing but silence. Just like before but now even more pronounced.

And right as she was about to echo the client she got a text from them.

'Job completed and payment transferred'

She frowned at the message and after checking her bank account and seeing the deposited money- correction king's ransom, she pulled out the echo she bought for this job and inspected it finding nothing was off, and found it was the same as before.

Athena put the echo in her storage deck and after putting the metal panel back in place (no sense to let someone know there was anyone here) she got back in the car and left. As she drove off she felt like something big had just happened, even if she didn't know it yet.

John was feeling like some sort of evil mastermind… which a part of him now was… and he was going to stop thinking about the fact he had the memories of a genocidal dictator in his head… or rather code (still feels weird thinking of himself as a computer program now).

After I had my maniacal schemer moment (which I guess I am now), I began furthering my plan, and began looking over the architectural plans for Opportunity, which were in my head… also weirdly enough the schedule for Opportunity's worker breaks… which were never… there was a lot of useless data in his mind Jack took with him when he left Helios.
I noticed in the plans for Opportunity there was an override port right at the gate, apparently for emergency access to the very centralised network of Opportunity to lower the bridge in case of stranded Hyperion employees under attack by Pandora's fauna… who would then lure both themselves and the wildlife into a kill zone for the turrets to deal with both of them… perfect place for his way into Opportunity's systems.

Anyway after I finished making a plan of how to open up Opportunities doors, I began searching for any of Jack's old hidden bank accounts to pay for a reward fitting for a former Vault Hunter. And there was barely anything left of the quadrillions Jack once had, although there were a handful of accounts left which when combined left him with a jaw-dropping number.

One Hundred freaking Million… and this was a fraction of Jack's total wealth at his height, the amount of things I would have to have done back in his old world to even see a fraction of this was massive.

And there it was in his digital hands, and in that moment I felt like with this I could do anything… until I remembered that inflation does in fact exist, and that vast sum I had quickly decreased in value once he found out that this was far less valuable than it was in his era. And he's not trying to sound ungrateful, after all even in the borderlands world One Hundred Million was still a king's ransom, it's just that it is far less valuable than it would be back home.

Luckily for him (and unluckily for native Pandorans) this was still an incredible amount of money, easily enough to bribe- Hire Athena to do a job and still have plenty left over.

The job was simple and would barely be that dangerous (for Pandora's standard anyway), and would benefit all sides, as Athena and her girlfriend would get to leave this rock (yes he had been cyberstalking her to figure out what she was after) and I would get to access Opportunity's network and code it to the echo net space I lived in, a win-win for everyone… except those bandits whom Athena killed… that… that was a bit grim.

I still remember watching from Athenas Echo (which I hacked), and seeing the massacre in action… the part that disturbed him the most wasn't the blood the gore or even the Psycho's disgusting lack of sanitation… it was him… his own lack of… empathy for them. And while they were Bandits who raped, killed, and raided all across Pandora, the sheer lack of any empathy- any sympathy for them from him was… disconcerting, and while he had some greyish morals in his past life, he still felt some empathy for others.

But anyway away from this disconcerting topic, Athena had finally made it to Opportunity. He quickly texted her some instructions and a warning to not go too far on the bridge (those turrets were still probably active, and the only reason no Psychos or Bandits decided to try blowing up the bridge… again) and after a second of her looking for the override Jack she pulls out the echo that he had installed a datalink of his box into meant to connect any networks it was plugged into to him and a Hyperion adaptor. In a couple of seconds, the echo was plugged in, and he noticed an oval hole, a yellow and black contrast of colours filling it in, with code lining its edge, appearing in his box.

He observed and checked the link for a couple of seconds seeing if it was properly connected, and after seeing it was properly connected, he put in all the access codes to allow his code through, and he tentatively reached out his hand to touch the link. After praying to whatever gods he could think off of the top of his head that this would work, he transferred his data into Opportunity's Systems.

And I felt the difference immediately.

While I was in the echo net I was living in a place which I could barely control and was not compatible with the systems there making doing anything big a difficult task.

Here though? Here I was perfectly compatible with the code and tech of Opportunity, and instead of barely being able to do anything, here I WAS everything.

The Lights, which a second ago were lying dormant.

The cameras, which were deactivated were now online and giving me vision of everywhere in Opportunity.

And he could even see Athena from the cameras of the bridge.

I felt great as well, as while I downloaded myself into the Systems, I found out that the servers in Opportunity were still fully working and a Hell of a lot better than what they use to run the echo net that I stashed myself inside of, and I had a lot more of its processing power, than what I could steal away from the echo nets servers while remaining undetected.

It all looked so weird as well, instead of being inside a box with an almost infinite amount of white boxes all around. here there was no box surrounding him, and instead of white boxes being all around me, here they were all either yellow or black, and instead of the background being all black, here it was all blue, with lines of code running up and down everywhere, instead of being hidden like it was on the net.

I was brought away from my thoughts by seeing Athena on one of the cameras growing quite concerned by all the activity that was going on, and about to pull a move which brought to the forefront of my mind Jack's last memories and a fate I want to avoid.

I quickly sent a check to the- my systems, stopped the sparking at the boxes and fixed anything else she might see, and quickly used Opportunity's transmitter to connect to my account on the net, sending Athena her paycheck a message to tell her the job was over and she had been paid, and to also connect to my code on the other side of the link, making it so that I could instead transfer my remaining data on the other side of the link, from a much safer connection not about to be ripped out.

She seemed to see this, and after a couple of minutes looking for something (did she drop something?), she seemed to give up, and she got in her technical and drove away.

As she drove away I continued to watch her from the cameras until she disappeared over the hills.

I turned back into myself once she had left, and took a deep breath.

Now it's time for the next stage of my plan… as soon as I figure out what that is.

With a thought, I materialise a chair behind me to sit down on and crack my knuckles.

'Well I've got time to plan, so I wonder what's been going on in Hyperion since Jack's death'

And with a thought, a dozen screens come up in front of him, each one showing a different piece of information about Hyperion. But out of all of them, one stands out the most.

And even without reading the first few words, I can understand exactly what happened based on the image above it. Even despite how unexpected it is.

It's of a Hyperion base on Tantalus, Hyperion soldiers are streaming out of it being attacked… by DAHL Marines.

Hyperion and DAHL were at war.

Authors note.

Well that took longer than the last chapter, and was pretty much how expected the update rate to be so for those who were hoping for a quick update rate, well I have got some bad news for you.

But anyways I am gonna end this Authors note here as I am exhausted.

So see you next chapter… if you have still bothered to read this far.