Explosions, loud noises, "robots talking"
Transitions, 'thoughts', "internal voices"
Videocalls, comm systems, Echo devices
So, you want to hear a story huh? well, I'm pretty sure the stories of the vault hunters have been told over and over again, bet you are getting bored of them...How about this? I might have a story for you, one about two worlds colliding by complete accident, a war escalating and the rise of a new brand of heroes, how about that? Well to bad, because I am still telling you about it.
So, you know about the vault hunters, right? stupid question probably, everyone has heard about them, but have you ever heard about the vault hunters that never made it into the annals of history? Yeah, that's right, we are going really obscure for this one. Anyway, the number of vault hunters that came before the ones that we all remember is huge, but while the vast majority found an unceremonious death at the hands of the bandits or the local wildlife, others went on a different route.
Many of the vault hunters that failed and survived decided to change professions, either joining one of the many companies, settlements or simply becoming bandits, the easiest way of gaining wealth and power without risking it all searching for the vault. Unsurprisingly the last option was the more popular, at least that way they are still shooting things.
For this story, we want to follow a specific period of time of Pandora, right after Handsome Jack's death at the hands of the Vault hunters working with the Crimson Raiders, the efforts of the Crimson Raiders to eliminate any and all traces of Hyperion from the map meant that there were many opportunities for pillaging and getting tech for selling on the black market, especially since many Hyperion bases were just being abandoned. One of such bases was a private investigation research base established in the middle of the cold wastelands of Southern Shelf. on an ice island far away from the nearest settlement.
This facility caught the attention of a group known as the "Copper Wolverines", a third-rate bandit tribe that works by ransacking places they deem as easy targets, not because they are cowards, they had the firepower to destroy stronger opponents, but an easy job is better you know? Anyway, this crew of bandits was sent to dig up anything they could find there, but oh boy was this going to be nothing like what they had expected.
Somewhere on Southern Shelf, middle of the day
The Southern shelf was mostly silent, it was around sunset, many of the wildlife, mostly Bullymongs, were walking around the place while a few rakks flew up on the sky, the Soaring Dragon mostly abandoned and only housing a few dozen bandits, one of them acting as watcher on top of the highest mast. That's when a group of 4 of buzzards go past flying above the Soaring Dragon, one low enough to the highest mast that the watcher got hit on the head and fell, hitting the deck and dying immediately.
The buzzards were 3 regular ones and one of the Badass variants, each having their respective pilot and carrying two bandits on the sides, most of them were covering their faces with masks or balaclavas with googles, all of them wearing winter clothes for the climate and having a variety of guns strapped to their belts and backs.
"Alright ladies, we are officially past The Soaring Dragon and in the sea between Southern Shelf and Three Horns, ETA to landing 5 minutes"announced the pilot of the Badass Buzzard through its Echo device.
"Bet the taskmaster and the assault crew already took all the fun" said one of the Marauder bandits through the Echo comms "they better left some fun for us"
"Yeah, because wasting half our ammo on Bullymongs and unstable Hyperion loaders is what I call fun"Said a Killer marauder on one of the buzzards"really, I just want to get something to sell"
"Can you annoying screeching varkids stop!? otherwise, I am crashing us into an iceberg"said the pilot of one of the regular buzzards, clearly annoyed"ETA is 2 minutes, we should be seeing the objective right about...now"
Just like a charm, from afar a huge ice island covered in snow was seen approaching, with the main thing making the island stand out was a huge building of around 3 stories tall painted in yellow and white, with some grey areas, but the paint on the building looked worn out and almost all was either covered in snow or ice. A few meters away from the building were a few more badass buzzards landed on the island with a few dozen other bandits guarding the area.
"Alright ladies and gentlemen, we are at the Hyperion research station, time to see what Handsome Jack was hiding here"said the pilot of the badass buzzard as the buzzards landed, the bandits getting off and touching ground.
Soon enough one of the bigger bandits approached the group that just arrived, it was a guy dressed in a mostly metallic armor with some clothes underneath them and a broken Crimson Lancer helmet, still covering his face but letting his eyes visible. This bandit soon was in front of the new ones.
"Alright ladies, my name is taskmaster Henks and I will be your superior on today's mission!" said the now identified Henks to the rest with a commanding voice "my assault team already cleaned out all immediate threats, so no bullymongs or rakks are around here. I want all of you to head to the entrance and await orders!"
The bandits obeyed the order and Henks took an opportunity to better look at them as they walked, nothing to special so far in his opinion but one of the bandits seemed slightly different, this one was wearing a worn-down Hyperion jacket with some Hyperion's battle engineer armor pieces like chest plate, leg armor and elbow and knee covers, painted red and a rusted brown that looked like copper, alongside that this bandit was wearing a simple cap that showed his short dirty blonde hair and he was wearing a bandana as a mouth cover and a pair of googles for the snow. On his back he had a Hyperion assault rifle as his main weapon.
"Hang on boy" said Henks stopping the odd bandit out of the group as the others kept walking "that's some fancy ass clothes you got there, and you don't seem to be older than the youngest of my psychos...show me your face, I want your name and previous life"
The bandit sighed and took off the cap, lowered the bandana to his neck as well as his googles, revealing his white skin and green eyes.
"Name's Kenneth Darnold, former Hyperion engineer" answered the now identified Kenneth, looking serious at Henks
"Former Hyperion huh? I thought people like you would be out of the planet by now" he said looking at Kenneth, giving him a good look from top to bottom "volunteer or forced"
"Aren't they the same thing?" he said, which earned a laugh out of Henks "used to be an independent vault hunter with a couple other people, that didn't last due to the rest of my group stealing the money we had, I took a job at Hyperion until I was fired a week before Handsome Jack's death"
"So, you are a former vault hunter? well, what are the odds" he said with another laugh "alright Darnold, since you are former Hyperion I have a special job for you, do you still have access permits? from Hyperion?"
"They never took it away" said Kenneth with a smirk as he presented an access card "as long as I have this, Hyperion security won't shoot at me"
"Excellent, then I have the perfect job for you" said Henks before looking at the facility "my boys and I cleared the main entrance from the bullymongs living there, but apparently those beasts never figured out how to get deeper into the building, we want you to enter the facility and deactivate any and all security systems that may be inside, I don't want us to get ambushed by loaders while we scavenge for loot...and make it quick okay? During the night the Bullymongs like to go hunting"
"Understood sir" he said as he began walking to the Hyperion facility, just then he stopped right by a dead marauder who had his arms torn off and a buzz axe stuck on his chest
"Poor bastard" said a killer marauder reloading his smg "a bullymong got the jump on him, his buzz axe was stolen and used against him before his arms were ripped apart by a separate bullymong...that's unlucky"
The killer marauder then left while Kenneth looked at the buzz axe, deciding to get it out of the corpse of the bandit and strapping it on his back alongside his AR before getting to the main door of the facility, opening it and seeing that the main entrance room was pretty thrashed, dead bullymongs lying on the floor, mostly slingers, adults and two badass bullymongs, while the ice caps they used as nests were completely broken down except for the parts that he assumed led to the upper levels, giving way to access the other doors, which were closed shut. Something of note was that the place was still illuminated by some functioning lights, meaning that the whole building was probably still powered up.
"Alright kid, let's get to work"said the voice of Henks through the Echo device"the boys and me will wait here until you can confirm that it's safe to go in there, see if you can find the control room"
"Not going to be easy, these places are like labyrinths, but I'll see what I can do" said Kenneth as he walked to one of the doors as he checked one of the access panels, from the looks of it the panel was still working so he got his Hyperion access card and ran it through the panel, earning him a ding and a green light, followed by the door opening "nice, it still works"
With that out of the way, he went further down into the facility, mostly seeing empty hallways with an occasional meeting room and some Hyperion loaders walking around the hallways, but none of them seemed to care about him being there, simply continuing to patrol the area.
"Boss so far I see nothing very important or valuable, the loaders seem to be mostly untouched and guarding the place" he said to Henks using the Echo device "I feel like the structure we can see is mostly a facade, Hyperion tends to do that"
"Well at least we know the surface levels are mostly empty"said Henks through the Echo"I got some news, according to the explorers the facility has a bunch of lower levels, bet one of them has the control room, see if you can find an elevator or something to access the lower levels"
"On it, over and out" said Kenneth as he ended the communication, as he kept walking, he found a Hyperion loader that looked tougher than the others and painted black and white instead of the usual yellow, guarding a reinforced door "that looks important"
"greetings worker, I am loader DRK-7 or Dark-7 for short, unfortunately this area can only be accessed by Hyperion employees with special permission from Handsome Jack, the great leader of Hyperion industries"said the loader as Kenneth walked towards the door.
"didn't you hear? Handsome Jack is dead" he said as he stopped right in front of the robot "I have orders to head to the control room and organize the self-destruction of the facility to make sure bandits like the Crimson Raiders don't assault the place"
"Your concern is valid, with Handsome Jack gone the Crimson Raiders could be very well locate this place with no issue"Said Dark-7 on its usual robotic voice common for a loader"scanners show many bandits surrounding the facility already, however, are you sure you are not with them?"
"I can assure they are not with me" he said with a grin looking at Dark-7, lying with all his teeth "I hid amongst them to enter and since none of them can enter because of the loaders, this will be the perfect opportunity to destroy them in a big explosion"
"Your plan to kill the bandits would also comply with the objective of destroying the facility, I can't seem to find major flaws on your logics"said Dark-7 as it stepped aside and inserted a code on a nearby control panel, opening the reinforced door which probably confirmed to Kenneth that it was an elevator"You have access to enter the lower levels, the control room is right by the power core area, just past the main R station, good luck down there worker"
Kenneth nodded and entered the elevator, soon the doors of the elevator closed, and he felt the elevator moving down.
"Alright Jack, let's see what you are hiding in here" he said as he got his AR ready just in case, after around a minute or so, the elevator finally stopped, and a new set of doors opened, revealing a new hallway that was pretty short, an electrified door at the end guarded by a pair of GUN loaders, Kenneth got off the elevator and walked up to the loaders "what now?"
"Please wait while we open the security gates, this should only take a minute or so"said the left loader while the right one turned around and began to work on a control panel they were covering. Kenneth was starting to grow more curious with everything, but his train of thought was short as the electrified door opened"please let us know when you are done to let you out"
'Well, that's ominous'he thought as he walked across the door as it closed behind him, leaving him right inside a huge room that looked like a giant engineering place that had multiple prototypes for vehicles, war machines, huge loaders and constructors, badasses and many more things, adding to that there were a lot of doors leading to smaller garages and a series of tubes on the ceiling that seemed to shine...purple? well that was odd. Kenneth decided to report back to Henks "boss, this place is filled with prototype Hyperion weapons, no wonder the place has so much security"
"Seems like we have hit the jackpot with this one, we will get a shit ton of money for all that stuff"said Henks with a laugh"see if you can find anything else valuable while turning off the robots, and do it quick, the others are starting to get impatient, and I am afraid the psychos will start eating people"
"On it boss, over and out" Kenneth said as he walked across the engineering room and past many of the machines in there, sort of admiring them and curious about the design they had, since most of them seemed to be oddly big, had big cannons or looked way too big to even be powered up by a regular power Hyperion source "ok these things are impressive, but I doubt Hyperion can even power them up regularly"
He remembered Dark-7's directions, so he began to check for signals that led to the power source of the facility, but he wasn't able to find a lot, most of the closed doors led to Storage areas with many turned off loaders or some unfinished machines, there was one set of doors that seemed different from the others but there was one thing that also made it stand out was that the tubes on the ceiling seemed to all connect to the wall this particular door was on, so that was a good enough clue. He tried to access the place with his access card, which took a few tries given it was asking for an eye scanning from Handsome Jack, but he solved that problem by breaking the eye scanner and rewiring it to bypass it.
"Ok, now you better open up" he said before trying to open the door with his access card again, and this time it worked, with the door unlocking with a simple triple beep "fucking finally, now let's get in and cash in quickly"
Kenneth then opened the door and as soon as the door opened, showing a huge open space that had a huge transparent tube with a purple energy flowing through it, being flanked by a metal walkway that was right above what appeared to be a vault closed with thick steel doors. Deciding to walk the walkway Kenneth soon reached the control room, entering it he saw multiple screens and a couple control consoles with many buttons, some keyboards and such things to make things function.
"Alright, now let's open the way for the others...now what is the deactivation code?" He said as he began to work on the consoles, starting to type on the consoles and running various codes and button combinations to try and make it work. All the codes he was inserting were giving "ERROR" messages, which was starting to frustrate him, this place was so secret that Handsome Jack was most likely the only person who knew what the base's codes were. At one point he just ran a code that gave a result, and he heard a metallic noise right outside, so he went for a moment to check on it and saw that the metal doors of the vault opened, revealing a huge deposit of eridium being held there, all of it energized. "that's...a shit ton of eridium on what appears to be a generator or something"
"Kenneth, come in!"Said Henks voice through the Echo device, sounds of gunshots being heard on the background of call"Kid, answer quickly!"
"Boss, what is going on?!" Kenneth said slightly panicked at the sudden call "You will not believe what I found here!"
"We have bigger problems to worry about right now, the Crimson Raiders are attacking us!"Henks announced, which certainly surprised Kenneth"They are everywhere, Fucking everywhere!"
Kenneth went back into the control room and after some typing, he managed to get the security cameras of the exterior to work, and he confirmed that the rest of the bandit crew he came with was being attacked by members of the crimson raiders, many of the bandits already dead as the ones remaining bunkered up using some crates and the already destroyed buzzards. The Crimson raiders had some dead people among them, but they were mostly fine, very few losses.
"Hang on sir, maybe the exterior defenses are still functional!" Kenneth said as he began to enter lines of code to try and turn on any defenses, meanwhile a couple of psychos charged at the crimson raiders until they got headshot by someone. As this happened Kenneth kept trying to get the defenses to work to no avail "Shit, the codes I am trying are not working, Jack probably had this place all for himself!"
"Try everything, I don't know long we will be able to-"Henks wasn't able to finish as he and the other bandits got hit with a flame burst that appeared from nowhere, killing them all as the security feed glitched for a second before, from the center of the flame burst rose a certain red head siren.
"Ah man, not the Firehawk" said Kenneth as the Firehawk(Lilith really), finished the final bandits as the other crimson raiders approached her.
"Alright people, that was the last of them, now we just enter, blow this place up and we get out, simple"Said Lilith as she cracked her knuckles, Kenneth could only listen because Henks' Echo was still on.
"Ma'am, are you sure this is a good idea?"said one of the raiders as he reloaded his gun"even with your powers the security of the building has been intact for years, they are probably expecting an attack from us"
"Damn, you make a valid point there...and we only are 8 people"said Lilith as she walked back and forth trying to think of something, she then seemingly got an idea as she walked to the facility but instead of entering, she stood in front of one of the walls.
"Ok, this can't be any good" said a slightly panicked Kenneth as he tried to do anything to get the crimson raiders away, but none of the codes seemed to work "goddamit, fuck you Handsome Jack!"
As he was doing this, Lilith grabbed something from her pockets, a bunch of eridium pieces that she soon absorbed to boost her powers. Soon enough she began to focus her powers on the facility.
"Alright Jack, let's see if your buildings are well bolted to the ground"said Lilith as she began to concentrate her siren powers onto the building, her tattoos glowing orange while the exterior of the building was starting to glow purple. Pretty sure that means problems.
"Oh lord this cannot be good" Kenneth said starting to worry, he then checked the interior security feed and saw that the rest of the building was also getting engulfed on the purple energy from Lilith's siren powers, making the loaders confused as they looked around at the energy flowing through the building.
"Mister employee, the building is being seized by the powers of a siren, what's happening to the self destruction?"Said Dark-7 through Kenneth's echo.
"I don't think Handsome Jack planned far ahead enough for this situation Dark, he made the place so only HE could control the place!" Kenneth said now fully panicking, soon the siren energy reached the area where Kenneth was "Oh this isn't going to be pretty...wait a minute"
He soon ran outside to see the Eridium generator and saw the siren energy reaching it. Realizing the danger, he ran back to the R area, closing the door that leads to the generator room and activating the secure lock.
"ok, hopefully that gives me some time" he said as he ran around checking the garages where the other unfinished weapons were being held, he knew that getting into one of the was his only hope, but so far none of the things he saw were even finished enough to protect him. "great, there's only junk here and I'm about to die! Just perfect!"
"Voice queue detected, opening project CyberU"Said a robotic voice through the comm system, as soon as it ended one of the closed doors opened, revealing a new storage area that Kenneth couldn't open earlier. He couldn't exactly see what was in it at the moment, but anything was probably better right now, especially considering that the facility was starting to shake.
"Yeah, this is better than nothing!" Kenneth yelled as he ran to the newly opened storage area, just as he ran the tubes transferring the eridium energy began to shake, one of them even caused an explosion that almost hit him "Shit, quick quick quick!"
Luckily, he was able to reach the storage zone of the so called "CyberU" project, hitting the main switch to close the reinforced door to try and keep himself safe.
"This better work" Kenneth said as he breathed hard, feeling the building shake a lot and an explosion happened outside, probably from the eridium generator "Ah fuck"
On the outside, a few minutes earlier
Lilith had begun channeling her siren powers onto the building after absorbing the eridium pieces, apparently she had a plan on how to deal with the facility that the rest of the Crimson Raiders didn't knew, which was exemplified when she got a call on her Echo
"Lilith, what the hell are you doing?! I can see the light show from my sniping spot!"said a pretty gruff voice with a drunk accent through Lilith's echo
"Mordecai, we can't destroy this facility with our current numbers, so I'm doing the best next thing and teleporting the whole thing to somewhere else, where it's never seen again!" said Lilith to the now identified as Mordecai, as she kept channeling her siren powers to the building
"Lilith, Brick is not that far away from our position overlooking the Soaring Dragon, we can just give him a call and bring his men here to assault the base"Argued Mordecai with a more raised voice.
"Brick and his men won't arrive soon enough, the loaders inside are probably already preparing a counterattack on us due to the bandits!" she argued back, not stopping her powers "better to get rid of this thing now than to wait to get killed by Hyperion"
As Lilith kept using her siren powers on the facility, it soon started to shine brighter with a brighter purple, making many of the crimson raiders cover their eyes from the brightness
"Lilith, this is Patricia Tannis speaking"said a female through the Echo"I don't want to be the bearer of worrying news...oh who am I kidding this is the only fuuny part of this job at the moment, anyway, the energy readings on the Hyperion building are all over the place right now, so maybe try to reduce the amount of power you are using right now? Pretty please like the uneducated usually say?"
"Tannis, I...I'm using the same amount of power when we teleported Sanctuary, I haven't done anything different so far!" Lilith yelled starting to get slightly worried, deciding to take a few steps back from the facility...but to her shock and everyone else's shock, she was still connected to the facility via some flows of her powers, which were glowing brighter the closer they got to the facility "Ok now I'm starting to freak out now!"
"You lot better stand back now, I am getting a huge spike on eridium readings, like if there was a huge Eridium vault at the facility that is causing an unforeseen reaction when mixed with Lilith's powers, now of course the probabilities of that happening are of about 876419.9 to 1 but-"Tannis was blabbering on through the Echo when a huge shake happened, making many of the crimson raiders soldiers step as far away from the facility as possible as it was starting to get enveloped in purple electricity"Oh...right...it's happening right now..."
"Lilith, you have to get away from that, now!"yelled Mordecai as Lilith, without giving it a second thought, stepped away as far as possible from the facility and once she got far enough, her powers finally disconnected from it...but the purple electricity and brightness was still there and going strong, making Lilith grab her Echo to talk to Tannis "Patricia, why is that thing not powering down?!"
"It appears that the heavy presence of eridium in the facility has caused it to form a closed circuit when Lilith's powers were added as a reactive, it's essentially replicating the power and making it stronger over time!"yelled Tannis through the echo, kind of sounding excited"This is some incredible developments, it would be more if the lot of you weren't so close to potentially dying"
"Yeah no shit!" Lilith yelled as she and the other crimson raiders ran away from the facility as it shined even more, the purple electricity starting to fully envelop the building as it then caused a huge purple explosion, then a flash and a shockwave that pushed Lilith and the crimson raiders away as they fell to the ground, also breaking many of the icebergs and smaller ice islands around the place. A minute or so later Lilith recovered from the explosion and stood back up, looking around at the smoke filled area. "guys?"
"Lilith!" said the voice of Mordecai as he came from the smoke getting next to her "that explosion took out my sniper site, good thing I managed to jump down!"
"Amazing, truly marvelous, that explosion had some of the highest energy readings ever recorded in the history of science, I am so excited I could...never mind, I think the excitement went...somewhere else now"Raved Tannis through the Echo
"Too much information Tannis" Lilith said with a sigh, by now the rest of the crimson raiders were also standing up and paying attention to the conversation "anything happening in the rest of Pandora?"
"As of now nothing major, some earthquakes in The Dust, ice collapsing in the deep parts of The Fridge, The Hyperion site near Overlook collapsed and the Slab king's camp seems to be onfire" Reported Tannis as she then took a pause"never mind, that wasn't from the explosion, someone thought that using a fire rocket launcher to cook meat was a good idea"
"Anyways, I suppose we can call this a victory then" said Mordecai with a smirk as the other crimson raiders, minus Lilith, began to celebrate, high five each other and fire onto the air "alright boys, let's loot this place clean and then we go to Moxxi's for a couple drinks, my treat!"
"Mordecai, we...might have a problem with that whole looting part" she said looking at the direction the facility was supposed to be at as she nudged him to look, he then turned his head to see...
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...
...
...
...
...
...
...nothing...
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...
...Literally nothing, the place where the facility should be now is just an empty crater in the middle of the ice, there was no debris, no burn marks, not even ice chunks on the crater from the explosion...it was like it banished, which prompted Lilith and Mordecai to say the same thing.
"Shit"
Unknown office
Inside of a very organized office, which was decorated with some shelves, tables, a pot plant but the features were a desk and a chair with a computer on it, a man with dark hair and a bit of a beard, dressed in what seemed to be the uniform of a military officer, was sitting in the chair while working on a computer with a tired look.
"ugh" said the man "I need to finish this quickly; I have a meeting in about 10 minutes and it's with Syuen of all people...I wish something would get that off my-"
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!
The man didn't have to wait too much for his wish to become true, as suddenly a huge earthquake happened that began shaking his office and everything inside it, the man himself had to hold onto the desk for support as everything kept shaking for a solid minute or so until it finally stopped, the man took a bit to recompose himself from the shock.
"What in the actual fuck was that?!" he yelled as he recovered, suddenly he got a call from a comm device
"Deputy, are you ok?!"said a female voice through the comm device, the now identified deputy sat straight on his chair as he listened"Did you feel that earthquake?!"
"Hard not to Shifty, I thought the floor would cave in" said the deputy fixing his suit "any damages?"
"Some buildings on the Outer Rim collapsed and some areas exploded due to gas shaking, but everything seems to be ok"Said the now identified as Shifty
"Ok, deploy repair teams to the damaged areas and security to keep the population calm" said the deputy before thinking about something "any ideas on what caused the earthquake? an enemy assault maybe?"
"No concrete answers yet sir, radars haven't detected any movement near our position, but the radars detected a huge energy spike somewhere around here"Said Shifty as some coordinates were sent to the deputy, as he checked them, he hummed to himself as he cross referenced it with another document
"Wait, that place is close to an area where we sent a rescue team to find some missing squadrons, do we have any of them near that area?" said the deputy
"Group 1 has been destroyed already and group 2 hasn't reported back for hours, only groups 3 and 4 are near the area"informed Shifty, making the deputy think
"Redirect group 4 to investigate the place and find the source of the energy spike, if they can recover anything from it the better" said the deputy as he began to work on his computer "with some luck the people I had to meet with won't mind my absence"
"Actually sir, the meeting was cancelled, the meeting room collapsed on itself, and everybody cancelled"Said Shifty, which elicited a relaxed sigh from the deputy.
"Alright, that would be it all, keep me informed Shifty" said the deputy as he ended the communication with Shifty, slightly more relaxed but still worried, since he didn't know what caused the earthquake or if that energy spike was a danger or no... whatever it was, they were going to discover the cause of it...
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...
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...For the Ark and humanity...
Well what do you think? quite an intriguing tale isn't it? And hoh boy is there a lot to analyze with this one, like what happened to Kenneth? What world was that right at the end? And what changes could this potentially bring? Well, you might want to sit and wait for it, because as for me, I have a business to attend to, time is money and all.