//------------------------------// // Battle Ponies! // Story: My Little Vault Hunter: Guns Are Magic. // by Dapper Stache //------------------------------// "Are you guys sure you want to come with us, It's dangerous out there, as you probably saw in the caverns." Axton said, full well knowing full well that the caustic caverns are one of the most dangerous places on Pandora. "Plus, you guys did mention something about being important to your country. If you can ever get back there that is." The ponies frowned at being reminded they couldn't go home, but they knew they had to press on and find some way off this rock. "Of course we will go!" Rainbow said enthusiastically. She had figured she could dodge any incoming enemy shots with her impressive speed, and throw off their aim with her stellar flight capabilities, and even if she didn't dodge ALL of them, which she knew full well she couldn't, She had one of those techy shield doohickeys that could protect her from the few shots she didn't dodge. And she knew her friends had each gotten their own advantage, either from the gear they had been given, or from their own personal skill or strength. "Well, If all of you are going, We might not want to put all of our eggs in one basket here, so maybe My group will stay here, and you guys can go with Kreig and Gaige." Axton said, Still not sure if he should let the ponies go or not, but they all seemed so willing, so he wasn't going to protest. "Well, I've just contacted Kreig and Gaige, telling them that they'll be going with you guys instead of us. They'll get you guys out to Arid Nexus. We've already cleared the path to the Nexus, although we didn't explore the place too much, we had decided to regroup after we had established a fast travel link with the Nexus, and decided to leave the assault to plan, and to train for a few days. That's about when you guys came in. also just checking, all of you guys have gotten the hang of those echo devices we installed for you, right? They're gonna be crucial piece of communication, enemy detection, and knowledge of locations of mission checkpoints and overall navigation. if you already haven't figured that out." "Yeah, I think we all got the hang of those Echo devices when you explained them to us earlier." Twilight said, Secretly double checking that she had read every part of the operation manual Inside her Echo's database. "Who's ready for the meat grinder?!" Kreig yelled as he walked into the room, "you know we don't always have to yell about meat as we walk into rooms, right?" Kreig's inner voice told him, "Wait, what are the ponies doing here? i guess these really are our new recruits then. not just some hallucination you've recently come up with." Kreig's inner voice thought, wondering if he should be worried that It hadn't been just a hallucination. "Alright, I'm here, can we get going now, I've been waiting for a chance to go screw up some robots for far too long." Gaige said, anxious to get out on the battlefield. She hadn't been in combat in days now, and she was beginning to get rather bored perfecting her deathtrap's upgrades, and attempting to fix that nasty bug between the anarchy circuits in her arm, and the new update to the amp damage system she had to use for amp shields to work. the bug makes it so the anarchy damage multipliers themselves are divided by the amount of projectiles a weapon shoots, which ISN'T supposed to happen, along with amp shield damage, which IS supposed to be divided by the amount of projectiles. *COUGH* GEARBOXFIXITNOW *COUGH* *COUGH* (Yes, this is an actual bug in the game, look it up. It's been there since Gearbox nerfed amp shield damage with weapons that shoot multiple projectiles. And it really gets on my nerves, so i decided to put it in here, just to stress the issue a tad more. This bug, and the bug where you can't shoot the infinity with an anarchy build, are the two bugs that really get on my nerves in borderlands, as I really like to use anarchy.) "Okey dokey lokey then, I've been really wanting to test out these new weapons on some moving targets!" Pinkie said, a rather disturbing smile creeping across her face, but it didn't linger long, and her face reverted to it's happy demeanor within half a second. "Ookay then..." Gaige said, wondering if it'd be bad if Pinkie got a taste of blood, she snickered a little at the thought and quickly dismissed it."lets get going, shall we?" And with that the group was off to the Arid Nexus, ready, and willing to face whatever challenges lied between them and the location of the Vault of the Warrior. The group materialized in a desert area with large amounts of bones lying around, and strange dog like creatures roaming the sands. there was a large pipeline nearby and a few of what looked to be Hyperion's maintenance stations for it nearby. "Well, this place is a dump." Twilight said, as she had expected something a little more... dangerous, waiting for her when she got there. "Yeah, your point is?" Gaige asked cynically as she walked up to the catch-a-ride station, "This entire planet is a dump, only reason anyone is even here is because of Vaults and Eridium." Twilight wanted to argue but decided against it. As she'd read up on this planet's history the night before once she had gotten her echo device. It pretty much stated that this entire planet's history is based on vaults and ancient alien civilizations. Ever since the Eridians sacrificed their entire civilization to imprison the Destroyer in the vault in order to keep it from consuming the entire universe, this place has become nothing but an abandoned planet, until the Dahl corporation took interest in it for it's Eridian history and it's similarities to Promethea, before the Crimson Lance showed up and scared 'em off. Promethea was the planet where the Atlas corporation found the technology to make their guns the best around, and only aren't here now because of the fact that their Third Starbourne Brigade of the Crimson Lance tried to take complete control of Pandora, and the Vault of The Destroyer, before anyone knew what horrors the vault held. the Destroyer was released, and killed by the four original vault hunters shortly after. The Crimson Lance was abandoned by Atlas, yada yada yada. The moral of the story is the place is a crap hole, besides the vaults, and a plentiful amount of eridium, I could've just said that to begin with, but that'd be kinda repetitive, now wouldn't it? Anyway, Back to our story. As Gaige spawned in two bandit technicals, Kreig pressed the button on the holocommunicator nearby, answering Mordy's transmission. A holographic image of him popped up out of the communicator. "You guys see the building with the light shooting out of it? That's the info stockade. We're Gonna get you there through the main eridium pipeline -- head there now." the group got into their seats on the technicals and got moving, when another transmission from mordy came in on their echos. "There should be a ladder on the side of the pipe leading to a maintenance hatch. You can use that to get inside the pipeline. It'll be messy, but It'll lead you to the stockade." As they got to the pipeline, Gaige was the first to attempt to climb up the ladder, but the ladder snapped in two at the joint where it connected to the top of the pipe, just as soon as Gaige laid a finger on it, and snapped, collapsing toward the group. They all managed to go unscathed, and dodged the falling ladder. "Goddamn It! You okay?" Mordecai said, coming in again on the echo. "Rrgh... looks like the ladder's busted. Still the pipe looks cracked -- I bet if you raised the pressure you could blast the pipe open. Get inside that way. Yeah -- Head to one of the pumping stations." The group drove up to the first of the three pumping stations, as a few Hyperion loaders, A few Hyperion spooks and a bunch of soldiers, all came out to confront them. "Get ready, This is about to get messy!" Gaige said as she jumped out of the car, and blasted a few of the spooks, before beckoning for the rest to come out and help. Rainbow whizzed above the loaders, making passes at them to shoot volleys of corrosive bullets. Pinkie jumped behind a lamppost, completely and inexplicably disappearing, and suddenly reappeared in the exact same fashion behind one of the Hyperion soldiers, shooting him in the back of the head with a corrosive shotgun as she did so, and quickly turned to shoot the other soldiers square in the face. Rarity kept her distance from the combat, keeping at mid range and lying down behind cover as she used magic to levitate her gun towards the enemy and began shooting it with her magic, peeking up a little to see where she needed to aim. Fluttershy Ran a good fifty feet from the brawl, pulled out a sniper rifle, and started picking off the enemy, rather efficiently. She also told a few of the nearby skags that those Hyperion loaders were especially tasty, causing the skags to whip themselves into a frenzy and charge at the Hyperion robots and ripped two or three of the loaders to shreds, before the skags were shot by Incoming war loaders! Applejack ran towards the loaders promptly bucking each one in the legs, tearing both of them off simultaneously, then stomping the loaders into the ground, crushing their main circuitry. Twilight fired five or six bolts of magic at the Hyperion soldiers as she charged at them, quickly teleporting herself behind them, then finishing them off with a squarely aimed pistol shot to the back of the head. "Well, That's the last of 'em" Twilight said, rather happy with how well her friends did on their first fight. Gaige stood in the backround, mouth wide open, speechless at how flawlessly the ponies preformed.