//------------------------------// // Theft // Story: Friendship? Emotion not found. // by The Rar //------------------------------// Hallowed forest, Northern Shelf, Pandora. 10:35 SPT “We’ll be taking that amigo” The short one yanked the power core out of Ajax’s immobile hands. “You thieving bastards, give me that back.” Ajax spat. They were four in number and were sporting some high end weaponry, no doubt looted from Hyperion. They had some powerful personal shields and they all had some sick abilities. Two of these abilities had become apparent. The first when a man in a sleek suit carrying a glowing sword came into existence out of thin air and the other became apparent when a field of pure energy engulfed Ajax, hauled him into the air and prevented him from moving. These were no mercenaries, these were Vault Hunters. A group of very talented treasure hunters who came to Pandora and begun kicking up trouble for Hyperion. Ajax admired them, they came to the planet, basically stuck their middle finger up at Hyperion and played a realistic shoot ‘em up game with Hyperion soldiers, but right now they were being very difficult. “Sorry amigo,” The short one held his arms out at his side and smiled. “Hard luck. Maybe if you weren’t doing some sick hang time we could go toe to toe for it eh?” “Just let me down, we’ll see how cocky you are after my fist has kissed your face” “Ah! This one’s got some spirit! Come on Maya, stop with your siren phase locking and let me have this one!” So that’s what was trapping Ajax. Sirens were very strange creatures indeed, they all possessed a strange psychic ability of one kind or another. Ajax had only ever fought one previously and it didn’t go all too well. That particular siren had the ability to jump over to a different dimension and back again, she’d ran circles around Ajax and didn’t even break a sweat. Ajax wasn’t very interested in taking on one who could trap you in a box of pure energy. “Stop with your foolish kidding Salvador,” The sword wielding one began, snapping Ajax out of his memory’s. “This is a Hyperion mechanical, he could be reporting our position to Hyperion as we speak. Let us not waste time for the sake of your amusement” “Whatever Zero, this thing is going to the scrap heap anyway.” “No…” Ajax said “What was that? Was that a “No”? No to killing you?” “No… A “no” to reporting your position” “What?” The two previously talking said, slightly shocked. “I won’t report your position to the scum that is Hyperion.” “Strange,” The one named “Zero” began. “This is unusual behaviour for a Hyperion droid.” “That’s because I’m no longer a Hyperion droid. I am a droid, but not one of Hyperion.” “No longer a Hyperion droid? How can that be?” “Well, let me expl-“ “Enough” A third member of the group interrupted. “We’ve wasted enough time on idle chat. Maya, scrap this thing and let’s go!” “Hey! Come on! I was enjoying talking!” The one named “Salvador” complained. “And I’m sure you’ll enjoy talking to the Hyperion grunts that I’m sure are fast approaching” “Fair point, let’s go. Zero, you agree?” “Indeed, let us melt back into the dimension of shadows. I feel most uncomfortable being so exposed.” “We all agree then. Maya, crush this tin can.” “Sure Axton, it was becoming difficult to hold this thing in phase lock anyway” “No, please listen to me” Ajax begged. “Move out!” The one named “Axton” Yelled. “Maya, do your work” The one known as “Maya” clenched her fist. The field began to shrink around Ajax’s body. Ajax could feel pipes bursting and plates of armour cracking and it pained him, damned artificial senses again. “Ahg! Stop! The pain is unbearable!” “It feels pain?!” The one holding Ajax in her grasped said in amazement. She loosened her grip, questioning whether machines can really feel pain, for a mere second but that was all Ajax needed. Ajax punched with all his might and broke free of the field. He fell to the floor, oil streaming from pipes on his legs and arms and smoke rising from cracks in his plate. “Take it down! Maya! Get ready to lock this damned thing again!” Axton yelled Ajax was already a step ahead. He’d knocked the short man to the ground and had already retrieved the power core. “Sorry amigo, hard luck” Ajax chuckled to the one named Salvador. Maybe if Ajax had known the short one named Salvador was known for his ‘Gunzerking skill’, he may not have chuckled that last part. “Hard luck, yea. For you” The short one jumped to his feet and something strange happened. He drew a machine gun that was comically large in the tiny man’s hands but he also seemed to draw another from his pocket. Ajax assumed he possessed some technology similar to his own warp device. “Coma balas sabrosos puta Hyperion!” The man got down on one knee and took a large breath. “Eat tasty bullets you Hyperion whore!” The short man pulled both triggers of his guns simultaneously and sent a tide of glowing projectiles towards Ajax. They hit his body with the force of a freight train and knocked him off of his feet, but he never hit the ground. The energy barrier that encased him previously returned with vengeance. He hung in mid-air still grasping onto the power core. “Crush him, before he escapes again!” This time there would be no escaping. No way to break the cage that now trapped him. Well, being crushed into oblivion wasn’t the glorious death Ajax had hoped for but it was decent. Better a vault hunter kill him than some bandit or worse, Hyperion. Knowing Hyperion they’d probably resurrect him and make him a slave again. The crushing feeling came back, but this time something was different, something was crushing inwards. Not the field of energy, something physical. The core! Ajax was still holding the power core! “Oh… This is bad…” Ajax breathed. If the power core he was holding shattered… Ajax imagined an entire weapons manufactory exploding. He then added some pretty colours and an object shaped like him into the image and he had the future. Power cores were originally designed by a company called “Atlas”, to be placed into the suits of armour their private army wore to make them more potent in combat. They contained a power that, if uncontained, could cause untold damage. Ajax could no longer think though, the pain in his limbs was becoming intense and his train of thought was thrown right off. All he could do is wait, wait and see if he goes out with quite a spectacular bang. Twilight’s dream. Unknown time. This dream was a huge step from her previous. There was no death, there was no gore, there wasn’t as much as a curse until the others arrived. Things were different, but they were no less confusing. She didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know what time it was but she did know it was still dark in this universe. Whatever planet she was on obviously had a different time scale to Equestria. She didn’t know who the people attacking her were and just like the last time, she didn’t know who she was. She was in the same body as last time, she did at least know that. She was fairly comfortable here, until the pain began. After a short conversation something happened to the light in front of her face and it began to hurt. Her legs ached, her arms stung and she couldn’t think thoughts beyond how much pain she was in. Whoever was controlling the body however was obviously tougher than her and had already formulated a plan. Twilight, or rather the thing controlling Twilight, pumped her arms forward and burst free of the light field. The pain stopped and Twilight closed her eyes, letting out a mental sigh of relief. When she re-opened them, she was already running, legs pumping hard to move her and she was carrying some object that seemed to pulse with power. It, to Twilight, looked like some strange magical artefact. Her running spree didn’t last long though, after some yelled curses in a language she didn’t understand she was flung off her feet and was re encased in the light. This time the thing controlling her didn’t seem to have an escape plan and simply clung onto the object. The pain began again, the object in Twilight’s hands crushing her chest this time. The pain was beyond anything Twilight imagined possible and far beyond anything she was able to cope with. She drew a mental breath and screamed at the top of her lungs. Hallowed Forest, Northern Shelf, Pandora. “Not this damned thing again!” Ajax yelled as his body began to spark, Purple slivers of electricity danced along every surface on Ajax’s body and caused the pain he was already enduring to intensify tenfold. He tried to search for a cause for this somewhere in his system and he searched databases for other instances of this happening. He found no cause and he found no other instances. He was fine but he was experiencing a very unique malfunction. Ajax’s eyes looked down at the device that was getting strangely hot in his mechanical claws. “Oh this just gets better and bloody better” Ajax noticed that the purple electricity was causing along his fingers and into the device. The metal began to glow a strange hue of purple, much like the sparks and started to show signs of failure. The signs being that all the metal protecting the core was boiling and dripping to the ground. “What the hell is happening? Why is there liquid dripping from the machine?” Axton yelled “Ah… I maaay have left the power core in the things hands before Maya trapped it… My bad…” Salvador said “My bad? MY BAD?! That thing’s going to explode soon and you’re giving me “My bad”?! Maya! Crush that thing, quickly!” The field around Ajax began to crush with more strength in an attempt to crush the power core before it exploded but it was far too late. The core glowed a blood red and in a very strange motion, collapsed in on itself. Inside the diminishing field of light there was nothing but Ajax and a glowing red ball of light. “Balls” Ajax said. The red ball expanded and exploded. The four vault hunters were blinded and knocked off their feet. Several seconds later, when their vision came back and they had hauled themselves to their feet, no one quite understood what had happened. “It exploded, we saw it, where the hell is it?” Axton said, quite stunned. “I’m going to have side with Axton on this one, we saw that thing go kablamo, why is there no scrap? I was going to make a nice decoration out of that scrap!” Salvador added “We’ve almost died, we’ve destroyed the power core and we’ve got a vanishing robot on our hands and yet you still find a way to amuse yourself, you truly are one of a kind Salvador.” Zero also added “I don’t get it… I phase locked it, it couldn’t have gone anywhere. What happened?” Maya finished “I don’t know what happened,” Axton begun “But that robot, wherever it is, could have the power core. We need to find it” “Agreed” The rest of the group added. The void, Unknown Location, Unknown time. “Damn it” Ajax collided with another floating piece of space junk. “Damn it” Another “Damn it” And another. Ajax didn’t know exactly where he was or even when he was, his on board clock was saying a day had gone by in the ten minutes he’d been falling. Advance Time measuring device my ass. He didn’t know exactly where he was but he did know this, it was colourful and there was a lot of trash lying around. Junk was everywhere. Pieces of spacecraft, chunks of earth and very interestingly, Crimson Lance soldiers. The Crimson Lance was the private army of Atlas, the same company that built the power core. One thing Ajax noticed was that all the men floating in this void seemed to have a huge hole in their backs where Ajax assumed the power core would’ve been place. He worked out that anything caught in the explosion range of a power core must get sent to this hell. The place could very well be hell, it didn’t look any different to the fabled place. Ajax had once been told you could hear demons chattering in hell, Ajax didn’t believe that, but today his opinion of what he had been told drastically changed. While he was floating and avoiding space junk, he could hear voices, whispers in the air. Many of them were unfamiliar to him but one, a powerful and cheerful one, was quite familiar. Ajax could hear the voice that he had heard the first time he had been struck down by power surges. The voices were talking about him. “Damned demons show yourselves” Ajax said to no one in particular. The voices continued to chatter about him but no demons made themselves known. “Damned cheerful torture, cease!” It didn’t cease. The torture continued. The cheerful clamour of voices continued until Ajax hit a very large piece of junk. He blacked out and fell into a state of relative peace, but when he woke up… Well, he wasn’t on Pandora facing four vault hunters, that was for sure. But Ajax would take fighting it out with four of the toughest humans on Hyperion record over his current situation any day. “Hey there! I don’t know who you are or where you came from but you look AWESOME! You look like some weird robot! Are you?! Do robots have names?! Someone should throw you a welcome party! *Gasp* I’ll throw you one! It’ll be just awesome! There’ll be streamers and balloons and punch and cake and-“ The pink one bounced up and down, seemingly deifying the basic laws of physics, and excitedly detailed what a party for Ajax’s unexpected arrival will contain. “Urg… Better and bloody better…” Ajax groaned.