//------------------------------// // Chapter 8: Catching Up // Story: Borderlands 2 DLC: Vault of the Consular // by NightStream //------------------------------// It wasn’t until morning that the vault hunters that were staying at Twilight’s castle were able to see the alicorn once again and when she had arrived home from the Crystal Empire, she did not expect to see additional houseguests on top of the fact that Maya and Gaige were actually deciding to live with her, Spike and Starlight. Though, more importantly, she was surprised to find Gaige and some of the other vault hunters standing on two legs. “H-how… You were… now you’re-.” She said, still trying to process how it this whole thing was possible. “Twilight, let me give you a demonstration,” Gaige sighed, taking the band that Discord had given her and holding onto it. “This body is the normal one that we are used too back on Pandora. That goes for the same for everyone else, including Lilith, Brick, Mordecai and also Tiny Tina. Discord gave us these bands and also told us that when we have these on, we’re in our normal bodies.” It was then that she had decided to take off the band, allowing for herself to change back into her unicorn form. “However, if we take these off, we’re turned back into our equine forms… Does that make sense?” “It…… strangely does.” Twilight said, finally processing everything. “Though, to be fair, Discord isn’t… well… Normally when it comes to him, he’s not one for always making sense out of things, so it’s kind of strange.” “And trying to familiarize yourself with a world of talking equines when you’re used to living on a planet where psycho’s and murderers are trying to kill you isn’t strange?” Maya countered what Twilight originally said, causing the Alicorn to think a little bit. “Touche.” Twilight replied, redirecting her attention to some of the new… houseguests in the room. “So… I’m going to assume that these three are friends of yours?” “Yeah actually,” Maya replied. “That’s Lilith, fellow Siren, Mordecai, and Brick. They’re friends of ours and also were considered as the first vault hunters.” That had Twilight a bit curious as she summoned some parchment, ink and a quill to write using her magic. Though, who asked the next question… was Spike. “Wait… what do you mean by ‘first’ vault hunters?” He asked, which in turn lead to one of them speaking. Specifically, Lilith. “Well, there was originally four of us and we opened the first known vault to exist on Pandora. Vaults were said to have ancient alien tech and such, but when we opened the first one, we just a ugly alien freak called ‘The Destroyer’. That was around five years and in that timeframe, a LOT has changed.” “Could you explain what you mean?” Starlight asked. “It’s a very long story if you actually want to hear it.” Mordecai then spoke up. “Gaige and the others are what you may consider as the second generation of vault hunters. But why are we talking about the past? Shouldn’t we be talking about what happened yesterday?” That had both Twilight and Starlight confused for a moment as they looked back at one another before turning towards Mordecai. “Yesterday? What do you mean by that?” “Axton discovered something yesterday and… wait, where is he anyways?” Gaige asked, looking around a little before speaking the first thought that came in her mind. “I swear to god, if he’s snoozing off at this hour, I’m gonna-!” “Don’t worry Gaige. I will give him the personal wake up call.” Brik says as he walks away while cracking his knuckles… before walking back in and asking “Um… where is he staying again?” “Rarity’s place. It’s a boutique that looks like one of the spinning carousels. Hence the name being Carousel Boutique.” Maya then added, shortly before Brick went out. It was only a bit later that they heard the sound of shouting and Axton slinging out curse words that they saw Brick dragging the Commando by his hands. “You know I can perfectly walk by myself right?” “True, but this makes more fun for me Slab.” Brick said with a smug smile on his face. “You have to be kidding me, I was having a nice dream too. We got done with looting the vault and all the ponies were chanting my name… ah it was so majestic to hear.” “Hmmm it seems to me he is still dreaming, I think I might need to add another dose of wake up punches.” “I’m fine, no need to do so.” Axton quickly said, not wanting to have a repeat of earlier. “Honestly… I did not expect for that to happen when Brick volunteered to bring him in,” Maya replied honestly before looking back at Gaige. “Yeah, but this is Brick after all…” The Mechromancer replied, offering a hand to the commando to help him up. “Still, we’re glad you’re here. Twilight just came back a little while ago and we were just about to mention our… discovery yesterday.” “Yeah, found this yesterday at the ruins of a castle in the forest.” Axton says as he brings out a piece of the vault key. “It was behind a door by a crystal tree, didn’t open for anything until Gaige got there.” “So this is what a vault key piece looks like…” Twilight said as she tried to have a closer look. “To be honest, I thought it would look more like a piece of an actual key.” She extended a hoof out in order to try and touch it, but the piece did the strangest thing… and moved away from her and closer to Axton. “What the? Axton, why can’t I touch the piece-?” “I don’t know, i’m not trying to move it away from you or anything.” The Commando insisted. It even got a little more stranger when Maya tried to touch it, but the same thing happened. “That… is beyond me,” Lilith then said after seeing that. “The piece is acting like it’s… bound to you or something. Like only you can hold onto it for the time being. I haven’t seen anything like that with the Vault Key we were familiar with back on Pandora.” “Seriously, this is now a thing? Maybe…” Axton then grabs ahold of the Vault key piece and holds it out towards Brick to take. “See if you can take it.” “Alright then.” Brick then grabs the piece and it comes out of Axton's hand and is in Bricks… until it teleports out and back to Axton. “Seriously?” The Commando says deadpanning. “Well, that’s what it looks like. Would you like Brick to try and grab it-?” Lilith offered, only for Axton to shake his head from side to side. “I think I get the picture now with this thing here. My guess is that whoever grabs ahold of it first is the only one who can hold it. I so I think I can safely say I am NOT grabbing the other pieces… I’m fine with only one being close at hand.” “Okay, then.” Gaige said, looking at Twilight. “There was also something else that we found out that Rainbow Dash explained to us. It appears that each of these pieces are suppose to represent one of the… Elements of Harmony I think she called it.” “These pieces represent the elements?” Twilight said, writing it down on the scroll, “Fascinating… Hmm… And this was found by the Crystalline tree in the old ruins right?” Her question was said out in the open, but it sounded like it was directed towards Axton since he was the one that found the piece. “Well, yeah.” “Hunh… If that’s the case, then my only guess would be that piece is related to my element, the Element of Magic. It’s a long story, but it was in those same ruins a few years ago that I originally awakened the Element of Magic. So, I would that given that you found it in the exact same place.” Twilight hypothesized, before setting down her quill. “Well, in theory of course, but it’s the closest possibility we have at the moment.” “So what should we do in the meantime?” Gaige then asked. “Well, unless anything else turns up on the vault key pieces, we don’t have a lot to do at the moment… Well, of course, I wanted to hear more about the story Lilith was mentioning earlier, but-.” “Actually, I think we have the time for that if you want to listen.” Lilith then pointed out, looking at Brick and the others. “If it’s alright with you guys.” “Fine with me.” Axton said. “Ah, time for a trip down memory lane.” Brick takes a deep breath and exhales “Ahhhh the carnage we had in those days.” Twilight raised one of her eyebrows for a bit before looking at Spike and Starlight. “Should I even ask?” “Meh, you’ll find out soon enough.” Gaige replied before looking towards Brick and the others. “Brick, Lilith and Mordecai have the first part of the story while we have the second, so I’ll let them do the talking right now.” “Well, it all started five years ago,” Mordecai began. “Back then, a lot of the well known corporations that produce weapons, grenades, shields and a lot of the equipment we have were fighting over Pandora because that’s where the first vault was. And in that vault was suppose to be things like advanced alien technology, powerful weapons and also riches beyond your wildest dreams… though getting to that point was not easy…” He then stopped and looked over to Brick, who happened to pick up where Mordecai left of at. “You see at first Pandora was peaceful and all that, but the corporations turned it into a wasteland because of them fighting over who would be the first one to open the vault. The main ones were: Atlas, Hyperion, Torgue, and Dahl.” “Wait… You never mentioned Atlas during the weapons demonstration though.” Twilight interjected. “What happened to them-?” “Geez, no need to jump the gun so fast, amigo.” Mordecai replied. “Now… as you were saying Brick.” “Right. So yeah because of them Pandora became a wasteland. Sand was all you could see, and rocks and small communities here and there from when the corps abandoned the people who were left behind. So the average person turned into a bloodthirsty psycho… Except for Tannis, the one who helped us find where the Vault was that Axton, Krieg, Gaige, Maya, Salvador, and Zer0 found. She was one of those that were left behind but never, really turned into a psycho, just antisocial from what I was told really.” “Sounds like Twilight while she was a filly.” Spike commented. “Spike!” “What? It’s true.” He said before looking back at them and waiting for them to continue. “Anyways, Tannis helped us fight again a mercenary group that was contracted by the Atlas Corporation called the Crimson Lance. Originally, there was four of us in our group and… well, the fourth member was a traitor to the group. His name was Roland and he was able to help us get out of some tough situations. There was also Marcus; a merchant who despises refund policies, Zed; a doctor who helped us out a lot, even when he mentioned to us that he wasn’t actually a doctor, an AI that referred to herself as ‘Angel’ and Claptrap.” “Yeah, they’re familiar with him. We found him in Canterlot and he believed the Princess was the one for changing us… He also called Rainbow Dash a rainbow haired midget… and she did not take that well.” Gaige added. “Well, to sum it up, the vault key we needed to find was split into three parts, each part either being held by bandits leaders or the crimson lance itself. Though, when the vault was opened… We didn’t exactly find treasure and loot. Instead, the vault let loose an ancient alien called ‘The Destroyer’ that killed the leader of the Crimson Lance and caused a lot of problems for us.” Lilith mentioned before looking back at Mordecai and Brick. “Yet, even with the Destroyer dead… what happened afterwards for the next five years changed Pandora.” “How?” Spike asked. “Heh, well we had to deal with a zombie Island for one. An underground fighting arena, Stop General Knoxx, the last remaining Crimson Lance commander, from blowing up Pandora and finally stopping a robot revolution. Man those were some wild rides I even remember some of things we had to fight, you guys remember Crawmerax?” “Just like it was yesterday,” Mordecai smirked. “Though, because of what happened with the Vault, some of the corporations like DAHL and Torgue backed off while Atlas was ruined because of what happened with the Lance. But Hyperion was able to take what happened with the vault and turn that into more than just profit for them. You see, Hyperion made a giant crapload of money from a new alien ore that spawned from the ground called Eridium… But that was the least of our problems.” Starlight and Twilight both looked startled a bit, but when Starlight cleared her throat, she then spoke up. “The… least of your problems? Dare I ask what was the main problem.” “Two words…” Mordecai said, holding up two fingers. “Handsome… Jack.” Brick then let out a heavy sigh. “Because of him, our days of Vault hunting ended. With what he was able to do, we stood no chance of competing against. We tried to fight him but it ended in failure. From there we created the Crimson Raiders, basically any who were apart of the Crimson Lance joined up with Roland and us, and made the town of Sanctuary. It was a safe haven, for the most part, and we dealt with Jack very slowly. During that time Roland and I split off because of a disagreement, but we were still friends.” “Wait, who is Handsome Jack even?” Twilight then asked. “He was an Employee at the Hyperion corporation that used the Angel to trick us into opening the first vault, then claimed that he opened it and took over as the President of the company. He then went on an all out crusade across all of Pandora to kill all ‘bandits’ and have total control over the planet. A complete jackass and also responsible for the massacre that happened at the town we were in called New Haven before having to relocate to Sanctuary, a former DAHL mining ship colony that was abandoned.” Lilith’s explanation put the Alicorn at a loss for words, her face stunned because of what she heard. “From then… we sort of went our separate ways. Roland found any remaining survivors of the Lance and anyone who can fight to form the Crimson Raiders, a resistance group against Hyperion, Mordecai was a spy and a scout that would help provide information to Roland, I focused on dealing with all the bandits in the areas surrounding Sanctuary so Roland could focus on Jack while Brick… well… like what Brick said, both he and Roland originally had a disagreement and he went to be in a peninsula on Pandora called Thousand Cuts. Everything was like that… Until a few months ago at least.” “What happened then?” Starlight asked. “That’s where we come in.” Maya spoke up now as she looked at them. “All of us, Including Salvador, Krieg, Zero and the three of us had our own reasons for going to Pandora, but Handsome Jack sabotaged the train that we were on and left us to die.” “Well as you can see now, that didn’t work out exactly how Jack planned out.” Axton then picked up. “You see, after we were left for dead in the snowy terrain of the Southern Shelf, Claptrap soon found us along with the Angel AI from before and helped us out. They got us to the town of Liar’s Berg, where we soon met a man named Sir Hammerlock.” Axton took a moment to catch his breath before looking at Gaige, who picked up from where he left off. “Hammerlock was a Hunter, Scholar and Gentleman by trade and helped us with getting ourselves on our feet as we made our way towards Sanctuary. When we made it over there, we met with some of the other people Lilith mentioned earlier along with Scooter, a mechanic who specialized in vehicles to help us get around Pandora and Moxxi; Scooter’s mother, bartender, former owner of the Underdrome until Jack tore up the place and the one lady that says the most amount of innuendo’s you can hear in one conversation. Later, we met Lilith in Frostburn Canyon, saved Roland from a bunch of bandits called the Bloodshots along with Hyperion forces since they put a bounty on his head along with every other vault hunter, and met Mordecai and Tiny Tina in efforts of hijacking a Hyperion Cargo train that was supposed to have the vault key on it… but as it turns out, we were wrong.” That was when Maya took the reins and continued the conversation. “By the time we got back, it was then that we found out that Angel was actually working for Handsome Jack and when Lilith and Company had to relocate the entire city by phasing it out of the range of Hyperion Moonshots.” “Hang on… Phasing?” Twilight asked. “Is that like something in particular with Sirens?” “My powers, unlike Maya’s, is called Phasewalking. Normally, I can be able to go invisible and use my powers to take care of any creep who gets too close, but with Eridium, my powers are enhanced to include teleportation. Sanctuary got out of the way of the moonshots because I had enough Eridium to teleport Gaige and them away from the city and teleport the city out of a jam.” “Pretty much… Though, even though the city was okay, what we found out on the way back over surprised all of us.” Maya replied, looking back at Gaige. “We found out more about Angel on our way to try to group back up with the others in Sanctuary. But when we did group up, Angel told us a few things. One, the Vault Key was with her. Two, she was located on a peninsula overlooking Thousand Cuts called Control Core Angel and that we needed to get through three impossible security hurdles in order to reach her… and finally, when we did reach her, we found out that Angel… was a siren… and Jack’s daughter.” That left all three of them equally shocked. No words could describe their reaction, even Twilight’s ink bottle dropped to the floor when that happened, but the Alicorn did not react to that. And now, it was Axton’s turn to speak. “Yeah it was a surprise to see that as well. But before anything else could happen, Jack intervened and tried to prevent us from stopping him from using her powers as a siren to charge the Vault Key, all the while he was telling us off for attacking his ‘Innocent Daughter’. While we were taking care of the defenses in the control area, Roland came up and was able to open the coolants vents so we could destroy them. When we destroyed the second one, Jack ended up getting rid of the bridges to the vents, that is until Lilith decided to come and crash the party.” Axton then sighed and looked down. “Thanks to her we were able to get rid of the third and final vent. Angels last words were calling her father an asshole, which he deserved. At that moment then Jack was to be our next target… however it didn’t play out like that at all.” “Then… how did it play out?” Twilight asked cautiously. That was when Lilith began to speak and take over for Axton. “Just as we were about to leave, Jack came in from behind Roland and killed him right in front of us. I tried to harm him, but that was when Jack forced a collar on me and kidnapped me. While everyone else was scrambling to find out where I was, Jack was using my siren powers to charge the vault key and awaken a powerful alien in the vault he wanted to crack open called ‘The Warrior’. He wanted to open it himself because it was said that whoever opens the vault takes control of the warrior itself and this alien had enough power to cause a planet wide cataclysm.” Lilith paused for a moment before looking at Axton and the others. “However, by the time the key was charged, Axton, Gaige and everyone else showed up to fight Jack.” “And how did that turn out?” Starlight asked, the unicorn hesitant upon asking that question. “Heh, simple. We killed the f*ck out of that thing!!” Gaige boasted proudly, only for her comments to get some remarks from Axton. “Hey, watch you damn language, young lady!” The Commando snapped, a little irritated by that as he looked at her. “Don’t blame me. After possibly killing it with the amount of times we shot it in the chest, Lilith wanted us to use the Moonshot console to make sure it was dead and when that happened, parts of that monster were everywhere. Of course, we let Lilith kill Jack herself so she could avenge Roland, but you know what I mean.” The Mechromancer sighed, thinking that they were done explaining everything. “Yet, even with Jack dead, there was something we found out afterwards that threw all of us off guard,” Maya then reminded them. “When Lilith tried to get rid of the key that caused this mess to happen… it turns out that the vault that Jack opened caused other vaults to surface, not just on Pandora but also on other planets too.” “And as in the old saying goes, no rest for the wicked.” Lilith finished up. “So yeah, that’s basically everything… for the most part. Did I miss anything?” “Well how about when they took on Terramorphus, or when they went to loot the Lost Treasure of the sands, or open another vault on Pandora, man that guy was an ASSHOLE!! Then they went on a wildlife exposition with Hammerlock. Even went on a little adventure by Tina’s imagination.” Brick decided to then name a few more things that they did. “Well, we were in Tina’s imagination while you were playing Bunkers and Badasses with her.” Gaige reminded Brick. “Wait, there was another vault on Pandora?” Twilight asked. “That’s like… three that you’ve mentioned already.” “Yeah, but this one did not require a key exactly. The third vault was actually in the center of a large crater. One where Mr. Torgue happened to set up a tournament there.” Maya clarified. “The vault there could’ve only been opened if ‘the champion of Pandora feeds it the blood of the ultimate coward’. So, Mr. Torgue and the Torgue Corporation sponsored a tournament to find the ‘number one badass’ on Pandora. Even going as far as naming the place the badass crater of badassitude.” “AH GOOD TIMES… OH, SORRY! I WAS JUST LISTENING IN ON YOUR CONVERSATION AND REFLECTING BACK ON THOSE MEMORIES.” They all heard Mr. Torgue from Gaige’s echo device, surprising Lilith, Brick and Mordecai a bit by the fact that he was listening to their entire conversation from the sounds of it. “ALSO, DID SOMEONE CALL ME AN ASS**** WHILE I WAS IN THE SHOWER?” “Wasn’t talking about you Torgue, was talking about Piston.” Brick soon clarified for Mr. Torgue. “OH RIGHT… HE WAS AN ASS****!” Spike was now the one that decided to speak up and ask a question this time. “Uhh… Who’s Piston?” “A fighter in the tournament who was an all out cheater and a total coward. He played every dirty trick in the book to keep his number one ranking in the tournament from sabotaging fights to trying to make us look like cowards. Thankfully, when we killed him, that was what caused the vault to open-.” “AND FOR A GLORIOUS LOOOOOOOOOOOOTSPLOSION TO HAPPEN!!!!” They all heard Torgue yell while performing air guitar again. “So yeah… that.” Gaige then summarized. “Any questions?” The ponies all shook their heads along with Spike before the Mechromancer looked back at them. “Now, in the meantime, what should we do?” “WHY DON’T YOU DROP BY THE SUPPLY DROP I SENT YA? THERE’S A LINK WITH YOUR GUYS’ STORAGE UNITS SO YOU CAN GET ANY EQUIPMENT YOU STORED BACK AT SANCTUARY. I WOULD THINK THAT WITH LILITH AND THE OTHER VAULT HUNTERS HERE, THEY WOULD NEED THEIR EQUIPMENT, WOULDN’T THEY?!” Mr. Torgue spoke up. “He makes a valid point. I did have a couple of my rifles stashed in storage at Sanctuary,” Mordecai spoke up. “Though, I’m not sure about Lilith and Brick since Lilith has her powers and Brick prefers the… hands on approach.” “Hey I will still use guns from time to time, though nothing is more satisfying than beating the ever loving sh*t out of someone with your fists.”  Brick said with a happy smile on his face. “Yeah, I’ll take up on Torgue’s idea. I think there’s another shotgun I had stashed in storage that I did not get the chance to grab before we… well… ended up here.” Gaige commented, placing her Conference Call on her back for a moment. “Anything you might need, Axton?” “Hmmm, not that I know of. I have most, if not all, the weapons I normally use on me right now.” “Alright, I’ll go trade out my Conference Call for my Interfacer and be right back.” She replied, stepping out of the castle with Mordecai right behind her. Before going though, she chuckled and said one last thing. “Oh and FYI Axton… You might want to let Salvador and the others know about… well… your new best friend.” Axton then rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah laugh it up. Can’t wait to see what the others have to say about this, especially Krieg.” He then turned around and walked outside. Just as he noticed Krieg standing outside the door. “God f*cking dammit” he mumbled out. “SHINY ROCK, GIMME!!!” “This won’t end well, I can already tell.” Axton mumbled again, as Krieg grabbed the piece of the vault key, only for it to return to Axton. “SHINY ROCK, HOW DARE YOU BETRAY ME!! HOW DARE YOU!!!” Krieg roared, only for Salvador to come up and be puzzled as to what was happening… And Krieg chasing Axton while he was holding onto the vault key piece. “SALVADOR, GET HIM TO STOP CHASING ME NOW!!!!” Axton shouted to Salvador as some of the others were laughing. “What are you pendejos even doing?” He asked in return, all while Zer0 stared at them with a question mark on his mask. When Gaige came back though was when things got a bit out of hand. “Okay, I leave you guys for five minutes and now you’re causing sh*t!! What the hell is going on?!” The Mechromancer shouted. “KRIEG WANTS THE VAULT KEY PIECE!!!” Axton shouted at her as Krieg soon got his buzzaxe out and was shooting fireballs at him. “STOP HIM ALREADY!!!” Gaige sighed, taking out a spare relic that she had put in her inventory for if she needed it and decided to hold it out for him. It was then that the psycho’s attention was redirected as he went over to Gaige and took the relic to keep for himself. “MINE! MINE! MINE! MY PECS HAVE PECS!!!” “Phew, thanks for that Gaige.” Axton said as he caught his breath. “Your welcome… You owe me a blood of the ancients now.” She deadpanned, looking back at everyone else. “Still, you may need to bring Salvador and Zer0 up to speed on everything. Zer0’s got a question mark on his helmet again.” “Don’t worry about the relic, i’ve got spares. And yeah, you’re right about getting them up to speed.” Axton replied, looking back at the others. “And talk about it inside the castle. You idiots already attracted too much attention to yourselves as it is.” Mordecai pointed out as Axton and them noticed all the civilians in ponyville that looked scared or afraid of them. Including some of the young children. Causing Gaige to facepalm as some of them had the same thought on their minds. “Ah crap…” “Hey it wasn’t my intention for that to happen.” Axton said. “Yet it did and now things just got more complicated-.” Gaige replied, shortly before hearing someone else speak. “WOOHOO!!! BURN ALL THE BABIES!!!!” Again, Gaige facepalmed herself as they watched Tina and the Cutie Mark Crusaders race into town on their custom made carts, courtesy of her and the help of Salvador and Brick. “That comment did not make things any better.” Axton deadpanned and facepalmed. This was going to be the start of a long day… A long and… rather difficult day. Especially with having to bring everyone up to speed on everything they had just talked about. While waiting for everypony else though, Gaige was using her ECHO device to look at her skill tree and see if there were any adjustments that needed to be made. This though, happened to catch somepony’s attention. Mostly because all that she was seeing was a lit up screen and several boxes instead of the icons that the Mechromancer was familiar with. So when Starlight got a bit closer to Gaige and noticed what she was looking at, she was… well, rather surprised to say the least. “What are you doing, Gaige?” “Oh this?” She asked, pointing to her skill tree as she used a finger to point at it. “I’m just going through my skill tree and seeing if I need to adjust anything.” Starlight herself raised an eyebrow at that, looking a bit confused by what the Mechromancer was talking about. “Skill… tree? What the hay is a skill tree?” “Well, each one of us Vault Hunter have some sort of special ability that we call an Action Skill. Think of it like if you had one particular spell you would use frequently then anything else for example.” Gaige suggested to her, causing Starlight to scratch her chin. “You mean like if Twilight used her teleportation spell?” The Unicorn asked upon thinking it through. “That’s a good example. For us though, each one of us varies with a different skill. For me, I bring out Deathtrap; For Axton, he brings out his turrets; For Maya, it’s her Siren powers and so on. Each of us have a skill tree on our ECHO device that allows for us to modify our action skill so it could take on other traits. For Deathtrap, my skills give him some useful combat abilities while for Axton, it gives his turrets more modifications and firepower.” The Mechromancer explained, trying to not overdo it with the amount of words she was saying. The Unicorn herself began to understand… to a certain extent before noticing something else as she pointed to a hoof at a couple of the squares on the skill tree. “Why do those ones have a glowing box around them?” She then asked, causing Gaige to smirk a little. “Those particular choices are perks that are enhanced by my class mod,” She said, tapping the lunchbox at her waist that had four playing cards on it. “My Legendary Roboteer mod enhances the amount of damage Deathtraps attacks can deal, increases Deathtraps speed, how much health we have, how much damage we can resist and lastly, my personal favorite, reducing the cooldown time on bringing out DT in the first place.” Around this point was when Rainbow Dash and some of the girls were entering the castle. But Gaige was too busy paying attention to her skill tree to notice… and the same could be said about Starlight. “Interesting… What are some of the names of these skills you’re mentioning?” Starlight asked, interested in learning more about it. “Well, some of the ones that help me a lot include some abilities for Deathtrap, including ‘The Stare’ since that allows DT to scorch enemies with laser beams,” Unnoticed by either of them, Fluttershy was now shivering a little as she hid behind Zer0. “‘Evil Enchantress’ right here helps me when using elemental weapons and ‘20% Cooler’ reduces how long I have to-.” “Hey, that’s my catchphrase!” Both Mechromancer and Unicorn looked up, surprised to see the rest of Twilight’s friends within the same room that they were in. “Girls? When did you get here?” Starlight asked, rather shocked and startled by seeing all of them in the same place. “Just now, silly! Twilight called all of us by to share some news, only to find both of you messing with that ECHO thingamajig that has that one ponies voice on it!” Pinkie Pie chuckled, having Gaige mentally roll her eyes a bit as she closed what was on her ECHO device. It didn’t help any that the pony she was talking about soon responded afterwards. “I LIKE THIS ONE! CAN WE BE FRIENDS?” All of them heard Mr. Torgue shout in respond, followed by Pinkie’s simple ‘yes’ reply and Mr. Torgue declaring something about being ‘friendzoned’ or something else that Gaige could not understand. “All this aside, why did you happen to talk about my catchphrase like that! It belongs to me!” Rainbow Dash declared. “Do you have ownership of it?” Gaige then smirked a little, causing Rainbow Dash to think a little bit. “Because something tells me that Equestria has some sort of law dealing with free speech?” “ … Okay, how do you know that?” The baffled pegasus asked, rather puzzled by how Gaige was able to get one up on her like that. “I was bored last night, so I decided to snoop on Maya while she was reading a book about Equestrian laws and what not.” The Mechromancer sighed. “Now, can we please get moving? Everyone else is by that weird map… table… thing.” On that note, the whole table they were going to meet at reminded Gaige of the small map table in Sanctuary that Roland would use to coordinate attacks with the Crimson Raiders. “Hunh… I guess there are some similarities here after all.” She sighed, following the others as they decided to join them. Though, that was when she remembered that it was the first time that the rest of Twilight and Rainbow’s friends actually got to meet Brick, Lilith and Mordecai. She only remembered that the moment that Pinkie decided to have herself hop onto Brick’s back like she was Tiny Tina. “What do you think you’re doing?” Brick asked. “Oh, I’m just doing what Tina told me, silly Bricky!” Pinkie chuckled. “She said it was fun whenever she was on top of your shoulders and I wanted to see it for myself!” That not only got Gaige to facepalm herself, but also got a much similar and collective response from her friends too. Including Twilight. “Come on down there, girl! Brick needs his ‘personal space’…” Tiny Tina then spoke up. “Otherwise, anyone who startles him basically gives Brick permission to clobber them to a bloody pulp…” “As Tina said, I would get off my back, now.” Brick said in a stern tone. “And yes, I would beat you down if you startled me, which would include pranks.” “Aww… Okay!” She said, bouncing off Brick like a trampoline and landing gracefully near Tina. That just caused a bit of an awkward silence amongst the group for a few moments as they were all getting situated so they could share the news. Nevertheless, when they told them about the events of last night and how they found a vault key piece, everypony had their own different reactions. Rarity thought that the vault key piece attached to him was rather… in her own words… grim since it drawed too much attention. And when she meant attention, she meant attention away from Axton. Applejack and Fluttershy seemed rather calm and surprised about everything along with Salvador and Zer0. But when Pinkie and Tina heard about it, she thought that inside this vault… there was everything she needed for the ultimate party. Something that wanted to make Gaige slam her head against a wall. “Alright, ya told us about the key and everything,” Applejack told them before redirecting her attention elsewhere. “But what ya haven’t done is explain who the hay are these three?” “Well to simply put it, Myself, Mordecai, and Lilith here,” Brick started pointing at the other two. “We were the ones who went after the very first vault on Pandora.” A lot of the other ponies in the room looked a bit confused at that before Gaige spoke up. “Before there were any other vaults showing up all over the place, there was one main one on Pandora. Brick here, along with his companions were responsible for opening the first one.” “So that first vault somehow lead to another one sometime later?” Applejack then asked. “Yes, but the other one was five years after the first one opened. After the second one opened… let’s just say more vaults began showing up all over the place, along with on other planets.” Gaige replied, trying to simplify things. “Does that sound right Brick?” “Basically. Just we ran into issues when we tried to continue Vault Hunting.” Now that had Applejack and the other ponies look at each other a bit confused. “Issues?” Gaige sighed before looking at Brick and Axton for a moment. “Do you want the short version of the explanation or the long version? Because the same stuff we're talking about now, we told Twilight, Spike and Starlight like fifteen minutes ago.” “Just give them the short version, I get tired of explaining the long version too much.” Axton sighed out. “Okay, to put it in short… You got bandit groups going after you for greed or their own reasons, corrupt corporations that try to suck Pandora dry of resources and make this planet theirs and numerous other horrors that just happen to show up after opening a vault. The only time that I remember a Vault not having any monsters inside was during the Campaign of Carnage-.” Gaige was going to continue with her explanation, but was soon cut off before being able to continue. “THAT WAS AN AWESOME LOOTSPLOSION THOUGH, AM I RIGHT!?!” Mr. Torgue shouted before mimicking the sounds of a guitar as he performed another air guitar solo. “COMPLETELY BADASS IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF!!” “It was pretty epic to witness after we thrashed Piston.” Axton said in response. “Who?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Think the worst kind of cheater you could picture in your head and add on the fact that he calls you a coward, even though he is one.” Maya then spoke up, waiting for the right time to speak. “Not to mention that he thinks that rules don’t apply to him.” “He was part of the tournament Axton, Maya and the rest of us were a part of and was supposedly the “number one badass” on the leaderboards. However, he got that ranking through setting up fights, breaking rules and playing every other dirty trick in the book in order to try to open the third vault himself-.” “WHEN HE WAS THE COWARD ALL ALONG!!!” Torgue interrupted. “OH, MY BAD! SORRY ABOUT THAT!!!” Gaige sighed to herself for a moment upon hearing that, taking a deep breath as ashe was going to continue explaining. But one of the other ponies beat her to it. “Okay, ah gotta ask… What the hay does this whole ‘coward’ thing involve a tournament and opening up a vault?” Applejack then asked. That was when one of the others in the room decided to speak this time. Specifically, Lilith. “Well, from what I was informed by a friend of ours named Tannis, the vault was found in a large crater that was said to only open “if the champion of Pandora feeds it the blood of the ultimate coward”. So, Mr. Torgue used that to open up a huge tournament to find this champion… or as he called it…” “THE NUMBER ONE BADASS!!!” Torgue shouted out, like it was on cue. “So, when Axton and the others defeated Piston, the conditions regarding the opening of that vault were satisfied.” Lilith finished, before looking back at everypony else. “So… any other questions?” “Well, if I may…” Rarity then spoke up. “On the subject relating to the key, how will it be possible to find these pieces? Unless we have something to assist us, finding them will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.” “Hmm, maybe we could use the key here,” Axton said as he brought it to his face while rubbing his chin in thought. “And somehow find a way to track its energy signature so we have a way of finding the other pieces.” “So… like a radar?” Gaige asked. “Yeah, but maybe we could also use magic to help with the radar. Might give us a better way of pinpointing the exact locations, rather than going off of a general location.” Axton then said. “Pfft, that sounds like a pet project that Twilight would want to do.” Rainbow Dash snickered. “I like the concept, I must admit,” The Alicorn in question replied. “But this isn’t something I can take on by myself… I would need to work on it with another person. Preferably one with prior knowledge to the energy and components of a vault key. As the old saying goes, two heads are better than one.” That though… just left Gaige a bit baffled. “Is it just me… or is she asking to work with Tannis?” The Mechromancer questioned. “I really have no idea how she will react to this prospect when we tell her.” The Commando replied. That just left many of the ponies there rather… confused. “Who’s Tannis?” Rainbow then asked. Causing Gaige and the other Vault Hunters to sigh a little bit. “Let me say this…” Gaige replied. “She’s both insanely smart… and also a bit insane on the side.”