//------------------------------// // Chapter 13 // Story: Borderlands 2: Starlight DLC Pack // by the-pieman //------------------------------// Anthony recalls the Vault Hunters remarking the Happy Pig motel going down and decides to take that job. The area should be a cakewalk for him alone, but with him and the ponies splitting up, they should handle it all really fast. Three parts, three of them, simple. Anthony checks his SDUs and notes he’s low on ammo so he heads down to Marcus’ store and buys some before browsing the man’s wares. While the guns were all quite decent and fairly levelled, he didn’t find anything he was interested in, though he almost splurged on a fire pistol. True there wasn’t any real need to fix the abandoned motel but it would open up a Catch-A-Ride, another bounty board, and a Fast Travel station and those were all plusses. The job selected, Anthony heads down to Moxxi’s again to grab Pinkie. Dash is a bit more of a chore to pull away from watching Scooter work on the renovated flying machine, but once she’s assured he’d be finished by the time they get back she relents and the ponies stock up on ammo. “So how’s this gonna go, exactly?” Pinkie asks as the three hop into a Technical. “Simple, we just drop one of us off next to each objective and that way we can do all three at once. When we’re ready, we let each other know and Dash will come by and round us up in the Technical. Take us back to the motel and repair the steam pump.” “Sounds easy, what’s the catch?” Rainbow asks sounding hesitant. “Real shit pay for the job itself. We’re mainly doing this out of the goodness of our hearts and the facilities outside the motel.” “Ugh, really? Well... it is the right thing to do I suppose and we’ve been doing this whole ‘not heroes’ thing for a while, we don’t wanna end up being the bandits Jack accuses us of being.” “That’s the spirit, and don’t worry, the next job I’ll pick will be all about the rewards.” Anthony assures her as they arrive at the motel and pick up their current job, the ECHO recorder stuck to the powered-down bounty board. “Pre-recorded message begins: Aaggggh! The Bloodshots are killing us! Aaggggh! Pre-recorded message ends.” Soon after the recorder goes quiet, the mission to turn on the power comes up and the nearby steam pump, as expected, is down and is, as Scooter points out, “Broke as hell.” “So now we just head around and get the parts. One is guarded by bandits, another by skags, and the third, bullymongs.” “What kind of name is Bullymong anyway?” Pinkie asks. “It sounds weird.” Anthony just laughs. “We’ll do that one next then. So who wants the bandits?” “Me~e!” Pinkie says, raising a hoof. She hops in place several times, even as Anthony and Dash try to tell her they’re fine with it. “Alright, you just have to head to the North. It’s right over there, so you shouldn’t have to use a vehicle.” Anthony says, pointing. “I think I’ll take the Bullymongs, and Dash can take the car to take out the skags, they’re the farthest away.” “Alright.” Pinkie says, heading for the very close-by bandit encampment. About the time Dash gets Anthony dropped off by a steam pump overtaken by ice, Pinkie gets on the ECHO. “Uh, it’s up there, but how do I get up there?” “Shoot the ladder down.” Anthony advises as he hops out, Dash driving off for the remaining pump. Anthony walks up to the iced steam pump and prepares for the badass Bullymong to jump down, which it does, shaking the ground with impact. The very pissy Bullymong, being what it is, starts off the fight by chucking two large ice blocks, then leaping into the fray directly, other brat Bullymongs closing in, but not getting in the way of their alpha. Anthony Sparks up and runs past the Bullymong, using the speed boost to snatch the Gearbox from the Baddass’s grip and waving it in front of the creature like a prize. Holding down the trigger of his Hyperion pistol, he gets the Bullymong five times in the mouth and ten times in the eyes, effectively mutilating the creature’s face. It wasn’t that high level after all, badass or not. Anthony grins as the brat bullymongs run off, clearly knowing their place. And a beep saying that Pinkie had acquired the second part is followed by loud screaming and a massive explosion in the distance. With a laugh, Anthony calls up Dash. “You ready to pick me up?” “On my way now.” She says, Anthony hearing a loud, squishy crack over the ECHO, and the beep of Dash getting her part comes across. A half-minute later, Dash rolls up to Anthony staring at the badass Bullymong, noting that Anthony was completely clean while Dash was covered in skag blood, spit, and vomit... but mostly blood. “What is it with you and keeping deaths clean?” “I prefer a few precise shots, don’t wanna get blood in my eyes when I’m in a fight in case it turns serious.” “But punching and kicking is fun, especially with this Roid shield. I just stand still, let them break it, and unleash Tartarus like nopony’s business.” Pinkie, by the Motel, is waiting for the two, juggling bandit body parts that had been blown off, the rest of the camp given a big, messy ‘paint job’ and was covered in gibs. “Alright, let’s get this place up and running again.” Anthony says, climbing up the steam pump ladder and plugging in the parts as he goes. “And there we go. Turn that valve now.” By the time Anthony is back on the ground, the steam pump is fully operational and the nearby power generator springs to life, vibrating and rumbling. “Alright, now the Catch-A-Ride should be up and working.” “And Scooter said he was gonna be done by now, right?” Dash asks excitedly. “Sorry ta burst yer bubble Dashie, but I ‘spected ya to take another ten minutes ‘r so. Still puttin’ the finishin’ touches on, but once I’m done I’ll have this here whirly-bird ready for liftoff.” “Yes!” Dash squeals more than yells. “So now what?” “Well, now we can check out the bounty board and get some more jobs to tide us over. Now let’s see what we got here...” Instead of the usual mail delivery quest, Anthony finds a new one. Again, nothing too major, but the difficulty was quite a bit higher. It would be a good time killer. There’s one on the board he doesn’t recognize, from yours truly. “Huh, Marcus needs some crates of guns recovered from bandits who stole ‘em, and is willing to give up a gun from the shipments to whomever completes it, along with a small amount of cash. He is, of course, not being stingy with money, but perfectly reasonable in his assumption that I have more than enough and is not stiffing me on the cash at all.” “Alright,” Dash says. “We’ll take it. So where are we headed?” “Uh... oh, it’s in Shock Fossil Cavern. That’s not too far away, actually.” “Sweet, let’s get rollin’!” Dash says as she hops into the Technical. “And when we get back to Sanctuary, let’s see if we can’t craft some guns when Scooter’s done with the Buzzard. We still have that mountain of Dahl stuff in storage.” Anthony nods. “Yeah, I could use a better assault rifle, this zapper is really showing its age.” “How long you had it again?” Pinkie asks, hopping in the back as Anthony takes the turret seat. “It’s a green level five.” Anthony says, sighing. “And it’s my highest RoF weapon.” “Jeez, no kidding.” Dash says, driving off for the new map marker the quest had placed. “Shame we can’t keep the bits that make it a shock weapon.” “We found that other shock weapon in the Dahl bunker.” Pinkie reminds the group. “Can we scrap that and make one that’s electric?” “Only iff’n it’s from the same weapon man-you-facter.” Scooter explains with a grunt of effort from his end. “But if ya’ll got it from a Dahl bunker yer gonna be makin’ a Dahl anyways so’s yer good. I’ll shows ya the basics when ya git back ‘ere.” “Scooter, you are awesome!” Dash says, repeating herself from a while earlier. Scooter gives his thanks and ends the transmission, as they arrive at the cave. Walking in, they see a large machine in the middle of the first room, sparking and sending off electricity like crazy. What the machine does or is for though, is a mystery for the ages. As soon as the group pulls up, a few psychos run out to greet them in the standard Pandoran way. “They told me to bring a pail lunch! You look pale enough to me!” “No dice, nutso.” Anthony replies as several bullets from his Jakobs find temporary purchase in the bandits’ heads before exiting out the back of their skulls from sheer force, the impact barely slowing them and dropping the psychos easily. “Show off.” Dash mutters as she hops out of the vehicle and prepares her slag mirv grenade. Once the rest of the oncoming Psychos are slagged if not blown to bits, Pinkie finishes them with her corrosive shotgun. The ‘survivors’ melting alive from the DoT. Several more marauders come out and begin firing but the group just advances, their shields taking the bullets in stride for several rounds before Rainbow’s breaks and a bullet barely misses her leg. She grins and charges at the bandits, and begins a melee frenzy, while Anthony and Pinkie work on a few nomads. Seeing an explosive barrel off to the side, he looks to Pinkie and offers a suggestion. “Think you can hurl that at them without setting it off?” “No problem-o!” Pinkie runs past the nomads and bucks the barrel at them. Anthony blasts it with his Jakobs and sets it off mid-flight. The nomads turn and hold up their shields, blocking the blast completely. They begin laughing at the attempt. “What?” Anthony calls over. “Haven’t you heard of a distraction?” The nomads immediately turn their shields towards Anthony, blocking his incoming spray of bullets. Pinkie comes up behind them and blasts them both with her party cannon, taking them out from the concussive force as well as the shrapnel. Anthony grinned at the classic ‘fake distraction/real distraction’ move. Works every time... Dash is finished with the marauders fairly soon after and the mission changes to ‘find the stolen weapons.’ The group spreads out and eventually find six of the crates, loading them into the back of the Technical. But there was supposed to be eight, and Marcus doesn’t pay for an incomplete job. The last two are pinpointed to have been moved to somewhere within Southpaw Steam and Power. “Isn’t that where we took out the assassins a few days ago?” Dash asks. At Anthony’s confirmative nod she cocks an eyebrow. “But, wouldn’t the assassins have respawned by now... so we’d have to clear them out again right?” “And this time they’ll probably be expecting a raid. We kinda took them by surprise last time, but now that they know there’s a target on them for having the crates...” “Great.” Dash replies sarcastically and sighs. “Oh well, might as well get it over with.” “Right!” Pinkie says. “And we don’t have to do anything like finish them with specific weapons. We just need to remember their actual weaknesses and exploit them! We’ll have those crates, easy-peasy!” “Alright then.” Anthony says, reloading his minigun. “Let’s re-assassinate them.” Walking in, the three notice that the place seems mostly unchanged from the first time, but something catches Pinkie’s eyes... some new posters on the wall, not as yellowed as the ones of the main Vault Hunters. “Look, we’re famous!” Anthony checks it out and notices the same. “Hah, Jack finally passed around a bounty on us. Guess fucking up his servers hit a button.” He and Dash share a low five as they inspect the rewards, just out of morbid curiosity to see how much Jack was offering for them. Pinkie has a hefty $270,000 bounty at the moment for Extreme Violence and a Destructive Personality, Dash has nearly $400,000 in various bounties for ‘Excessive Force’, Murder (Temporary), Assault (Temporary), Maiming (Temporary), and illegal shield usage. Anthony, meanwhile, has $998,000 in bounties, most of them related to questionable activities with a minor. Anthony, obviously, was upset at the insinuation. “What the heck? What minor? Gaige? Hey, she was the one suggesting I’d want to try something.” He points to Dash. “She was there, she can vouch for me.” Anthony shouts at the inanimate poster. “Chill dude.” Dash mumbles. “At least they got your good side. This is the worst picture of me ever! It doesn’t show off all my awesomeness!” “It’s meant to be just you as normal, not ‘awesome’” Anthony clarifies. “But yeah, he did bother to get my good side. Figured he’d try and make me look like some kind of pervert.” “Anyways, how do we get this money?” Pinkie asks, stars in her eyes. “Uh... well, actually, this is a reward for bringing us in dead. We can’t exactly get this money ourselves. It goes to whoever offs us and keeps us from respawning.” Anthony looks closer at the posters and notices small print. “Holy hell... Jack is offering a special deal for all three of us. He’ll pay our combined bounties and double it if they turn us in all at once.” The total being 3,336,000 at present. “Wow, that’s a lot of money.” “And the scary part is, he can actually afford it.” Anthony says. “Anyways we have weapon crates to get back.” “Right!” Pinkie says, pronking off further into the power plant. As it turns out, the assassins didn’t respawn or at least had found a new hiding place. Either way, they were not there making the mission a standard ‘kill the bandits, loot the place’ mission. “Hey, wait a second.” Dash says, as she finishes off a marauder with her special rifle. “Our level bar thingies aren’t going up.” Anthony realizes he forgot to mention the downside to levelling up too fast. “Well... if you’re too high level for an area, you can’t advance your clearance progress by taking down enemies in said area. You just start getting diminishing returns the bigger the level gap, and eventually you just stop getting anything.” “So aside from whatever vendor trash we sell after this, and the quest rewards, we’re getting nothing out of this?” “Well... yeah. We’re levelling up too fast for these guys to catch up and as such, we just can’t get anything but their gear from them.” “Yeah, and their gear sucks!” Pinkie exclaims, picking up a Bandit Smig and inspecting it, before giving it a disgusted look and tossing it behind her. “These are worse than the Dog I got last time I was here.” “Yeah, and this caster is obliterating these guys, but doesn’t do much to guys our level unless the target has armor to melt.” Dash adds. “We’ll have to spend our loot and quest money on better guns when we get back to Sanctuary.” Pinkie sits up straight for a moment, ‘thinking’ face on. “Waitaminute! Why would we sell these?!” she shouts. “Scooter said he can help us make guns, and we’ve got good parts in our current ones...” she lets the words trail off to let Anthony and Rainbow Dash connect the dots. Anthony shrugs. “I suppose, but with our limited collection there’s only so many possibilities. We could try but we’d have to salvage about three of our current guns to get a single better one. We’d be better armed, sure, but also less armed.” “Yeah, and we need to talk with Scooter about what we’d need to do with everything.” Rainbow Dash counters. “I mean, if these parts are why the guns are so terrible, taking them with us won’t help much, Pinks.” “But it is an idea, we’d just need to scavenge from tougher customers is all.” Anthony says, attempting to find a middle ground. “So we’ll sell these things and see how much cash we can pool together from it.” The three continue through the Steam Plant, talking as they kill and loot bandits. “Yeah, but they aren’t worth much and there’s only so much I can carry.” Dash points out. “Is there a way to carry more stuff?” Anthony nods. “Earl’s Black Market. The guy sells SDUs for ammunition and storage upgrades.” He pauses before revealing the caveat. “Except he won’t sell anything unless we pay in Eridium.” “Jack wants Eridium, this Earl guy wants Eridium, some of these bandits want Eridium... what’s so special about it, really?” Dash asks frustratedly. “I mean, I get that it can do some funky stuff, but if the planet is supposedly overflowing with the stuff, why haven’t we found any?” Anthony just shrugs. “Chalk it up to bad luck. Of course it would be more common if Jack wasn’t literally mining all of it up and pumping it into... uh... charging the Vault Key.” The group is interrupted by a Psycho charging them. “Look at me when I’m staring at you!!” Pinkie just shoots the guy in the head and it bursts like a watermelon. “This is getting kinda boring with how easy it is.” Pinkie complains. “Dying sucks and all...” Dash comments, taking down a Marauder. “But Pinkie’s right, these guys are lame. Takes all the glory outta this, y’know?” Anthony, for a change of pace, Sparks up and finishes off the remaining bandits around, sighing as the power’s relatively short timer is left long by how effective he was at this point. “We’ll finish this job and go Thresher Hunting, deal?” “The tentacle-y things you mentioned earlier?” Pinkie asks, idly twirling her launcher around like a baton with surprising ease. “Yeah, aside from the Tadpoles, they’re big, nasty, and have tiny critspots.” “The harder the kill the better the loot.” Rainbow reminds them. “So let’s just get that chest for Marcus and head out.” Continuing through the plant, the group eventually comes to a decently-sized cache of weapons. It couldn’t all be from Marcus, it had to have been hoarded. “They’re all white.” Pinkie notes as she kicks open crate after crate before finally stepping in front of the chest highlighted by the group’s ECHOs. “Yeah, let’s just leave them or scrap ‘em. Come on, let’s get this thing back to Sanctuary.” “Yeah... hey, I know, let’s drag these extra crates, but without all that foam crap, and stuff ‘em full of guns. That Axton guy was doing it back when we first met ‘em.” “I like that idea!” Pinkie says, going over to one of the crates and jumps inside, throwing out all the foam packaging. Not feeling terribly contrary, Anthony goes along with the plan and starts filling up the open crate with vendor trash. After about half an hour the entire set of crates, all twenty of them, are stocked to the brim with SMGs, Assault Rifles, and pistols of every variety. With quite a bit of trouble, they manage to get their gear and loot back to the Technical. As they’re driving back, Pinkie is tasked with keeping their cargo on-board, there being a distinct lack of straps on the sturdy but ultimately unsafe vehicle. Rainbow was, much to her disappointment, easing off the gas, having already lost one crate to sheer speed and Anthony told her that the next one they lose they were going to turn back for. With that rule set, Rainbow drove carefully, and getting the three of them and their loot to the Happy Pig’s Fast Travel Station in about ten minutes. “I could walk this faster...” “And carry all these weapons and grenade mods at the same time?” Anthony asks rhetorically, quirking an eyebrow. “No... come on, let’s just grab all we can and head through, I wanna get paid.” Scooter’s voice comes over the ECHO, talking to all three Vault Hunters at once. “Hey y’alls, I overheard you three chatting ‘bout makin’ some guns. I’ll send an offer-zay-shun to drop off right into mah garage this time.” Taking Scooter up on the offer and using the Fast Travel station near the motel, the three get to Sanctuary and head for the garage. It would take a bit of time to learn, but making better guns was a necessity at this point. They were far outclassed. The crates of guns, including Marcus’, are moved to their final destinations by some of the citizens for a few measly bribes, and Scooter sits down with them, grinning broadly at them as he looks them over, gesturing towards a simple workbench with a half-dozen manufacturer’s logos plastered across the hodge-podge materials. The bench had multiple arms on it, and there’s a bar with dozens of differently-colored rolls of duct tape, the most-used one being a roll of black with flame designs on the edges. “Alright, sit yerselfs down, and watch a master!” he said, cracking his knuckles dramatically and winced at the pops. “Okay, so ya gotta take apart each type’a gun different, an’ it’s different dependin’ on the manufacturer. Yous can find benches like this one all over Pandora, but mine’s the only Omni-bench! I worked super-hard gettin’ it to work with every manufacturer an’ not rips its own arms off.” As he spoke, he set a pair of older Vladof pistols, which the bench automatically begins to scan, identifying its very short part list, and puts up a holographic prompt asking which part should be collected for each of them. “Now, ya gotta get only the best parts. I set this t’ scrap all these guns, since ya brought in a whole heap’a real basic weapons.” he says, “So ya’ll need’ta go through all yer stuff and find what works. Now, I’d suggest you set any greens’re blues aside as ya go, an make ‘em better with each other. Go nuts!” he says, having shown them the basic methods of using the system as he talked. The parts, after they scrap the guns all down, result in a veritable mountain of raw scrap metal and enough actual parts to make up to fourteen pistols, six assault rifles, three sniper rifles, eight sub-machine guns, a single launcher, and four shotguns. There’s stacks of varied bayonets, laser sights, and specialty scopes and barrels enough to make a Loot Midget cream himself. And that’s just with the basic parts. Once they’d finished with all the white-grade weapons and equipment, Scooter showed them how adding pieces to a design worked, and it turned out that lower-grade pieces could be used in higher-grade designs; as long as the majority was of a given rarity, the gun would be that rarity level. As such, they pulled out a slew of greens, taking out the cores of them when possible, and other bits when the cores weren’t worth it. “Well, I always knew Vault Hunters were purty good at gettin’ tons’a loot, but this’s ridiculous! You could go into competition with Marcus with this many guns!” Anthony puts up a hand. “No way, Scooter, I know what happened to the last guys who tried competing with him.” Wise kid, I can tell you that much. “Fair ‘nough. Anywho, Marcus is who yer probably gonna be sellin’ to, when you make mosta these, but it looks like ya got enough to make a green in each weapon type to yer likin’. Everythin’ else’d be white-grade, sadly.” he says, looking over the list of parts. He paused after going through it, looking over it again. “Hmm... I think ah kin even help ya make a special one, blue-grade. Lemme grab a core ah bin holdin’ onto fer a while, and you decide which a ya’ll’s gonna get Scooter’s Affections. That’s the gun, by the way.” he clarified, before ducking off rummage through his stuff. “Well, white at a higher level is better than a green five, so I’ll take what I can get. I already got the Sloth from Mordy, so you girls can figure out who gets Scooter’s gun.” Anthony said, looking over the parts and, making an assault rifle purely from Dahl-only parts, he made a white that put his Electric Minigun to shame... well, aside from the clip. It was only carrying about a third the ammo that his level five held, but the boost to firepower was significant enough to make up for it. Taking the white and scrapping the Minigun for its body, he checked what he could do if he used that part in his new gun, but alas the parts rejected each other leaving him a still-effective weapon. Taking apart his Iron for its core, he figured that combined with a few other parts he could make another blue pistol, scrapping his Inspiring Vision for higher-grade components to keep the Straight Shooter stay afloat in the Blue range. Finally, he tore apart his Fervid Gospel, and began rebuilding it around the Maliwan core, though all he had to work with were lower grade parts. This time, he added a Maliwan-style Bayonet, the twin blades sharp and classy. Pinkie took over the bench next, tearing apart her own weapons with a feverish intensity that shocked the others. The bandit slag shotgun was the first to be retrofitted; unfortunately, the core couldn’t be upgraded past a level-ten value, but it was a far cry from the level 3 she’d had previously. The finished project, a Sketer Room Clener, was far better than the previous iteration. She’d taken apart her Topneaa, and decided to go a different route than normal, scrapping much of it for spare metal and the like, and began to build something entirely new: a Launcher. The corrosive core it holds had to be made from scratch, costing much of the available scrap. She also scraps her Dog, the minor weapon’s scrap needed to finish the Maliwan-designed components like the Sight. Sadly, she couldn’t replace her Plump Root, the poorly-aging Torgue weapon now more of a keepsake than anything. Dash, looking over her weapons with disgust, scraps all of them, except the Plasma Caster and the Chief’s Luck. Looking over what she has available, she bites her lip, Anthony leaning over to offer advice as she mumbles about rifle manufacturers. “If you want more power to your shots, but don’t want to sacrifice fire-rate, Dahl bases work well, but they’re hard to shoot continuously when taking careful aim.” “Hmm... What’s Jakob’s deal, then? There’s a little square in my vision flashing colors and telling me to ‘only use Jakob’s for power’.” “Well, since you’ve been wanting higher rate of fire up to this point, Jakobs is only as fast as you can pull the trigger, which can be insanely fast... but only if you can keep it up.” Anthony explains. “So unless your Exo’s thumb and fingers can keep up with the demand, you’re better off going with something faster.” “Oh... alright, Dahl sounds pretty good then.” she says, before grabbing pieces of scrap and feeding them into the table. Some tinkering around, and she produce an Assault Rifle, and looks over her E-Tech SMG. “Is there any way to pull out the SMG’s core? I like it, but...” she stops, looking sadly at the options given by the table, which consist of ‘cancel scrap’ and ‘scrap for materials’, no ‘remove’ option given. With a hearty sigh, she pulls it apart for the Tediore casing and reload system, and puts it together into a new SMG. The Refill Subcompact MG was significantly more effective, as well as being Fire-based in element. However, at this point, they’d consumed most of the scrap re-creating effective components they’d come across before, leaving her not enough to even make a Tediore-style pistol. Having no other changes to make, Anthony steps away from the table and begins heading for the city’s mission board. “We can do a few extra jobs and get some more cash, or go off on our own and level up a bit faster, what do you guys think?” “Those both sound good to me!” Pinkie chirps. “But let’s get some more levels. I’d like to get access to some better guns and shields and stuff before we go after the big bad meanie pants boss! I’m starting to feel a teensy-weensy bit insecure after that incident in the Caustic Caverns.” She pauses for a moment. “Oh, also, what exactly to Varkids like to eat?” Anthony pauses mid-step. “Uh... well, I’ve only really seen them come out of hive mounds and waste bins so... garbage? I guess?” “Oh, okay!” Pinkie says, and begins to bounce out of the garage. “I’ll wait over at Moxxi’s, call me when you’re ready to go!” As she leaves, Scooter comes back. “Hey, y’all! I gots that core Ah aforementioned before, lemme just put that thing t’gether...” he says, stepping nimbly past and getting the bench, before slapping together a pistol - blue grade and labeled ‘Scooter’s Affections’ on Anthony and Dash’s ECHOs. “Now, this here gun’s a special one - every time ya fire, it’ll change element. Ah cain’t guarantee what kind it’ll turn to after each shot, but it’ll certainly keep ‘em guessin!” he says, and Dash accepts the weapon. It looks like a Maliwan, too, aside from the core, which slowly shifts colors everywhere but the barrel, which is currently purple. Anthony checks the map on his ECHO and begins planning where they should go next. They were still around level thirteen so they could handle most situations... but the problem with that is that they’d have to be challenged in order to get better. They’d have to leave their comfort zone and go looking for real trouble before trying to help with the Bunker. “Hey, Anthony, you got anywhere with a bunch of different enemy types for us to fight? I wanna see if this gun is as cool as it sounds.” Dash asks. “Well, we could head back to the Exploitation Preserve and go through the front door this time, lots of kinds of nasties out there, a few robots and Hyperion goons as well, not to mention we’d likely find more elemental enemies due to what remains of their Slag experiments.” “Oooh, sounds awesome! Alright, lemme go grab Pinkie, and we’ll meetcha at the travel node thingy!” Dash gets up, barely pausing to thank Scooter over her shoulder as she sprints off to get Pinkie. Anthony shrugs and heads for the Fast Travel station, but turns to Zed’s ‘hospital’ along the way, going in to check out the various vending machines inside. Guns were useful, but if their shields didn’t cut it they wouldn’t have time to shoot anyways. Looking over the shield options -all of which are better than the ones he has currently- he jumps in the air as a hand comes down on his shoulder, gun leveled at Zed’s head before he even registers that’s whose hand it was. “Woah there! Jus’ comin’ over to say hi. I don’t think we’ve actually met in person yet; I’m Doctor Zed, and this, as ya might’ve guessed, is my clinic.” “Sorry, been a little jumpy. Anyways, I need a deal on a good shield. One for me, two for my friends.” Anthony apologizes. “We’re heading back to the wildlife preserve and are needing some better equipment.” “Oh, hey! I recognize yer voice, yer that new Vault Hunter, the one with the creepy-ass bounty on him. Yeah, I kin fix ya up with some better stuff, lemme just see the shield yer usin’ right now.” he extends a hand to accept the shield, eyes calmly confident. Also slightly glazed, but that’s not too big an issue. Anthony sighs and offers up the level four Pangolin. “This has been doing a bad job of keeping my insides... inside, lately.” “Ooh, I kin see why... eesh, these older models barely stand up anymore, I’m surprised it’s still gotta charge. Here, I’ll lend ya one, and you kin go out and get me some Stalker hearts ta make another. They make great capacitors, funny enough.” Anthony nods, figuring their natural shielding has to come from somewhere, and returns his attention to the other shields available. “Still need two more.” He settles on a cheap, standard Tediore ‘Shield’ for Pinkie, and an Adaptive Shield for Dash, since she keeps getting hit with elemental attacks. Once he’s ready, he bids Zed goodbye and heads for the Fast Travel station. Like before, the nearest station is in the Highlands, meaning they’d have to do a bit of fighting and travelling before getting to the reserve again. He wasn’t going to get anywhere without backup, Anthony leaves to get the ponies their shields. The next thing to upgrade were the grenades they were carrying. While mainly used for their secondary effects at this point, they were still falling behind. Deciding he’d let them decide on grenades for themselves he begins heading for Moxxi’s to round up Pinkie first. On the way, he spots Pinkie and Dash both by the fast-travel station, talking animatedly with a random citizen, who’s squatting and chatting back in a lively manner. The conversation just seems to be about Pandora in general, and about the ponies, but nothing Anthony quite finds interesting. Interrupting the citizen’s ramblings, Anthony clears his throat, waiting for the ponies’ attentions. “Oh, hey Anthony!” Dash notices him first, Pinkie still talking amiably. “You ready to go?” “Yeah, got us some protection, too. If we want better ‘nades we should get them now, but if not, we should go now.” He looks up to the sky. “I give us about five hours until sunset, and I don’t wanna be stuck there at night.” “Alright. Hey, Mr. May, we’ve gotta go, but it’s been nice talking to ya!” she says, grinning. The man smiles happily. “And if you happen to take any good pictures, or see any really beautiful landscapes, tell me about them next time you stop by!” he replies, as Anthony, Pinkie, and Dash prepare to transfer away to the Highlands.