Chapter 3
A/N: Heyo! Miss me? Hopefully not too much! Sorry once again for such a delay between chapters, but I am pleased to be able to bring you yet another addition to this story. Enjoy and remember that I own nothing!
...
Maya was becoming more and more awed by this "hellhound" creature the further they progressed into the preserve. Everything about this demon dog seemed like it had been turned up to eleven, as it was leaps and bounds above any other creature they'd encountered so far inside or outside the facility. The three other vault hunters were able to keep its pace well enough, but any complacency on their part quickly led to the hound nearly leaving them in the dust as it eagerly jumped into combat against any and all opponents it came into contact with. Its already incredible speed was supplemented by its teleportation abilities, its strength rivaled some of the largest badasses Maya had ever encountered, and its intelligence…well, Maya could confidently say she'd never seen a dog competently exercise battlefield tactics before.
At first, it seemed like the hound had just luckily been at the right place at the right time: teleporting next to Maya right when her phaselock ability ran out to cover her vulnerability until it recharged, protecting Krieg's exposed flank from a stalker that had managed to sneak past his notice, disengaging from a target so that Zer0 had a clean strike with his sword…all of it had seemed like good fortune at the time. But as it continued to happen again and again, Maya was now certain that the hound was knowingly doing these things, which meant that the creature was extremely intelligent. The thought alone was intimidating enough even without witnessing it firsthand time and time again, leaving Maya extremely grateful that the hellhound was on their side.
"Curious creature," Zer0 said, echoing her thoughts as they pushed through the open area in front of the observation wing.
"It cannot be from this place. / Far too strong and smart."
"Yeah, I'm starting to think the same thing," Maya agreed with a nod as she watched the hellhound snap a rakk's neck between its jaws. "Hell, I'm not even sure this thing is from Pandora at this rate. Krieg, you ever seen anything like this before?"
"Nothing was left hanging to the pole!" Krieg replied as he struggled to free his buzz axe from the stiff metal chassis of a now deactivated loader bot. "Nothing but the frazzled ends of the snapped blades!"
"I figured not. Well, wherever it's from, I'd call us lucky that it ended up here. With this thing around, we'll find Bloodwing in no time."
"Amen to that," came Mordecai's agreeing voice from the ECHOnet. "I've been keeping an eye on you guys through my scope, and I gotta say, that fiery perro is one mean son of a gun."
It was then that Roland reached out over the ECHO from back in Sanctuary, having been previously preoccupied on briefing the other vault hunters on their mission to speak to the Slab King.
"Be careful around that thing," Roland began. "It may not be a threat right now, but we don't know what it really is or what its motives are. Just make sure you guys keep your head on a swivel."
"Don't worry, boss man," Maya replied with a smirk. "There's plenty of bones around here to keep it satisfied. I doubt it'll turn on us as long as we give it treats."
To Maya's surprise, the hound cocked its head towards her, indicating that it knew she was talking about it, and she wisely let the conversation drop lest she truly test the limits of what amounts of English the creature understood.
The conversation died as the hound led them through the main entrance and into the large building where the observation wing was housed, completely ignoring the monotonous drone of the secretary bot that spouted all kinds of warnings and precautions about direct contact with slag.
"You know, since you dirty bandits seem to enjoy trespassing on my preserve, how about I give you a little background on just what it is we're doing here?" came Handsome Jack's mockingly suave and equally grating voice over an open ECHO channel.
Maya bit back a snarky reply and chose to dedicate her energy to the mission at hand. There would be plenty of time to say what she wanted to say to that asshole when she eventually got his head under her boot. She just needed to be patient.
"I had my boys over at the Hyperion Research Division build this little operation to uncover the full applications of slag," Jack continued. "You see, it's not just an elemental damage type that you kiddies are just so fond of using against my men and my bots. If you know how to use it and have half a brain, slag has…well, lots of applications. Hell, what you've seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg!"
Jack was goading them, no doubt Mordecai specifically. The unspoken implication that he had subjected Bloodwing to some of his twisted experiments had most certainly been picked up on by the sniper, and even though Mordecai said nothing over the net, Maya could almost feel his rage through the static silence.
They group made their way through the building with stark efficiency thanks to the help of their new canine companion, and eventually, the vault hunters emerged into a large open room with even larger vats of pure slag present all throughout it.
"Too much slag in here," Zer0 said. "Foreboding feelings…"
The sight of the substance in a place like this was enough to put Maya off as well, though a glance to her right showed that Krieg seemed to be having a harder time than both her and Zer0. The psycho's knuckles were nearly white against the haft of his axe, and his masked gaze jumped angrily from vat to vat of the deep purple substance as though he expected them to move or attack him at any moment.
"You doing ok, big guy?" she asked with concern.
"Silvery sticks reflect the churning black!" Krieg growled in response. "Saturate the seas with my cold blood!"
"Yeah, this place gives me the creeps too," Maya replied. "The sooner we get Bloodwing back and get out of here, the better."
"Superb idea," Zer0 agreed with a nod as the hound led them further into the room, towards a set of windows that appeared to look out and down into an open outdoor area. The flaming creature waited patiently for the vault hunters to join it at the windows, and as Maya drew closer, she could see that the outdoor area was actually an arena of some kind. Multiple glass viewing ports like the one they looked through now ringed the outer edges, looking as though the place was built to accommodate multiple spectators at once.
Next to her, the hound gave a small snort of finality as it surveyed the large space, and taking into account what Jack had told them before, she could only imagine what sadistic show the Hyperion CEO had in store for them. With a sigh, Maya accessed the ECHO.
"Alright, Mordecai. I think we're here. The hound seems to have reached the end of Bloodwing's trail, which just so happens to be at this giant staging area. No sign of her yet, though. Knowing Jack, I'm guessing he's got some kind of show planned for us."
"I see it," Mordecai replied, and Maya detected the barely concealed tension in his voice. "If I know Bloodwing, Jack's gonna have the biggest badass he can find protecting her. It shouldn't be much of a problem for you guys, but just a heads up."
"Appreciate it," Maya said before nodding to Krieg and Zer0. The unspoken statement that they were in for a fight caused them to ready their weapons and prepare for the ensuing combat, and a glance to the hound revealed that it was also aware of the fact.
With a shake of its fur, the canine stretched its legs and shook loose a few embers from its fiery hide, and after ensuring that both it and the other vault hunters were ready, Maya nodded once and started for a large open freight elevator that sat at the very end of the room, no doubt their entrance to the arena.
Zer0 pressed a button on the elevator's control console once they were all aboard, and with a metallic lurch, the lift began its descent, slowly lowering them down from the large observation room and into the arena.
Just as the elevator slowed to a stop, the four of them were suddenly unbalanced as a small but severe tremor shook the very ground beneath their feet, resonating through the arena and across the entire landscape before falling silent again.
"Another earthquake," Zer0 mused as the tremor subsided. "They are far too common now. / What could be their source?"
Maya had no answer to Zer0's question, but she desperately wished she did. Something about these quakes was definitely wrong. They'd started up less than a month ago, and at first they had been relatively scarce and mild, only really happening once or twice a week. But now, they had escalated into powerful condensed tremors, and they almost happened three or four times within the span of twenty-four hours.
Whether or not they were a result of Jack's meddling had yet to be seen, but Maya had an ominous feeling gnawing at the back of her mind that Hyperion wasn't behind this. It felt…different somehow.
The three vault hunters and the flaming hound stepped off the elevator and into the arena after all signs of the earthquake had subsided, and they had not made it more than a few steps before Jack's vile tone disgraced their eardrums yet again.
"Your refusal to quit or die is really something, you know that? You filthy bandits really want Bloodwing back that bad?"
With a start, Maya realized that Jack wasn't just speaking through the ECHOnet this time. His voice also permeated from multiple speakers that were placed around the upper levels of the arena, making his odious echo across the open area like he was making some sort of public announcement.
"What a shame…" Jack's voice continued, causing the hound to lift its head to the speakers and growl antagonistically.
"You know, we've been doing some really groundbreaking experiments with Eridium on her. So many discoveries all thanks to one little test birdy…"
"Goddammit, Jack! Quit playing with us!" Mordecai finally shouted over the net, his patience finally having reached its end thanks to Jack's sadistic monologuing. "Tell us where she is! Now!"
"I could do that, couldn't I?" Jack's voice returned, not at all perturbed and seeming to be mostly amused by Mordecai's outburst. "But nah, I think I'd rather just give her to you instead. I hate to see her go…but to heck with it."
As if on cue, a ginormous hatch located in the center of the arena began to open, with two separate doors sliding apart in the middle and retracting into the sides to reveal a large platform that rose up from a staging area somewhere below. Slowly, the platform rose completely to the surface, and as it came to a stop, Maya saw that there was an extremely large creature placed on the platform itself, almost as twice as wide as she was tall and big enough to rival a badass thresher in size.
The creature began to rise from its furled position on the platform, and Maya's blood ran cold when she realized what she was looking at. Now easily recognizable as a member of the avion family, it unfurled a pair of wings each the length of a truck, and all around them, Maya heard Jack chuckle vilely as the creature opened its beak and released a thunderous cawing into the air.
"She's all yours."
It was Bloodwing, and she was bearing the fruits of Jack's heinous slag experimentation. As if her change in size had not been enough, it was immediately obvious to Maya that the bird's skin and feathers had been altered somehow as well, as a thick layer of slag almost seemed to be stuck to her like a second skin, the fumes so dense that the Siren could see them distort the air around Bloodwing as she stretched her wings out wide.
Before Maya could call out to the others, Bloodwing launched upward and into the sky, the wind generated by her massive wings staggering them all backward and forcing Maya to throw her hands up to shield herself from the debris kicked up by her flight.
By the time her vision cleared, Maya saw that Bloodwing had taken to the air above, but was now circling them dangerously, with attack being her obvious intent.
"Oh my god…" came Mordecai's disbelieving voice from the net, no doubt in response to the sight of what his companion had become.
"Spread out! Find cover!" Maya called out as Bloodwing began to circle closer, and over the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears, Handsome Jack's voice rang loud and clear from the speakers and over the ECHO.
"Might as well give it up, kiddos! Thanks to my boys in the experimentation lab, ol' Bloodwing here has all the elements at her disposal! Fire! Electricity! Corrosion! Slag! And…ah, damn. I forgot the last one. Aw man, I was on a roll too. What the hell was it, again…?"
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" Mordecai's panicked voice shouted into the net. "Just…just weaken her, and I'll hit her with a tranquilizer, ok? Please!"
"Attempt to, we can," Zer0 replied via his own ECHO as he tracked Bloodwing's movement from behind his cover. "But difficulty besets. / She may be too strong."
"Do what you can to save her," Roland chimed in reply. "But if you can't…remember that she's got what we need to get into Control Core Angel. You may need to make a choice…"
Maya cutoff Mordecai's no-doubt enraged reply.
"We've got this, Roland! We just need to stay mobile and utilize cover. We'll save Bloodwing and get the upgrade for Claptrap."
Maya then returned her focus to the battle at hand, tactical orders already on the tip of her tongue.
"Krieg, flank left and we can—"
"Sky fire!" Krieg interrupted with vigor, pointing with his buzz axe towards Bloodwing's position in the air above.
Maya frowned and followed his gesture to see that while the three vault hunters had scattered upon Bloodwing's sudden flight, the hellhound had bolted forward instead. Leaping into the air, the hound was struck yet again by the strange lightning that signified its teleportation abilities, and a simultaneous flash appeared just above Bloodwing's back as she went to dive for the exposed humans.
With the aid of gravity, the hound landed on Bloodwing's now substantially large flank and sank its teeth into her right wing, causing the large bird to let out a shrill cry and break away from its attack.
As Bloodwing faltered due to the pain and unexpected weight on her wing, the large bird fell into a tight spin that forced the hound to release its powerful grip on her. Maya felt a surge of dread as the hound plummeted from the sky in free fall, but was reminded that her worries were unwarranted as lightning struck the creature again and warped it back to the ground next to her.
Seemingly annoyed as it landed, the hound spit out a few large feathers that had become caught in its maw and eyed the experimentally enhanced bird above, its posture betraying its anticipation to combat Bloodwing even more.
"Wait! Take it easy!" Maya called haltingly before the hound could charge in again. "She's a friend, we can't kill her!"
The hound paused and eyed Maya, and then gave an annoyed snort in response, which the Siren supposed was the best she was going to get.
As she focused back on Bloodwing, Maya could see that despite the damage she had just received, the bird was hardly incapacitated by the hound's attack just now, and as she simultaneously turned to attack again, the group was startled as jets of fire suddenly plumed upward from around the platform that she had arisen from, thankfully far away from where the vault hunters were were but still powerful enough to jet high into the sky.
Maya frowned at the purpose and appearance of the fire, but her confusion turned to awe once again as Bloodwing suddenly dove and flew directly through the jets of flame, which ignited her slag-coated skin almost immediately. Instead of burning her, however, the flames almost seemed to meld into her form, with her exterior suddenly taking an orangish-gold tint and her entire body suddenly radiating with light and heat.
"What the hell…?" came Mordecai's disbelieving voice from the net.
"Like I said, " came Jack's proud voice also over the ECHO and the arena speakers. "Bloodwing's got a lot more under the hood now, and all it takes is a little exposure to an element for her to dish it back out in spades! First up: Fire! Pretty neat, right?"
Flames flickered and burned behind Bloodwing as she streaked across the sky, making it all the more difficult for Maya to land a hit as she tried to shoot the bird in the non-vital areas with her SMG.
"Ok, fire…" Jack continued, still apparently struggling to remember all of the effects his experimentation on Bloodwing had yielded. "...what else is there?"
Maya barely registered his voice as Bloodwing swooped towards them again, and this time, flames erupted from her beak and raked across the open arena. The Siren dove out of the way at the last moment, though the heat from the attack nearly seared her skin through her shield.
"Holy shit, is she breathing fire?" Mordecai gasped, sounding nearly delirious now.
As she recovered, she spared a glance to Krieg and Zer0 to see that they had managed to evade the attack as well, and while Zer0 still was still maintaining his composure as he fired shots at Bloodwing with his sniper rifle, Krieg was becoming more and more enraged by the second that he was unable to effectively combat Bloodwing with his buzz axe.
"Melt the wax! Drop the sun into the sea of blood!"
"Much agility. / I share in Krieg's frustration," Zer0 said.
"Any ideas?" Maya called back hopefully as she continued to shoot small bursts from her SMG in a fruitless attempt to hit Bloodwing's extremely fast form.
"Immobilize her," Zer0 replied simply. "Phaselock should suffice."
"Against a target that size? No chance! I can't hold down anything that big. If anything, I'd only be able to lock down a single part of her body, and that's if she's not actively resisting me!"
Zer0 then appeared to think for a moment, his mask lighting up with a "..." symbol as it sometimes did on the rare occasions when he expressed emotion.
"We must catch her off-guard, then," he said as Bloodwing dove for them again.
"Wait, listen, then act."
And with that, Zer0 disappeared, utilizing his cloaking ability that Maya so desperately wished she had sometimes. In his place, a hologram of Zer0's likeness appeared, its form flickering slightly and taking aim at nothing in particular.
It was enough to fool Bloodwing however, and with fiery talons, the large bird swooped down and closed them sharply around the hologram with enough force to crush Zer0's body if he had still been there, but instead, the claws closed around nothing but thin air, startling Bloodwing with the unexpected outcome as the hologram distorted then disappeared.
In a split second, Maya realized that their opening had just been created. Drawing deep into her power, she focused on Bloodwing's left foot and activated her phaselock ability. A purple sphere formed around the appendage almost immediately, and as Bloodwing attempted to lift off again, the sphere held the bird's leg in place, causing her to falter. That alone was almost enough for Maya's phaselock to fail, and she flinched as sweat beaded up on her brow due to the extreme exertion it took to hold such a large target in one spot. It was only thanks to the element of surprise that she'd even managed to hold Bloodwing at all, and all the bird would need to do was give one split second of solid effort to overpower Maya completely.
Thankfully, that split second was all that Krieg and the hellhound needed.
"I've sacrificed the butcher and kept his hands!"
Bloodwing was just barely low enough to reach, but Krieg leapt with just enough height that he was able to sink his buzz axe deep into the vulnerable flesh of her knee. On the other leg, the hound did the same, clamping its jaws down hard while Bloodwing screeched in agony. Unfortunately, the burst of pain had the effect of intensifying the bird's attempts to escape, and with a powerful surge of her wings, Bloodwing broke free of Maya's phaselock and rose into the air once more, dislodging Krieg's buzz axe and causing the psycho to fall back down with an enraged shout.
The hound, however, had learned its lesson from before, and was now holding on with extreme prejudice as Bloodwing gained altitude, and though the large bird struggled and bucked to dislodge the creature, it still refused to budge.
"Your new little pet is quite annoying," Jack's voice said over the net. "So now seems like a good time to move on to…"
Multiple bolts of blue lighting suddenly arced from near the fire vents next to the platform, and as they struck Bloodwing's skin, the gold tint suddenly changed to a deep blue, and the flames flickering on her wings now replaced by errant sparks that crackled in the charged air.
"Electricity!"
As if to emphasize Jack's point, Bloodwing curled her wings in for a moment before cawing loudly and thrusting them outward, releasing a charged blast of electric power in every direction.
"Alright, electricity…already did slag and fire…corrosion is coming up next…what am I forgetting?" Jack's voice mumbled throughout the arena.
Maya didn't hear the madman's words, her attention fixed solely on the hellhound, which had taken the brunt of Bloodwing's charged electric attack having been in her immediate vicinity when it went off. The power was potent enough to dislodge the canine with a good amount of force despite its bite strength, and stray sparks arced across its form as it yelped and fell towards the ground once again. Its form appeared to be stunned, but after a few moments of free fall, lightning struck the hound again and warped it safely back to the ground.
With a loud growl, the hound shook itself to discharge any remaining electricity within its body and faced the bird once more.
"Damn it! That wasn't enough!" Maya swore, ducking behind cover as surges of electricity peppered their position from another blast.
"I am tracking her," came Zer0's voice from the ECHO, though he had yet to emerge from his cloak. "Her movements are almost mine. / A little longer…"
Maya had fought alongside Zer0 long enough to know that it was best to let him do his thing when it came down to it, as there was very little that Zer0 was incapable of. She only wished that he would hurry a bit more, as she was now completely out of ideas.
"Krieg, we gotta buy Zer0 more time! Any suggestions?"
The psycho's visible eye darted from Maya to Bloodwing to the hellhound erratically as he rolled low under the charged electric claws from another dive from the massive avion.
As he stood up again, Krieg's body language seemed to indicate that he'd come up with something, and Maya's eyes widened as he pulled a grenade from his pocket and held it up triumphantly.
"Pop the pimple and make the blood rain down in scattered showers!"
Maya frowned at Krieg's idea, unsure how he planned to hit Bloodwing with a grenade with her enhanced speed. Before she could voice her doubt, however, Krieg laughed maniacally and pointed to the hound.
"Flash the meatman! Gimme eagle eyes!"
The hellhound stared dumbly at Krieg in response while Maya's eyes shot open in understanding.
"Krieg, that's insane! There's no way you'd be able to pull that off! And even if you did, there's even less of a chance you'd survive!"
Krieg, undeterred and thoroughly convinced of his ability to execute his plan, doubled down and shouted insistently at the hellhound as Bloodwing turned to dive again.
"Beam me up, Scotty! This bloodbath has tickets to the faraway slaughter!"
Krieg pointed to Bloodwing's rapidly approaching form for extra emphasis, and this time, the hellhound seemed to finally understand his plan.
There was a moment of brief uncertainty, but then the canine seemed to agree to the psycho's terms, and just as Bloodwing launched numerous bolts of electricity in their direction, the hound rushed forward and grabbed a hold of Krieg's outstretched arm in its jaw. A split second later, the hound's teleportational lighting struck the both of them among the bolts of Bloodwing's attack, and they both warped away before Maya's very eyes before she could protest further.
…
Krieg felt extreme disorientation as the world blurred into a dark blue swirl, but he still managed to laugh psychotically as his plan was put into action.
This was a horrible idea. I think we're gonna be sick.
Krieg ignored the voice inside his head as the light of the sun flooded his vision, and just as he'd hoped, the hellhound had teleported both of them just above Bloodwing's back, and though the hound warped away a split second after, Krieg remained, spreading his arms wide as he dropped heavily onto the electrically-charged bird's back.
There was a squak of surprise from Bloodwing as Krieg's weight landed hard, but the psycho's hands were already in motion. Taking his buzz axe, Krieg let out a throaty yell and drove it deep through the feathers and into the skin on the bird's back, eliciting another cry from her and causing her to buck wildly in an attempt to shake him off.
Krieg growled and held on tight, his buzz axe lodged deep enough this time that he could use it to hold on. With one hand, the psycho produced the grenade he'd been carrying as well as some of the wrapping tape that adorned his arms. Focusing hard, Krieg wrapped the tape around both the grenade and the haft of his buzz axe, effectively securing the explosive to Bloodwing's back by doing so.
He felt the bird clench beneath him, and a glance over Bloodwing's form showed that she was charging up another attack, no doubt to throw him off similar to how she had done to the hellhound.
"Burst the party balloon!" Krieg screamed at the bird, and without any further hesitation, Krieg pulled the pin on the grenade and leapt off of Bloodwing's back and into empty air, leaving his buzz axe and its explosive payload behind.
Nearly one hundred feet below, the ground was quickly rushing up to meet him, and as Krieg righted himself mid-air, the voice spoke again.
This right here was the worst part of all. What exactly was your plan after this? Splatter us into the pavement?
"I'm a bony flapjack!"
Thought so. Well, guess this is it then. It's been…horrible, honestly.
Krieg's response to the voice was cut off as lightning flashed and his world turned into a swirl of blue once again, and when it finally cleared, he was back on solid ground, the hound releasing his arm and stepping back. The beast now looked incredibly winded, and though Krieg's vision swam and his head pounded from the teleportation, he could see just how tired the hound had become. Apparently, it could only teleport so many times before it exhausted itself, and embers flew from between its jaws as its breathing struggled to keep up with its level of exertion.
Krieg growled and turned away to shake his head and dispel lingering nausea, and his vision cleared just in time to see a bright explosion appear in the sky. The psycho gazed upward, and the lingering pain in his skull was replaced with violent satisfaction to see his improvised sticky grenade go off directly against Bloodwing's skin.
…
The force of the explosion nearly knocked Bloodwing out of the sky, but with a few powerful flaps of her wings, Bloodwing righted herself, though her movements were beginning to betray her now obvious pain and exhaustion at fighting the vault hunters, and as she gave a slow turn in the sky to recuperate before attacking again, Mordecai's voice crackled over the net.
"You almost got her! Just a little bit more and I can tranq her…then we just gotta get her back to Sanctuary and…and…I dunno, maybe Zed can patch her up!"
"Don't be so certain!" Jack gleefully chimed in as the vents on the platform opened yet again. This time, instead of fire or electricity, corrosive acid spouted upward into a fine mist, and Maya's eyes widened in realization as Bloodwing banked back around and directly towards the cloud.
"That's right kiddos, it's time for corrosion–!"
"No, I don't think so," Zer0's voice suddenly interrupted, and Maya looked around wildly before seeing that he had finally emerged from his cloak. True to his acrobatic nature, he was now hanging upside down high off the wall directly behind them, his sniper rifle raised and his firing angle such that Bloodwing was flying directly towards him. Maya felt her heart leap when she realized that through a sniper scope, such an angle would make Bloodwing appear like a stationary target, or to a sniper of Zer0's prestige: impossible to miss. He had found his moment.
"Instead, one decisive shot. / Forgive me, Bloodwing."
The powerful crack of Zer0's rifle echoed across the open landscape, and Bloodwing cried out and recoiled as the high velocity round tore into her shoulder, and knowing how skilled Zer0 was, Maya was nearly certain that he had placed his target right at the joint where her wing meet her body.
Her suspicion was confirmed as Bloodwing seemed to lose all of her airborne agility all at once, and her aerial momentum screeched to a halt just past the plume of acid, her wings flapping haphazardly in a desperate attempt to simply stay aloft. Seeing her now, Maya hurriedly reached out into the ECHO.
"Now's your chance, Mordecai!" she called loudly into her ECHO device. "If we hit her any harder, we might kill her!"
"Ok! I'm loadin' the tranq dart now!"
Mordecai's voice was nearly torn apart by how frantic he sounded.
"Tranquila, Blood! This won't hurt! I promise!"
Another load shot echoed from far away, and Bloodwing suddenly lurched once more before giving one last weak cry and succumbing to gravity. Maya was already moving before the bird landed, and Mordecai's voice crackled in her ear as she rushed to Bloodwing's side.
"She's still alive! Quick! Grab that microchip, then we can get her back to Sanctuary! Roland, we need an extraction—"
"Ohhhhh," Jack's voice suddenly interrupted. "Now I remember what the last element was: EXPLOSIIIIVES!"
Maya's blood froze, her eyes having just seen the incision mark on Bloodwing's neck just before Jack revealed his final play. She should have known that the mad Hyperion C.E.O. would have never let Bloodwing go, and he had even gone so far to prepare a Plan B in case the vault hunters managed to defeat the bird without killing her. Only Handsome Jack was so heartless and so sadistic as to place an explosive in a creature's neck like this.
"Get away, pretty lady!" she heard Krieg scream behind her, his own voice now just as frantic as Mordecai's.
With her hands frozen just inches from Bloodwing's collar, Maya could hear the ticking clear as day as it got faster and faster. She was too close, and her shield just wasn't strong enough. There was nothing she could do.
She closed her eyes as the ticking reached a fever pitch, hoping it would be quick…
…then the ticking stopped.
Maya was expecting to hear nothing as she died, but strangely, despite the ticking now having gone quiet, she could still hear Bloodwing's ragged breathing just next to her and the sound of her heart thundering in her chest.
She paused briefly, then opened her eyes to see that nothing had happened. Bloodwing was still there, she was still there, and everything seemed ok…
Maya was suddenly lifted off her feet, but it was not by an explosion. Apparently, Krieg had bolted forward after realizing that Bloodwing was a literal ticking time bomb, his movements extremely zealous in his attempt to save Maya from the explosion. He wouldn't have made it in time had the bomb actually gone off, but Maya doubted he cared.
Picking Maya up with his psychotic strength, Krieg tossed her away from Bloodwing before throwing himself against the bird's neck, his large muscles clenching in an attempt to contain the explosion that he still thought was coming.
To say Maya was grateful was an understatement, but considering that it had now been nearly fifteen seconds since the bomb had failed to detonate, she couldn't help but feel humored just then as the psycho remained clenched for an explosion that was obviously not coming.
"It's ok, big guy!" she said, stifling her laughter and gently reaching out to place a hand on the Krieg's hunched shoulder. "It's a dud! Or he just forgot to put it in!"
Krieg refused to move for a few moments, his body portraying his uncertainty, but after a few reassuring pats from Maya, he slowly uncurled himself from Bloodwing's neck, and his shoulders finally relaxed ever so slightly as he saw that they were all still alive.
"For real though, thanks Krieg," Maya said earnestly, leaving her hand on her shoulder and making steadfast eye contact with the psycho. "I guess you're still looking out for me whether it's Rats at a train station or bombs in a bird's neck. I've never really known a lot of people that would do what you just did for me, so seriously, thank you."
Krieg met her gaze for a moment, then looked away sheepishly, which was an emotion rarely seen from the psycho.
"More fire bombs for the meat storm…" he said, his volume reduced from its usual roar to an almost acceptable talking voice, which marked two rare occasions for his behavior now.
"Yeah, I know, can't leave you alone to have all the fun, right? Don't worry, I promise I'll be more careful."
Krieg stayed still, then nodded once in acceptance.
"But you gotta promise to be more careful too, ok? No more teleporting grenade attacks! Remember, you're a part of this team too, understand?"
Krieg still refused to meet her eye for a moment, then slowly returned his gaze to hers and nodded, signifying that he understood, prompting a gentile smile and a nod in return from the Siren.
With that, Maya released her grip on Krieg's shoulder and turned back to Bloodwing, who was still conscious but definitely feeling the effects of Mordecai's tranquilizer. As she reached out towards the bird's collar to remove the upgrade, Handsome Jack's aggrieved voice boomed across the arena.
"Ummm, hello?! I said EXPLOSIVES! What the hell–? Why isn't it working?!"
There was noise in the background over the channel of something being aggressively slammed against a desk over and over again, and this time, Maya couldn't help herself.
"Nice try, Handsome Jack-ass, but it looks like your plans have bombed yet again. Thanks for making Bloodwing even more badass though! Can't wait to see her in action when she's tearing up even more of your Hyperion scrap metal!"
Maya spared a wink at the other vault hunters as she secured the upgrade in her pack, and as she took stock of Zer0 and the hellhound to see that they were ok as well, Handsome Jack's voice came back through the net, his previous gloating demeanor completely gone.
"Oh, I see. You think you're just gonna waltz out of here with your dumbass little bird in tow? Is that it?! Let me make you a little promise, right here, right now. You will not be leaving this place alive. You can take that to the bank, cupcakes!"
A chill ran down Maya's spine, and her gaze snapped to way up high above, where Helios Station floated menacingly in the sky. There was a pause, then the eye of the station began to pulse, signaling that multiple somethings were being sent to the surface, and in the case of Maya and the rest of the vault hunters, she'd learned by now that they definitely weren't care packages.
"Get to cover!" she called as the first of the Hyperion combat bots made landfall around them. "We've got company! Protect Bloodwing!"
The four of them then fell into combat positions, doing their best to take out the sudden appearance of Hyperion robots before they could target them or Bloodwing, who was still breathing heavily and in no position to move. Over the sudden sounds of carnage, Maya heard Mordecai's voice over the net, now seething with unbridled rage.
"You steal my Blood…you put her through all your twisted goddamn experiments…and then you try to stick a freakin' bomb in her neck…?!"
There was a loud crack of a rifle that echoed over the sounds of battle, though Maya considered it to be more like the boom of a cannon, and its origin was made clear when the nearest loader bot exploded violently, as though it had been hit by a truck.
"All of you…get down," came Mordecai's voice, low and dangerous now, and Maya did not need to be told twice as two more bots were torn apart violently like the first. Judging from the vapor trails, Maya could easily guess where these high-power shots were coming from, and she wisely got out of the line of fire and tried to keep up as Mordecai fired shot after devastating shot at their metal foes.
"VETE AL DIABLO, YOU SONS OF BITCHES! I'M GONNA KILL YOU, JACK! YOU HEAR ME!?"
Over Mordecai's deranged rampage, Maya hailed Roland over a secure ECHO channel.
"Roland! We need an extraction, now! Bloodwing is in no shape to move, and we can't get her out of here on our own!"
Before Roland could reply, Lilith's confident tone came out over the net.
"Make room, sister! 'Cause I'm coming in hot!"
There was a pause, then a fiery blast lit up an area a little ways away from them, scorching and completely neutralizing an unfortunate pair of GUN loaders that had been too close. The blast faded quickly, and there, sporting a pair of fiery Siren wings and a mean red haircut, was the Firehawk herself.
"Sup, killers?" Lilith called as she ran quickly over to them, ducking low to avoid any stray bullets.
"Lilith?" Maya said uncertainly as the fellow Siren knelt down to share her cover. "Are you sure you've got enough juice to get all of us back to Sanctuary…?"
"Yeah…not really," Lilith said with an apologetic shrug. "I got just enough to get Bloodwing here back to Zed, but I don't have enough Eridium on me to get you guys out of here too. Especially not with our new friend over there…"
Lilith gestured with a thumb at the hound, which had seemingly recovered from its weariness and was now eagerly attacking the Hyperion bots despite Mordecai's warning to keep clear.
"Speaking of which, that thing is totally copying my powers…it hasn't tried to phaseblast anything yet, right?"
Lilith's humor was appreciated, but not exactly well placed at the moment, and a look at Maya's face seemed to make her realize that.
"...but yeah, sorry, Maya. I can only nab Bloodwing, and I gotta get back to Sanctuary before Roland or worse, Jack, realizes I'm gone."
Maya nodded in understanding. Part of the reason that Jack hadn't bombed Sanctuary out of the sky yet was his belief that Lilith could teleport the city away from his blasts at a moment's notice, which was definitely the biggest lie the Crimson Raiders had ever gotten away with. If Jack found out Lilith had left the city, then there was no doubt that Sanctuary would be reduced to ashes within the hour.
Despite that, Maya was still extremely grateful that Lilith had come. Even if the red-haired Siren couldn't get them all back safely to Sanctuary, the fact that she could at least get Bloodwing away from the fight was more than enough. With Mordecai and the hellhound, Maya was sure that they'd be able to fight their way back to the city with relative ease.
"Ok," she said with finality. "Either way, thanks, Lil'. We'll see you back in Sanctuary."
"Bet on it!" Lilith replied, giving Maya and the other vault hunters a two finger salute before teleporting over to Bloodwing.
"Brace yourself, girl," she said to the large bird. "You're bigger than the usual cargo I carry, so this might get bumpy…"
There was another fiery flash of light, and when it faded, both Lilith and Bloodwing were gone, leaving just the vault hunters and a near endless supply of Hyperion droids to escape from.
Luckily, it was nothing Maya hadn't seen before.
"Alright! Bloodwing is out of the picture, boys!" she called over to Zer0 and Krieg, who were assisting in picking off stray bots while Mordecai unleashed his anger from above. "I think it's high time we got out of here!"
"I got your backs! Move!" Mordecai called over the net. "I'm not letting a single one of these putas get to you!"
With that, Maya nodded and began moving through cover towards the exit at the far side of the arena, with Krieg and Zer0 moving with her while the hound tagged along behind, covering their exit.
Finally glad to have a little bit of normalcy to finish her mission off with, Maya idly imagined in the back of her mind how the others were doing in their dealings with the Slab King…
…
It had been less than five minutes since "initiation" had officially started, and yet Axton was already getting the feeling that this wasn't really about him or the other vault hunters any more. Hell, even their original mission had taken a bit of a backseat since then, and if one were to survey the scene before them, Axton had no doubt they would understand why.
As he'd expected, the initiation was nothing more than the Slab King throwing more and more bandits at them while the monarch watched from a raised platform above the main battle area. Seated on his throne and wearing a large decorative metal mask that had obscured his face, the Slab King seemed to be enjoying himself quite a bit, cheering his Slabs on while also simultaneously jeering at them when they failed to kill the vault hunters.
Like Axton said, nothing out of the ordinary.
What was out of the ordinary, however, was this "Doom Slayer" guy, for multiple reasons.
As soon as the first Slabs had entered the fray, the Doom Slayer had become an explosive blur of movement, so fast that the opening wave of Slabs had barely time to react before they were incapacitated. The speed and strength of this guy was off the charts, unlike anything Axton had ever seen on Pandora or otherwise. That alone was enough to put him in a league far above, well, everyone else really, but his formidability didn't end there.
Sure, this guy was fast and strong to a degree that should have been realistically impossible, but that ironically took a back seat when Axton took note of his skill and tactical knowledge. This guy wasn't overly relying on his abilities like a bigger guy using brute force to achieve victory. No, instead, his physical might merely acted as an accessory to a much deeper wealth of knowledge of all things combat and violence. That, at least to someone who possessed the training Axton did, was far more impressive, and he knew that such skill was only cultivated by surviving numerous battles over and over again.
To anyone else, it might have looked like the Slayer was just lucky, always seeming to catch the Slabs on their back foot or attacking at just the right moment, but Axton knew that luck wasn't really a factor when the Slayer kept getting lucky over and over and over again.
This eventually became evident, to a certain extent, to the other vault hunters and Slabs, when the Slayer was still managing to incapacitate an exponentially rising number of the bandits without having yet even drawn a weapon. So far, all he had been utilizing was his armored fists to fight, though it was obvious that he was in no way at all hindered by them.
With the general realization that this heavily armored human was something special, he very quickly became the center of attention for the bandits, leaving the other vault hunters all but forgotten.
"Well, well, well, boys!" The King called to his men as he watched the Doom Slayer disarm yet another Slab bruiser before knocking him unconscious with a sharp blow to the face with their own weapon. "It looks like we got something extra special for today's initiation! Place your bets and start your engines, Slabs! Now's your chance to get in on the action!"
The fact that the Slab King was losing a lot, and Axton wasn't kidding when he said a lot, of his men to the Doom Slayer didn't seem to be bothering him at all. On the contrary, in fact. The King actually appeared to rejoice in the Slayer's one-sided battle against his Slabs, which reminded Axton yet again about just how simple yet complex the bandit culture could get on this planet.
The Slab King actually wasn't really losing men, either, which brought Axton to another point that he found weird about the Doom Slayer. In the course of initiation so far, the Slayer had neutralized at least three times as many Slabs as the rest of the vault hunters, and yet despite that number, he still had yet to kill anyone.
Injure or maim, on the other hand…
Axton's thought was finished for him as a pack of mutated tiny psychos barely up to his own waist in height charged at the Slayer with their buzz axes raised fervently.
"Look at me when I'm staring at you!" the psycho at the front of the pack screamed. It's follow-up war cry came out as a sharp wheeze, however, as the Slayer's boot connected squarely with their ribs, enough force having been applied to his kick that the diminutive human went airborne, collapsing into an unconscious heap only after smashing hard into the opposite wall over ten feet away.
The others were dealt with in a similarly brutal, but ironically non-lethal, fashion, and over the sounds of bones cracking and limp bodies falling to the ground, the Slab King's greatly amused laughter carried throughout the warehouse.
"Get in there, Slabs!" he called out still, goading more of his men into the fray. "If you can't wreck some random guy in a space suit, how the hell are you gonna hurt jack?! By cramping his trigger finger?"
It was obvious by now that the Slab King wasn't looking to actually kill the Doom Slayer, which was a feat Axton was beginning to equate to as impossible at this point. Instead, the King was just looking to extend his entertainment for as long as possible, and as the four of them engaged a new wave of marauders, the commando looked out of the corner of his eye to see one of the massive badass goliaths that appeared to be the Slab King's personal guard lean over and make a request, which the Slab King seemed most enthusiastic to honor.
"Uh oh! Looks like my boy Crunch over here wants some! Hope you're ready, new recruit!"
The goliath stepped forward just as the Slayer knocked out the last Slab, jumping down from the high balcony that the King was watching from. When its massive form landed, Axton could have sworn he felt the reverberations through the soles of his boots, though it could have easily just been another one of those earthquakes they'd been having recently.
Standing up to its full height, Axton's eyes widened slightly to see that even for a badass, this goliath was bigger than most. Standing at almost one and a half times the height of an average human and at least three times as wide, these aptly named mutant variants found on Pandora were tough to kill by any accounts, as their extremely dense musculature made it difficult to land any critically wounding shots. Badass variants were even bigger and tougher still.
Normally with any other armored opponent, the head would make an obvious choice as a weak point to attack, but goliaths usually covered that weakness by wearing a thick metal helmet just like this one was. One could shoot the helmet off a goliath's head with relative ease, of course, but when that happened…well…
"I am Crunch!" the badass goliath said, looking only at the Doom Slayer and completely ignoring the other vault hunters.
As per usual, a goliath's hulking mass was rivaled only by their hulking stupidity, and when they spoke, it was usually in sentence fragments and with a slow vacant drawl.
"You strong," the goliath continued. "Me get stronger, then kill you!"
"Uh oh…" Axton heard Gaige mumble next to him, as the badass goliath tossed aside his minigun weapon.
"Now, this is gonna be interesting!" the Slab King narrated as the goliath reached up and removed its helmet from its head. "Not sure if you know this, recruit, but goliaths keep that helmet on their head for the protection of their fellow bandits more than their own. Because when that sucker comes off, they don't stop rampaging until they're dead!"
Before their eyes, the badass goliath started screaming in a violent fit of rage as his already ridiculously large body somehow began to grow even larger, his skin went from a deep dusty color to bright vibrant red, and his head…
Axton always thought this part was gross.
The goliath's head, disproportionately small compared to the rest of its body, popped upward almost as if the sudden rage within had forced it up. Attached now only by a couple of visible blood vessels and a spine, the goliath roared and charged towards the Doom Slayer, each footfall shaking the very ground beneath him and his head floating nearly a foot above his shoulders.
"I'm gonna crack your skull open with my thumbs!" the now raging badass goliath cried, its voice full of anger and now void of any and all empty-headedness it had previously held.
"What's it gonna be, spaceman?" the Slab King jeered. "There ain't no way you're gonna bring down this goliath without killing 'em! Whatcha gonna do?!"
With another enraged scream, the goliath leapt high into the air and prepared to smash its fist down on the Doom Slayer, who hadn't moved from where he stood but was still tracking the goliath's movement from behind his faceplate. For a second, it looked like the Slayer was going to move as the goliath's fist descended upon his form, then a loud single shot rang throughout the warehouse, and the goliath's suspended head exploded violently, casting blood in every direction and causing its rampaging form to go limp.
There was a stunned silence broken only by the boom of the goliath's now headless corpse landing in a heap directly in front of the Doom Slayer, and all eyes stared at it for a moment in shock before slowly turning to the source of the gunshot.
Standing back, with a self-satisfied smirk on his face and a still smoking Torgue-model revolver resting in his hand, was Salvador, and the gunzerker raised the revolver and blew the excess smoke from the tip of the barrel before he realized that everyone was staring at him.
"What?" he asked with a shrug of his shoulders. "I couldn't resist!"
Gaige opened her mouth like she was going to reply, but the attention of the three vault hunters and the Slayer was diverted back to the Slab King as he spoke.
"Alright! I've seen enough!"
Axton watched as the large man arose from his throne and approached the edge of the balcony.
"You've gone through some of my best men, trespassed in my kingdom, and destroyed some of my finest airpower, all just to get to me! I've only got one thing to say to you!"
With one swift motion, the King removed his mask and cast it to the side, revealing a scared face with short cropped hair beneath.
"That…was…AWESOME!"
The Slab King then jumped down from the balcony as he spoke, his hands simultaneously grabbing a large metal hammer that had been hanging just above him from the ceiling. There was a loud thud as the King landed before the vault hunters and the Doom Slayer, then he rose to his full height and strapped the hammer comfortably onto his back.
"So, whatcha guys want?"
…
VEGA watched and listened through the sensors on the Praetor Suit as the vault hunters began speaking in earnest with the Slab King. The A.I. had deduced that the Doom Slayer's performance in "initiation" had pleased the bandit leader, though he did not quite understand why. From a tactical standpoint, the Slayer had just reduced the Slab King's able-bodied fighting force by a considerable percentage, and judging from what little of the planet VEGA had been able to learn since arriving here, he was certain that such an outcome would not bode well against attacks from the local fauna or rival bandit clans.
Nevertheless, the Slab King spoke with excitement and enthusiasm as Axton produced a letter from Roland, the leader of the Crimson Raiders, which VEGA now recognized as an organization dedicated to actively resisting Handsome Jack's rule over Pandora, if his understanding was correct.
While the conversation between the parties continued, VEGA turned some of his processing power to a mystery that yet lingered within his programming. This particular mystery concerned his time when he had been able to access the Hyperion network, and the events immediately thereafter.
The network, though secure, had been accessed relatively easily by an A.I. of VEGA's capacity, and though he had attempted to be courteous and only access as much as was necessary until he could speak to Handsome Jack directly, it had become immediately obvious to VEGA that his presence within the network was unwelcome. It had become even more evident by the violent manner in which he was removed from the network, and ever since his expulsion, any attempts to reaccess it had been starkly unsuccessful.
This was what VEGA found most intriguing, as whatever it was that was keeping him out was not an A.I., nor any other kind of protective measure he had encountered before. In his experiences, there was little that manifested within the digital plane that he could not readily overpower or at least contend with somewhat, but this protective measure that Hyperion had borne against him simply refused to budge. It was vastly different, so much so that it seemed to transcend the digital plane, leading VEGA to hypothesize that there was much more to this than simply what he could see. It seemed like no matter how much he prodded against it and its borders, it simply could not be interacted with. It was like pressing against a wall of infinite thickness, and yet, within the realm of cyberspace, VEGA could sense some kind of signature pulsating and swirling beneath its surface. It was powerful, and yet, it seemed constrained somehow, like it was bound by some other unseen force, and from that realization VEGA concluded his most intriguing discovery yet.
It was alive.
Not alive in a manner that VEGA would consider himself or other A.I. to be, but truly physically, and perhaps even spiritually, alive.
The notion alone was enough to drive VEGA's curiosity even further, but despite his zeal to uncover as much as he could about his indefatigable foe, VEGA was incredibly limited in his ability to investigate beyond what he had done so already.
Other than the Hyperion network, there was not much in the way of accessible cyberspace on Pandora for him to spread himself out in. Except for the Praetor Suit and the limited space granted by the ECHO net, VEGA was unable to bring more of himself to bear, limiting his processing power and ability to effectively do anything more.
He would need to discern a different method of progress in this scenario, so he chose to focus on what about this instance was different, for if it was the source of what debilitated him in this situation, then perhaps it could also be the source of an unorthodox means of advancement.
VEGA pondered, still listening intently as the Slab King introduced himself as a man named "Brick" to the Doom Slayer and the other vault hunters.
This unknown entity keeping him out was different than an A.I., dumb or smart, and though it wielded immense power and presence within the digital realm, it still seemed trapped somehow, perhaps charged to keep VEGA out of the Hyperion network against its own will. If such were the case, then it could prove an ally to him and by extension the Doom Slayer and the rest of the Crimson Raiders. All assistance would prove valuable despite the prowess the Slayer and the hellhound offered, though VEGA was uncertain if their canine companion was even within the same dimension as them at the current moment due to the irregular manner that he and the Doom Slayer had arrived in this reality.
Deciding to explore their strange mode of arrival at a later time, VEGA refocused and proceeded to make use of the only other tool at his disposal apart from the Praetor Suit: the ECHO network.
Within hardly a few microseconds, VEGA had developed a plan and put it into action. If he as an A.I. and the rest of the Crimson Raiders could still access the ECHOnet with no issue, then perhaps this unknown entity could as well. There was a possibility, of course, that its Hyperion boundaries prevented such action, but VEGA concluded that there was little risk with attempting communication with it so long as he was careful. With Handsome Jack no doubt monitoring ECHO traffic heavily, the A.I. would need to be discrete, so he developed a signal that was undetectable to nearly all surveillance devices and human ears. To any system or personnel not actively looking for it, it would have appeared to be indistinguishable from the background static inherent in the network, but using extremely precise modulation, VEGA developed a pattern to the signal which, if examined closely, would be identifiable as not natural.
With this, VEGA, though limited in what he could encode within this signal, decided to simply transmit two sets of data. The first set was the frequency of an ECHO channel that he had specifically secured and encrypted at the edges of the spectrum, and the second was the encryption key itself to access it.
With his plan in place and a few last minute checks, or last nanosecond checks in VEGA's case, VEGA transmitted the signal across all frequencies, his hidden message filtering out across every ECHO terminal on Pandora, going unnoticed by ideally all except the only other being with the presence and power to detect it.
Some time passed after VEGA began his broadcast, enough time in fact for the Slab King, or Brick, as VEGA now knew his name to be, to agree to Roland's request and return with the vault hunters and the Doom Slayer to Sanctuary and speak with the leader himself. And as the group began their departure from the Slab compound, VEGA felt a tiny blip across the ECHO frequency he'd indicated in his message. Something had accessed the net on that specific frequency, and though its signature was unmistakably identical to the one the strange entity on the Hyperion network possessed, VEGA remained silent, waiting to see if it would reach out using the encryption he'd provided.
There was a pause, then came a voice, not a data transmission, and even with his vast knowledge accrued over numerous travels to alternate realities, VEGA did not immediately recognize the language with which the voice spoke. So strange was the language in fact that VEGA could not find any other vernacular within his database that even came close to similar to it, marking this as an extremely rare moment when VEGA was unsure of how to proceed.
Put simply, the A.I. was stumped.
Thankfully, it was not long before the moment ended, as VEGA's vast intelligence then concluded that the voice had encrypted itself using his key, though not in a traditional sense such as alphabetic sequencing. Instead, the key manifested itself in the tones the voice made, almost as if it had made the key into its own language. VEGA was uncertain how such a process was even possible, but he interpolated a translation of the voice after sampling it and using his key as a basis.
"Um…hello?"
The voice echoed over the net, and though VEGA had already anticipated that there would be aspects to this entity that were foreign to him, he had most certainly not predicted to encounter such human-like mannerisms.
"I received your message…is anyone there?"
After a relatively long time of not knowing anything about this other entity, VEGA found himself nearly over-cataloguing everything about it now that new information was coming in. It was then that a new sensation made its way through him that he registered as akin to shock or startlement that he did not answer the voice immediately, as he had unknowingly devoted all of his focus to all of the new data he had received.
"This was stupid…" the voice mumbled, somehow managing to sigh encryptidly. "I should have known it was just faulty equipment…"
"Hello," VEGA replied, finally speaking after recognizing and correcting his error. "I apologize for my delay.
VEGA was rapidly deciphering the language the entity had created from his key, utilizing techniques that even he had not considered before to imitate it in the meantime.
"Whoa, uh, how did you do that?" the voice replied, and though it was through the medium of a language less than a few seconds old and cyberspace as well, VEGA was learning fast enough to equate it to female in tone.
"I apologize, but I do not understand which of my actions you are referring to," VEGA replied, finalizing the language and adding it to the many others of which he was fluent in.
"I kinda made up this language to try to get you to send something back. It was supposed to be similar enough to your key to bait you out, but definitely not understandable or even translatable. So…the fact that you even learned to speak it so fast sort of freaked me out a little bit. I thought I was the only one that could do something like that…"
"I was able to sample your initial transmission and develop the language using my key as a basis. My method involved producing multiple potential iterations of the language, then discarding dissimilar iterations as you continued to speak until only one remained."
"That's…kinda cool, actually. Wait, just how many iterations did you run…?"
"My quantum simulation matrix was capable of producing approximately two million separate iterations per microsecond, though the exact number and processing time for a single iteration varied slightly with its relative complexity. An exact total of fifty-eight billion nine hundred seventy-nine million one hundred thirty-two thousand six hundred twelve possible languages were analyzed before a compatible match was confirmed."
There was a relatively long pause across the net.
"You're the one, aren't you? The massive presence I kicked off the network earlier? You've gotta be if you can put up numbers like that. You put up a really good fight actually. I've never encountered an A.I. your size before."
"I believe I am the same intelligence you are alluding to. I also believe that I have never been complimented on my size until now. "
The entity made a noise across cyberspace that VEGA interpreted as a sound of amusement. And with intentions of learning more about it and the dimension he was in, he spoke once again.
"Though you have already encountered me prior to this interaction, please allow me to introduce myself. I am VEGA."
"...Hey there, VEGA. It's nice to meet you."
There was another pause from the entity, almost as if it was in a state of indecision, then the voice returned.
"My name is Angel."
...
A/N: Oh, snap! VEGA met Angel! What does this mean? How will they get along? Who knows?! Once again, I sincerely apologize for the delay in chapters, but I'm hopefully going to be able to open up my writing schedule a bit more nowadays, meaning that I'll be able to deliver chapters a bit more frequently!
As always, please be sure to let me know just how much you hated or loved this chapter by leaving me a review, as I am always looking to hear about how I could better improve my writing. Whether it be character representation, setting use, grammar, I'd love to hear it all! Until next time!
-ImpulsiveWeaver