//------------------------------// // Chapter 14 // Story: Borderlands 2: Starlight DLC Pack // by the-pieman //------------------------------// The three friends, as kitted up as they could be, travelled to the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, appearing near the base of Casa de Mordecai, as the alcoholic sniper called his observation post. “Now...” Anthony stated as the trio walked along. “We don’t have that Stalker-repelling shield, so basically the rule out here is: If you see something flicker but nothing’s there, shoot the flicker with a shock weapon.” “Gotcha!” Pinkie and Rainbow chorus in reply, both checking their guns to ensure they’re loaded. A moment later, Pinkie pipes up, “Except, I don’t think you and Dash have shock weapons.” she points out. Dash shakes her head. “Nah, the gun Scooter gave me has every element, so I just need to shoot ‘em more!” she says, voice full of bravado. “And as long as I see them first, I can just shoot them anyways, the Shock weaponry is just for keeping them from turning invisible after we start firing. We should be good. The upside is that without that shield, we won’t attract every Skag in the area. But they will still attack on sight.” Both of the ponies shudder over the thought of Skags. “Alright, either way, we’re basically just raiding them, right? So do we charge in, or should we have a strategy, or what?” Dash asks. “Well, everything will be higher level than us out here, so while there’s no actual mission other than to rack up kills we should definitely fight smart. The Rakks will be the most annoying, but the Loaders in the dockyard will be the ones needing the most ammo to take down. The Skags that have been experimented on are the main reasons for having varied elements of guns.” “Right, right.” Dash pauses for a moment. “Pinkie’s already gone ahead, hasn’t she?” the deadpan expression almost makes Anthony laugh, but he does note the absence of the pink party pony. Anthony rolls his eyes. “Well as long as she doesn’t run right into a Stalker den she’ll be fine-” A whooshing noise from above precedes a sharp pain in Anthony’s shoulder and he looks up to see a Rakk just vanishing. Anthony looks around where the Rakk was, eyes focused on the area around the raised hill as he backs up. Rainbow sees a flicker first and begins shooting with little restraint, emptying about a fourth of her fire SMG which successfully breaks the Rakk’s organic shield and run off, keening from being set on fire. Anthony takes it out before its shield can recharge and the both of them continue on, having spotted Pinkie’s marker on their minimaps. “Purple or not, Fire sucks against those shields...” Dash notes, disappointed that her newly-crafted gun wasn’t as effective as she’d hoped. “Yeah, try the pistol instead.” Anthony says, the two heading towards their wayward friend, who was presently swapping rapidly between her Slag shotgun and her Shock assault rifle, tearing through a small pride of Stalkers at a slow rate, but steadily enough. She’d already taken a few hits, though, and her shield had broken. Anthony is about to head down and help her, but a high shriek comes from the sky, and several Rakk divebomb him and Dash, obviously trying to keep the team separate. A sniper shot puts a hole in a wing of the first Rakk, sending it spiraling down, but the other two slam into their targets, Anthony’s shield near broken after the amp shot had drained its share. But, several shots later and the Rakk were down, solidifying their position as ‘mere nuisance’ to anyone with sufficient gear. Down below, the group of Stalkers are all low on shields, but also closing in on Pinkie, until a well-timed Party Cannon blast chews through several of them, startling the others into backing away. The breathing room is temporary, yes, but it’s enough for Pinkie to reload her weapons fully, and for Anthony and Dash to hop down the short slope to her. “Don’t forget.” Anthony warns. “Out here, the only New-U stations are where we came from, or deep inside the preservation facility. Dying will make us have to backtrack quite a bit. Stick close to a teammate if you can’t shoot your way out of FFYL.” Both of the ponies nod, the three of them able to finish off the Stalkers and level up at the same time - the higher-leveled enemies are tough, but not more than their abilities and gear can handle, and worth far more to them than lower-strength foes would. “So... has Jack forgotten about this place since last time?” Pinkie asks. “Dunno.” Dash replies, as a glowing blue bolt flies past her, knocking her shield down completely but doing little health damage. A single Sniper shot from Anthony and the Surveyor that had been watching them was blown to shrapnel. “If he was watching, he definitely knows now.” Pinkie points out. “Oh well, surveyors won’t be a problem.” Dash says as her shield recharges. “But if he decides to throw some actual firepower at us, we may be in trouble.” Anthony says scanning the skies for moonshots. None come. “Huh, maybe he was busy elsewhere. Not like he remote controls all his bots or anything.” “Hey, there’s another group of Stalkers over there!” Dash points out, heading for them with Pinkie close behind. Anthony pauses only to collect the gibbets he’d been asked to by Dr. Zed. Once the bits are collected, he takes aim from his standpoint and lands a few slow-moving but highly-powered sniper shots at the Stalkers. He manages to get their shields down long enough for the girls to take them out. Letting his Amp shield recharge from boosting his shots he sprints to catch up, and swapping to his newly-made Trance which coated the Stalkers in acid, the DoT keeping their shields from recharging. After more of the same, the Stalkers nearby seemed to get the message and avoided the trio unless they were feeling brave or had sufficient backup. The Skags, on the other hand, were not so convinced of the Vault Hunters’ superiority. The first loose pack the trio comes across is a group of adults, a few pups... and an Alpha Slag Skag at their back. Being the bigger target, Anthony is the first to get Slagged and decides against firing a shot, to preserve his shield, instead tossing out a grenade before remembering just how underleveled it was. Still, the weak grenade’s area of flames deters the Skags enough to make them try going around, and they were notably surprised by the sudden appearance of the blinking grenade. While the beasts were making their stunned detour around the flailing streams of fiery pain, Dash and Pinkie opened fire on the non-elemental adults, pushing the pack away from Anthony. His slag effect was beginning to wear off when a Spitting Skag launched a small volley of gunk at his back, knocking him forward and taking down his shield. A pair of circling Rakk noticed the change of events and dive-bombed, this time not as afraid of the human’s high-powered shots. Turning to cover her friend, Dash aims her SMG at the sky and then reloads in the standard way for Tediore weapons, knocking the last Rakk in the midsection with the gun, blowing its wings off. Pinkie doesn’t move her attention away from the oncoming Skags and keeps firing. While the current battle was not without difficulty, the three were much more adept at prioritizing threats to each other and managed to clear out the area with little pain... but also using quite a bit of ammo, the slagged Badass Skag had taken two full rounds from both ponies before going down, while Anthony focused on melting any pups that tried straying from the pack. More gibs collected (the ones that weren’t riddled with bullets, corroded, or slagged), Anthony moves ahead. Mid-collection, he also had to start harvesting from the Skags, as Zed called him up and added Skag Livers to the component lists, citing their use in catalysing the creature’s elemental abilities when they turn Badass. Anthony’s pockets are getting squishy. After a bit of ‘harvesting’ later, the trio get to the Dockyard, several loaders, engineers, and surveyors wandering about, doing their jobs. They don’t even notice the trio at first. What they do notice is a loud noise emanating from the front gate, which had been blown open, and Pinkie wheels her Party Cannon into the main area, several surveyors darting over, only to be pegged by fire from Anthony’s Widow-Maker. A Loader runs forward into the cloud of floating debris and seconds later is running back out at double-speed, missing an arm and a powder-blue pony hot on its trail. An Engineer looks up at the scene and, calling for backup, switches his Exo suit from ‘work’ to ‘combat’ mode and begins firing laser beams. Pinkie, taking that as a challenge, uses the heavy metal Crates as cover and, without warning pops up from behind the Engineer to shoot him in the back with her Launcher, much to his extreme confusion and agony, though this doesn’t last long. Gooey puddles don’t tend to get confused or feel pain, after all. The Loader chased by Dash rounds a corner behind a small building, and Dash zips around it, before yelping in surprise and backpedalling away from the now-awakening Constructor that had been lying dormant until the Loader activated it. A barrage of missiles slams into the ground a few feet behind her as she darts from cover to cover away from the heavy foe. A few shots to cycle the pistol, and she looses a slag and then acidic shot, the paired hits blinding the huge bot. Storming in, Anthony leaps over several barricades and grabs onto the transport machine’s cargo. Following suit, Pinkie hops on expecting a fun ride, but once Anthony hits the button to start the machine... “Can this thing move any faster?” Pinkie pouts, realizing that if there were a bridge, she could walk faster than this. “Nope, just hold on and deal with it. Looks like the bridge controls were destroyed already.” Anthony says as he looks down at said bridge, which had its control panel clearly turned into scrap. Back on the Dock, Dash fires a burst from her own SMG, but the fire weapon just doesn’t cut it against the heavy bots and huge Constructor. A grenade is thrown, and purely on reflex she kicks it away from her - and the explosive tears a hole in the dock beneath the Loader that threw the grenade. In a nearly comical moment, the remaining Loaders, the Constructor, and Dash all stare at the hole into the briney, short-circuit-inducing ocean. A grin lights Dash’s face, and out come her grenades as the Loaders turn to flee. Once they reach the other side, Anthony and Pinkie hop off and, from the control panel on the other side of the bridge, lower the platform for Dash to cross and, once regrouped, head for the main facility. It was wrecked for the most part, clearly having been taken down by the angry animals. Now the group would have to deal with both loaders and stalkers at the same time, but due to relations between the beasts and bots being so sour, it was more of a free-for-all, loaders blasting stalkers, stalkers hurling spikes at loaders. Add in three battle-hungry Vault Hunters, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster... and lots of gore. After almost twenty minutes of pitched battle, the addition of a large pack of fire-attuned skags and a flock of Rakk, numerous swear words being taught to impressionable young ponies, and a fortuitous moon-shot drop landing on the alpha off the previously mentioned Skag pack, the three weary, barely-functional Vault Hunters are relaxing atop a mound of corpses and robot parts, the second wave of moon-launched Loaders being dismantled before they could finish activating in several cases. “Okay... that was fun.” Dash says, panting. “Whoo... I think we should head back; I’m almost out of ammo even after rummaging through these bots.” she says. “Also, we got, like, four levels from this part alone.” Anthony thinks aloud. “Well, there’s an ammo dump not terribly far from the entrance over there, just down a hall and around a corner I think. We could rest for a bit, restock there, and keep going. Tannis did ask us to bring back Slag samples.” “That does sound like a better plan, yeah.” Dash agrees, heaving herself back to her tired hooves. “Settle down, girl.” Anthony chuckles, “this place is quiet enough, we should be good to rest here for another ten minutes before the loaders get replaced.” The mare nods, and flops back down. Pinkie, settling down onto a grassy hill, yawns a bit and begins to drift off into a very light sleep. It was only a few minutes before sundown at this point after all. Once the group is rested, and the first hint of stars appear in the sky, the Hunters head inside the building and, though the walk is a bit further than Anthony remembered, it was still entirely unguarded and they reach the Ammo Dump machine and take the chance to restock weapons. Anthony also takes the time to see what sorts of grenade mods were available, as those were the only things they were really missing from their revamped sets of gear. A bunch of whites of notably low level for them show up, all in the range they’d been at when they’d arrived. A single green, though, at level 16 is there, and the three do rock-paper-scissors for who gets which of the Bouncing Betty, the Mirv, and the higher-grade Transfusion grenades.