NeoNazo356: Before we start things up, its time to shed a little light onto a topic that some of you seem to be confused about. Gelasmus stated in his Review for the previous chapter- "Well, while I am slightly sad to see New York go already" -yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah- "And maybe, we'll eventually find out why the Justice League or any other heroes haven't tried to help." Here's the explanation behind that: The Blacklight/Mercer virus spreads like most zombie plagues; through bites, scratches, and fluid exchange. Now think about it like this. Say Superman DOES go in, fight some Infected, only for Mercer to wail on his over-undie-wearing ass until his solar-powered "force field" gives out, and then gets infected himself. The fact that the Blacklight/Mercer Virus CANNOT commute across bodies of water was the only thing keeping it from spreading to the mainland, and by extension, the rest of the world. Unlike the common citizen, Superheroes would have the ability to come and go as they please, military resistance or not, and if the JL decided to fight their way out, of their own volition or not, there's nothing that could stop them from leaving.

Spaceman: Though the Justice League doesn't answer to any government, they still follow the rules. Their actions have consequences and government opinion determines if their actions will be supported or criticized. Consider the Justice League Unlimited episode in which an Asian country created the giant radioactive Brimstone robot. That country refused help even though they were unprepared. Heroes walk a fine line between being sentinels of Justice enforcing the laws of a land and discarding the laws of a country to suit there own sense of morals. What governments fear is those morals becoming corrupted like in Injustice for All or Justice Lords.

NeoNazo356: So in short, it isn't that they CAN'T go into NYZ and fight Mercer, nor do they not WANT to. They DO want to help the people there, but the problem, outside of spreading the virus, is Mercer himself. He can Consume anyone, assume all their memories and mannerisms, while being completely indistinguishable from the real thing until its too late. If Mercer managed to Consume even ONE member of the Justice League, he could take them out like domino; using Black Canary to get close to Green Arrow, whose friendly demeanor would allow him to get close to Aquaman, who could lure Wonder Woman out into the open by wanting to talk about politics between Atlantis and Themyscira, and so on.

Spaceman: The every paranoid genius that is Batman would have weighed the pros and the cons, and chose the lesser of two evils. It's better to keep the Mercer Virus contained to small area and let the soldiers deal with the mutations and death, then to send in heroes and risk having the world be infected by super powered mutations. Mercer with the ability to fly at super speed instead of super glide would be extremely bad. Something similar happened in Marvel Zombies. After being infected, Quicksilver used his speed to travel around the world infecting others, and is apparently a major reason why the infection could not be contained before it became a global threat.

NeoNazo356: So... Long story short, made even shorter, is if Mercer sunk his teeth into even ONE of the Justice League, Game Over. Do no pass Go. Do not collect two-hundred dollars. Do not put in fifty cents. The. End. Period.

*NEW HAVEN*

Before I left Father Guerra's place in the Yellow Zone, after getting the first real sleep without having to worry about a Blackwatch or Infected attack at any given moment of deep sleep since this whole mess started, I got a real shower with soap and everything. So much crud had accumulated in my hair and on my skin that it nearly clogged the drain, but I managed to avoid that embarrassing situation. Barely. I only got to enjoy the luxury for ten, fifteen minutes tops before Dana kicked me out, desperately in need of a shower herself. From what Father Guerra told me of the Yellow Zone, I was one of the few lucky ones to bathe in running water. Explains why the place smells like shit.

Before I was given the green light to leave, Father Guerra ran a check on me to ensure I wasn't infected with the Mercer Virus, which according to Dana was a cover-up for the fact that it was actually called the Blacklight Virus. Said virus was created using a blood sample from some lady named Greene, who herself was extracted out of some armpit in the middle of Idaho, but in all honesty I didn't give a shit, because apparently Mercer ate her. Or something. When I asked how she knew that, she begrudgingly mentioned her brother since he was right in the middle of it last time. I could've easily forced my way out of there, head for the mainland whether I was infected with the virus or not, but after looking back on the horrors that the virus had wrought on Manhattan, I relented, knowing I couldn't possibly condemn an entire continent, nay, the rest of the world, because of my own selfishness.

None of us were viral-geneticists by any stretch of the imagination, but Dana who had been in the care of one Dr. Bradley Ragland during the last outbreak (now known to the history books as "New York Zero's First Outbreak") had been able to learn a few things once the dust settled after the whole nuke thing. Pretty much everything that left Dana's mouth went completely over my head. In fact she had to go into a few of the smaller things in greater detail, but eventually I managed to piece it together. The Blacklight virus was some kind of evolutionary chimeric mutation-causing infectious agent capable of reproducing only inside the living cells of other organisms. And that was the short version.

It worked by "plugging into" a living organisms' cells before activating the "junk DNA" in its system, resulting in several biological changes that created a form of sentience within the infected creature's cellular makeup... Supposedly. She said something about protein encoding regions and promoter introns, a retrovirus and some kind of enzyme, and how it apparently activated dormant non-coding segments of the organism's DNA. That pretty much went completely over my head, the highest I got in high school Biology was a B+, but what I could wrap my head around was it basically mutated you from the inside out, and that 99.99% of all infected organisms died from massive organ failure and cell saturation. I didn't know what they were saturated with exactly, but I can wager a guess its why these Infected monsters were ugly as shit.

Some varieties were capable of yielding beneficial results, as Dana was able to confirm that there were in fact, eight foot tall walls of living muscle so large they couldn't use conventional firearms during the last Outbreak because their fingers were the size of babies' arms. My zero-hesitation policy when it came to killing however, was not one of them, ruled out from the fact I was not infected with a beneficial strain, but instead part of a previously-recorded psychosomatic condition that had only in recent years warranted in-depth study. Back in the old days when Father Guerra still had his tattoos, he'd heard whisperings about how one in every fifty soldiers was able to kill without any form of hesitation, whereas "normal" people couldn't handle the blood, body parts, and fear in dying eyes. It made me something called a "Two-Percenter", something any government wetwork group would kill to have in their possession, so he recommended I not talk about that. E-VER.

Back to the main topic… The Blacklight Virus was highly contagious and could infect living organisms through a number of means. First and foremost was physical contact, as in if a non-infected person was bitten or scratched by an Infected or a Hunter; basically every zombie movie ever. Next was bodily fluid contact, but thankfully that was only through open wounds, and I managed to somehow avoid being infected in that manner when that Hunter tackled me off the side of a building and then puke blood all over me. Lastly was via direct injection like the so-called "D-Codes", but since I never injected myself with any suspicious fluid like a normal person, I was cleared that way as well.

After a very thorough check to make sure I wasn't hiding anything, and after the way Father Guerra waved that shotgun in my face I avoided making any "priest and little boys" cracks, I was given the green light to leave the island as soon as the weather set in once again. Storm fronts like the one hitting us tonight were pretty rare, so if I didn't take this opening and leave now, it'd be infinitely harder to do so later. After saying goodbye to Dana and wishing them the best of luck, I headed down through the sewers to the edge of the island, waiting for the stormy weather to set in so I could leave.

*NEW HAVEN*

Pacific Ocean
August 12, 06:03 EST

Once the stormy weather hit, with scuba tank in hand Virgil had hit the water, remaining below the surface as he bypassed the naval barricade in its entirety. While the suit's re-breather only worked for five to ten minutes before the air began to get stale, fortunately the breather-like apparatus on his face was compatible with exterior equipment, something he was thankful for during his and Dana's exodus from the Red Zone. The suit's digital bearing indicator kept him from going too far out to sea, and like he was told before he left, an ocean current would pull him further southward than he could get on his own.

He'd spent what felt like forever in the water, occasionally resurfacing to ensure he remained close enough to dry land that he could see the lights, but far enough away that he couldn't be seen. Traffic along the eastern sea board had thinned a bit since the Second Outbreak started a month ago, so he didn't have to worry about being hit by any boats, or worse, spotted on the way out. With the flippers he'd used before and his suit's strength-augmenting capabilities, he was able to cover in hours what would take a normal person… several more hours, he guessed.

He wasn't sure whether the suit could handle temperature extremes or not, but at the very least he wasn't freezing his ass off in the water. What he was able to figure out was that while for a normal person the oxygen tank would've run dry hours ago, that maybe possibly, the Nanosuit helped his body make better use of the oxygen he took in. Thankfully before he left, he was able to "think" the suit's clock into setting to the correct time, hence he remained aware of the passage of time.

He supposed it was pure dumb luck that his oxygen began to run out before the sun began to rise that morning. Bearing a hard right and swimming west as fast as his legs could carry him, since nanobots or not his legs were beginning to burn and his thighs chafing, he made his way back to US soil. He could worry about where he wound up later, but the fatigue both mental and physical was beginning to catch up with him, so first order of business was that he find a hole in the wall to duck down in for a couple hours, catch some Zs, and then decide on his next move.

*NEW HAVEN*

Docks
August 12, 20:55 EST

Arriving at shore as the sun began to peak above the horizon, with the Nanosuit's capabilities it was child's play to sneak into one of the dock warehouses and find a nice dark corner in the nosebleed section to take a quick nap in before the graveyard shift switched out for the day shift. That was his plan anyway, since by the time he woke up, the HUD's clock displayed he'd slept more than half the day away. Using his Tactical Visor to ensure no-one was around to see him leave, he snuck back out into the night air once more. From what he was able to glean as he cloaked his way around the nights' graveyard shift, he'd managed to land in Bludhaven, Gotham City's next-door neighbor. Whether it was worse or better-off was still up to debate.

"Huh, didn't think I'd cover that much ground, err, water," Virgil corrected himself, thankful that the Nanosuit could "recognize" when he did and did not want to be heard. "In all likelihood Blackwatch declared me dead already, so if I try to use my own identity, I'll be accused of identity theft. If they have any feelers out there for potential escapees, like me, I might wind up signing my own death warrant. Best option is to get an off-the-books job, so I suppose it's a good thing I wound up in Bludhaven. No shortage of off-the-books work to be found here," he summed up in his mind. Panning his gaze to the sides, plans of "borrowing" some resale clothing at the forefront of his mind, he caught sight of something that marginally unsettled him. "The hell. Seriously, what the hell am I looking at?"

What he was looking at, was a pair of punk-looking motherfuckers with leather jackets and Mohawks accosting a pre-teen-looking girl who definitely was not legal. Said girl was short and rail-thin with messy dirty-blonde hair, a bandage running across the bridge of her nose, pink ribbons in her hair, and a white gas mask worn askew over the left side of her head. Over a pink T-shirt she wore a burgundy-colored strapless dress with a short skirt that had been patched up numerous times, scorch marks here and there, with a small pink apron featuring a deranged-looking rabbit around her waist. She had a white and orange detached sleeve over her right arm held in place by mini-belts, a rabbit-shaped watch on her left wrist, her orange baggy pants had the right leg missing, a white sock with two pink stripes at the top and a dress shoe over her right foot, while the left foot had a pink woolen sock with vertical stripes and an orange sneaker on it. The only thing that stood out about her aside from her mismatched attire more, was that she had a case of ambylopia, or "lazy eye", in her left eye.

To clarify, it wasn't that they were assaulting her in the sexual sense, but rather they were trying to separate her from a picnic basket that was filled with grenades and plastic explosives. Honestly, the girl barely looked thirteen, so he was wondering just how she was able to acquire that much ordinance. Him, he stole it off of dead bodies and weapon crates, that was his excuse.

"Not even five minutes on dry land, and already I have to punch something."

*NEW HAVEN*

"Hand over the goods and we'll let you go!" one of the guys demanded as he tried to wrest the explosive-filled picnic basket free, the little girl's grip deceptively strong as she held her own against two guys who were almost twice her size apiece.

"Nevah! You won't touch my badonkadonks, you punk-ass bitches!" the little blond girl shrieked.

"If this wasn't happening to me too, I'd say this was just sad," the other guy said shaking his head.

"Hey there," a voice suddenly said behind them. The two dumbly turning around at the same time, the last thing each of them saw was a fist to the face. Each of them spinning on their heels before falling flat on their backs. The one who punched them proceeded to remove the wallets from their back pockets, fishing out the scratch that lie within before returning their wallets to their homes, then grabbing them by their waistbands before tossing them in the nearby dumpster. Turning around, one of the two managed to regain consciousness and lift the dumpster lid up over his head, only for another hook to take him out. Clearly the two of them had jaws made of glass.

"So… You some kinda robot from the future or something?" the manic pre-teen asked as she bounced on her heels, explosive-filled picnic basked now resting behind her back.

" . . . Nooooo," Virgil drawled out awkwardly as he fumbled for the latch to his helmet. "Just a guy. In a suit," he said running his fingers through his helmet-hair.

"Oh. S'cool," the little girl returned.

"You're… taking this exceptionally well," Virgil said motioning to his state of dress. His initial intention of unmasking was so the pre-teen in front of him wouldn't panic and call the cops, but seeing how she was not, he was actually a little disappointed.

"Yeah, well, I sees weird shits all the time," she returned. "Name's Tina. What's your name, girl?"

" . . . Virgil," he answered.

"Neat. Wanna hang out at mah digs?"

" . . . Sure?"

"Tally-ho!"

*NEW HAVEN*

As they walked down the dark alleys and such, Tina telling him random snippets about herself, and asking a few random things about him, he noticed some trends in her verbal mannerisms. For one thing, they switched quite frequently, including a stereotypical inner-city American speech pattern, little girl speech patterns, stereotypically pretentious British English speech patterns, and then on occasion randomly violent and murderous speech patterns. Once more he thought of Nature versus Nurture, but he would sooner assume it was the environment of Bludhaven itself that caused her to act that way, as opposed to something relating to her like maybe multiple personality dysfunction. With the whole "Two-Percenter" thing hanging over his head, who was he to judge?

"Um... Tina, right?"

"Ya-huh?"

"Where did you... get this?" he asked referring to the tan-colored trench coat he was now wearing. For obvious reasons he couldn't be seen walking around as-was, something Tina quickly rectified after having him follow her home, but until that very moment he'd had yet to ask where she got it.

"I picked it off a dead hobo," she said without an ounce of shame.

"Someone died in this?!"

"Yeah, pretty good fit, huh?"

*NEW HAVEN*

"Here we's are, girl. Home sweet home. Mi casa, su casa," Tina said after a couple minutes of walking through dark alleys from the port to the city's interior. As Virgil pulled the dead hobo's trench coat tighter around himself, hiding as much of the Nanosuit as he could leaving only his hands and feet exposed, he craned his neck up to see just where Tina had taken him. The place was an old all-brick building, probably there longer than he'd been alive, tagged with graffiti, posters, and numerous stains of ambiguous origin. From inside he could hear muffled music, shouting, generally the noises one would associated with a crazy house party. There was a metal-reinforced door in the middle and a pair of windows to each side on the ground level, while the second and third floor had five windows across the building's face, these reinforced with cage-like steel bars. What really caught his eye was the bright neon sign that read MOXXXiS, all the letters glowing hot pink whereas the Xs were colored bright red. Situated above it was a set of neon lines operating in sequence shaped like a long feminine leg with a high-heel shoe doing the can-can.

"Um… How come the ground floor windows aren't barred?" Virgil found himself asking.

*CRASH*

His question was answered in the form of a clearly-intoxicated patron being thrown through the window and out onto the sidewalk, another equally-intoxicated patron leaping out after him. As the two proceeded to beat the tar out of one another, Tina skipped to the door humming a merry tune, seemingly unfettered by the sight occurring not even two feet away. Deciding it wasn't really his place to question business practices in Bludhaven, Virgil followed the lazy-eyed girl as she cracked the door open.

The brunette's auditory senses assaulted with loud country music, Virgil walked in to discover Tina was leading him into a bar of all places. The place reeked of alcohol, the smell of many men and women simply drinking their troubles away filling his nostrils, but after the month he'd had, he could understand the appeal. There were men and women from all walks of life either chatting it up, drinking it down, arguing over sports playing on the tube, or in some cases *SLAP* getting a little too fresh with one another. The place was wide open with hardwood floors and furniture, and from a glance he could tell the place had been the site of its fair share of barroom brawls. The left side of the establishment was dominated by booths hugging the walls, catering to either individuals, pairs, or even groups of people doing various things done in a bar. The center of the room had circular tables scattered about, clusters of people enjoying their drink as they enjoyed sports playing into the night, some cordial, while some responded to violence, but overall it was in good fun. The right side of the room was dominated by, you guessed it, a hardwood bar lined with patrons in various states of wake or unconsciousness, countless shot glasses, and the occasional bowl of nuts. In the corner was an old beat-up, neon-lit jukebox that looked like it came right out of the 1900s, and while it looked like it'd seen better days, it performed it job of filling the room with music nonetheless.

"Take a seat, girl, this one's on me," Tina said pushing Virgil onto an available stool before she circled around and ducked behind the counter. Finding himself between two very large men in denim vests with full-grown beards, bandanas on their heads, and sunglasses even though they were indoors, he was soon on the receiving end of a two-fold stink eye from both flanks, courtesy of who were obviously members of a motorcycle gang. Before, the sixteen-year-old would've been scared out of his mind and compelled to find seating somewhere else, buckling under their gaze. After facing modern-day Nazis, bulletproof zombies, and giant flesh-eating gorilla-dog-things with teeth and claws like steak knives for about a month, instead the brunette returned a narrow-eyed, hate-filled gaze that promised a lot of pain and suffering, because in all honesty after swimming countless miles away from a literal quarantine zone, he was NOT in the fucking mood.

"I see you know how to handle yourself, 'sug," a woman's voice said to him as the two much larger men flinched back from the brunette's gaze and turned their attention back to their drinks. Shifting his attention once he was sure the two at his sides wouldn't be any problem, Virgil was greeted with the sight of a tall buxom woman dressed very provocatively, her hourglass figure just oozing sex appeal. The woman had shoulder-length brown hair with the ends curled upwards, bright blue eyes, and a beauty mark above the left side of her upper lip. She had her makeup caked on pretty thick, a layer of white foundation covering most of her face, the circles of pink blush on her cheeks like that of a circus clown, matching color eyeliner, and the mascara was pretty thick as well. Atop her head was a red magician's hat with a black-and-white stripped band around the bottom, a green, orange, and blue feather as well as a red Queen of Hearts playing card sticking out the left side. Her attire consisted of a bright red gold-trimmed suit like a Las Vegas magician would wear, the top exposing a generous amount of cleavage with a pink heart tattoo on the inside of her left can, her collar and cuffs matching the band on her hat. Hazarding a quick glance over the counter, he saw that the woman had fishnet stockings going up her very shapely legs, her suit revealing a generous amount of hip where it stopped, a pair of white platform boots on her feet with silver buttons on the sides stopping just below her knees. Overall her attire hugged her figure very well, but he had the feeling if he tried getting fresh with her, he might lose a hand, Nanosuit or no Nanosuit. Then again that may've been the gun holster attached to the loosely-hanging belt on her hips talking.

"I've dealt with worse," Virgil admitted as he snagged a drink from the man on his immediate right and downed it in a single gulp. The alcohol burned his throat, but took the edge off his headache, so screw legal drinking laws, he'd just swum God-knows how many miles out of a quarantine zone. The man he stole the drink from got to his feet pushing the stool back, hands gripping the counter and scowl on his face, but a sidelong murderous glare from the brunette, more intense than before, prompted him to take a step back instead, holding up his hands in a placating manner before he walked away.

"I can tell," the woman replied mirthfully. "So, you're the "robot man" that helped Tiny Tina out by the docks?"

"I guess I am," Virgil said placing the shot glass upside-down on the counter with a *clunk*.

"Well I appreciate it. She can handle herself just fine, but it's nice to know there's the occasional white knight out there," the woman answered as she topped Virgil off with another round. Clearly she didn't care about carding him, if the way she ruffled Tina's hair was any indication.

"I wouldn't go that far," Virgil returned with a sigh as he ran his fingers through his hair. Looking up and seeing how intently the woman was looking at the muscle fibers over his hand, he stuffed his hand into his pocket while using the other to tighten his grip on his collar.

"Still, I guess I owe ya. Tina was supposed to wait for someone to help her pick up her merchandise, but she ran off before I could send someone out with her," the woman answered, her eyes drifting to the material around the brunette's neck, but seeming to pay it no mind. "So, girl, what's your name?" she asked using Tina's gender-specific way of addressing him prior.

"Virgil."

"Name's Moxxi. Mad Moxxi," the woman answered with a tip of her hat and a playful wink. "It might not seem like it, but here in Bludhaven we help our own, so, if there's anything you need, I'll try to oblige you."

"Well, as long as you're offering… a place to sleep for the night and a job interview in the morning would be nice," Virgil answered as he swirled the shot of whiskey in his hand. He didn't expect someone he'd just met to be that accommodating, helping hand or not, but it couldn't hurt to ask since the offer was made.

"Oh is that all?" the woman said looking him up and down. "Not a problem," she said with a wave of her hand, and had Virgil taken a sip of that second shot he would've spit-took at that very moment. "Tina, take your new friend upstairs. *sniff sniff* And get him in the shower. He smells like something from the Hudson River."

"C'mon girlfriend, let's get you washed," Tina said scampering over the counter before pulling the brunette out of his stool, pushing him around the bar and to a set of stairs that led to the upper floor. "You smell like a dead hobo."

"That's cause you took this off of one!" Virgil argued tugging at his collar.

*NEW HAVEN*

"So wait, you're just going to let me in your house like this? Just like that?" Virgil asked as he was pushed up the stairs by the very pushy lazy-eyed girl.

"Yeah boy, you cool," Tina said, this time addressing him by his actual gender. Turning out the dimly-lit stairwell and shutting the door behind them, when the noise all but disappeared Virgil felt like he'd stepped into an entirely different building instead of just a single floor. The place he'd just stepped into looked like an upper middle-class apartment, completely different from the lower middle-class vibe just outside the reinforced windows. The hardwood floors were a russet shade of red, the walls painted a warm shade of sunset orange, and the interior well-lit, a stark contrast from the seedy-looking bar just downstairs. Between the plush sofas, open-walled kitchen and dining room, racing memorabilia and family photos lining the walls, the place felt like any other family-made home. "Bathrooms down the hall on the left. Imma nap," Tina said bouncing on the balls of her feet before she ran over to one of the sofas, draping herself across it before seemingly falling asleep on-the-spot, light snores leaving her lips as did the occasional snort.

'Okay… This is kinda weird…' Virgil thought as he made his way down the hall Tina pointed him towards. After a month of anarchy in the Red Zone, he'd learn to read when people meant him harm or not, and as too-good-to-be-true this reception was, for some reason he didn't feel in the slightest bit of danger. Like he was genuinely safe within these walls. 'It's not like anyone else could use the suit anyway. DNA profile or something,' he thought to himself as he entered the bathroom, checker-patterned black-and-white tiles on the floor, the walls painted a soothing seafoam green, a large mirror dominating the left side, a shower stall the back, and a toilet on the right. There was a dirty clothes hamper off to the side filled with women's clothing, half a bra sticking out the top, but he paid it no mind.

Shedding what was hopefully not in actuality the trench coat taken off a dead hobo, then the Nanosuit as he shimmied out of it, and lastly peeling his street clothes from his body he stepped into the shower. Hand hovering above the faucet handle as he took one last look around him, he turned the warm water on and let the rivulets of water trail down his frame. Feeling more at ease for the first time in a long time, he grabbed a random bottle of fruit-scented shampoo and a bar of soap before scrubbing down. If half of what Moxxi said was true, he didn't want to be a bad guest and step out of the shower smelling like something that'd just came out of the Hudson River.

"I wonder where that metaphor came from anyway."

*NEW HAVEN*

In retrospect, feeling of safety or not, Virgil probably should've been more aware of his surroundings as he gave himself a deep scrub. Were it a psycho-killer trying to run a parody of 1960s Psycho, that he would've noticed. You don't just forget what it's like when someone wanting to kill you is heading your way; kinda like your first kiss at your date's front door after you walk her home, only the paternal rage from the overbearing father when he happens upon it at the worst possible moment is far worse. Someone with light footsteps rifling through the clothes he'd left on the floor before sneaking off with what was likely a multi-million dollar piece of advanced military hardware… kiiinda slipped under his radar.

'Alright Virgil, stay calm. Tina probably woke up from her little nap and was just curious about the suit,' Virgil thought to himself as he flattened the wrinkles in his street clothes as best he could. 'All I have to do is come up with some kind of excuse and hide it out of sight… as soon as I actually come up with an excuse,' he said to himself as he walked out the bathroom and into the living room where he heard quiet muttering. Tina was nowhere in sight, but someone else was enthusiastically tugging and flexing the Nanosuit's muscle-like fibers, a look of total fascination on her face. 'Wait, is she drooling?'

She was an attractive young woman, her hair a light blond color and pulled back into two braids, a few lochs of hair sticking out above her forehead, while her vibrant blue eyes with circular glasses in front of them watched even the slightest movement the Nanosuit in her hands made under her ministrations. She wore a plain red T-shirt and black shorts with a white lab coat of all things over her shoulders, a pair of plain white sneakers on her feet. Though unnoticed at first, the girl had some of Moxxi's facial features, the shapes of their chest and hips quite similar, despite how her somewhat-unflattering clothing hid it.

"Um… Hello?" Virgil hazarded as he stepped forward.

"AH!" the blond yelped as she jumped to her feet, clutching the Nanosuit protectively to her chest as she did so. "Oh… Hello." Apparently she was quite skittish. "What are you doing here?"

"Apparently I'm being given a place to stay for the night and a job interview in the morning," Virgil answered, still trying to process how well things were going for him. Then again, having half your family killed by modern-day Nazis and the other eaten by flesh-eating zombies probably racked up some good karma. "What are you doing molesting my suit?" he returned with a raised eyebrow. "Were you the one who rifled through my things to get to it?"

"Yes. I mean no! I mean, I did, but I didn't see anything!" the blond panicked, her glasses becoming slightly askew on her face as she waved one hand frantically, the other clutching onto the full-body suit to her frame even more tightly.

"Girl, you needs to calm down," Tina said skipping through the room, before randomly laying herself down on the couch and falling asleep. Again.

" . . . That was random," Virgil admitted amidst Tina's light snoring.

"You get used to it…" the blond girl admitted as she looked Virgil up and down. "I'm Athena. And you are?"

"Virgil." No need to hand out his surname yet.

"Where on Earth did you get this!?" the now-named Athena said, suddenly in his face with wide eyes. "The composition of this material is flexible and elastic in nature yet entirely synthetic! How high is its tensile strength? How far can it be stretched without losing its shape? What about temperature resistance? What extremes can it handle? What-"

"She's going to go on like that for a while. Sit," a new voice said, a pair of hands clamping down on his shoulders slipping completely under his radar and forcing him into a sitting position. Craning his neck upward, he saw yet another young woman, her features indicative of a Eurasian descent, her shoulder-length black hair brushed out of her face, her brown eyes boring into his own. When she circled around, he saw that her attire consisted of a black sports tank top with red stripes running down the sides, white cargo pants, a pair of red toed sneakers with white and black accents, and a red fingerless glove with black knuckles on her left hand. "Who are you? And I'm not talking about your name. Who are you, that you could have something like… this?" she asked holding up one of the Nanosuit's hands between two fingers.

"That's… a bit of a story," Virgil returned. Glancing sidelong, he saw Athena rapidly postulating questions, completely unaware she was speaking incomprehensible babble.

Crossing her arms, the Eurasian girl leveled a glare at him as she took a seat across from him. "I've got time."

"Crumpets!" Tina shouted as she suddenly came into wakefulness, hopping to her feet and running into the kitchen.

"Can I at least know the name of my interrogator?" Virgil asked. While this girl was trying to be intimidating, nothing really compared to waking up strapped to a meta slab and being told you were going to be skinned alive by a modern-day Nazi.

And no, he was not fixating.

"Shaula. Now start talking?" she repeated.

'How did I get into this mess?' Virgil asked himself as Shaula grilled him, Tina ran into the kitchen to make crumpets, and Athena turned her attention back to the suit as she examined every nook and cranny of its design. 'Oh right. I chickened out of fighting modern-day Nazis in a quarantine zone. Still trying to decide which was the lesser of two evils here.'

Once again. Not fixating.

*NEW HAVEN*

NeoNazo356: Bet you didn't see this coming did you?

Spaceman: This story has a unique history and the characters of Borderlands are a part of it. They aren't imports, but analogues - alternate versions of the game characters that exist in this version of Earth-16. There histories are woven into the history of many characters and I hope the reader enjoy our takes on these wild characters.

NeoNazo356: When Spaceman and I were first making this story, we only initially had a few "pseudo-crossovers" in mind, but after getting a feel for how well some of them "meshed" with other characters within the story, the ideas kept growing, so you're sure to see some of my best work, for those of you familiar with other works. was my first-ever story, so understandably it was pretty bad. My later stories made were me getting used to writing, finding my style, and figuring out what I did and didn't like. This story and those that come after, are the result of much practice and planning, something I didn't have before.

Spaceman: You may be wondering why Moxxi was willing to help Virgil and Tina is so cool about things. They aren't innocent or naive, but they have a strong sense of family and there own sense of honour. He protected one of them, so they are willing to help him. It also helps Virgil must have been threw a lot like them.

NeoNazo356: Athena is an OC, not part of any IP. Appearance-wise, she resembles Winry Rockbell from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, but with the glasses and hairstyle of Satomi Hakase from Mahou Sensei Negima. Shaula is also an OC, appearance-wise based on Faith Connors from Mirror's Edge, only without the tattoos, not necessarily her analogue.

Spaceman: Moxxi has a fairly large family with five children, one son and four daughters. Ellie and Scooter being the ones explicitly listed, that leaves room for character building. Athena and Shaula being the two mentioned so far. They all have the same mother, but Moxxi has had many adventures which have left traits in her daughters.