“Uh, I think it goes like this...”
“No, that feels weird.”
“You’re bipedal now, of course it feels weird.” Anthony says, rolling his eyes as he watches Pinkie and Dash try to help each other into the exoskeletons. They were like frames ripped out of a robot and remade to fit some sort of human-pony hybrid. Made out of robot bones.
Rainbow Dash was having the worst of it though. “First I can’t fly and now you expect me to run on two legs?”
Pinkie, for her part, seems to have mastered the device and is wearing it like a suit, her ECHO and shield hooked onto the robotic attachments. She successfully stands on two legs and starts walking and jumping around, like a child who had finally grown out of its toddler phase.
Rainbow opts to stay on all fours, though this removes her use of the built-in finger-like extremities Gaige had installed. “I just can’t run like this, not at full speed, and if I can’t fly I at least wanna be able to run.”
“Idunno Dashie, this seems pretty fun!” Pinkie pulls out a standard Jakobs pistol and aims it around, using her new thumbs.
“Pinkie, don’t wave that around!” Anthony yells, “We may have shields now, but their recharge rate and delay is crap, especially mine.”
“Okie-dokie Anthony.” Pinkie says as she returns to walking around and climbing on snowy rocks.
“So what are we doing exactly?” Dash asks, more than a little bored. “Nothing’s happening.”
Anthony shushes the pony quickly. “Don’t say that, Pandora has ears.”
“I haven’t seen any around.” Pinkie says, “Are you sure?”
Anthony sighs again. “It’s a figure of speech. If you complain about being bored, it’s likely you’ll get jumped by a bunch of bandits.”
“Doesn’t change that I’m bored.” Rainbow mumbles. “And I don’t wanna walk like a human.”
“But if you don’t, you won’t have hands free to hold a gun.” Anthony says. “But if you’re sure...”
“I’m sure.” Dash insists, set in her ways for the time being. “Besides, I won’t need a gun.”
“Yes, yes you will.” Anthony corrects. “But if you really don’t wanna to use thumbs just yet, then you’ll want a Tediore. Here, I snagged one from the pile.”
“Uh, that’s a toy, Anthony.”
“Nah, Tediore just has real low-budget stuff. That and not needing thumbs is actually one of their marketing campaigns.”
“Huh.” Rainbow takes the gun in her mouth, and makes an odd face. “Tastes awful.”
“This is Pandora, Dash, ‘clean’ is not an option out here.”
Rainbow sighs and grips the gun in her mouth, pulling the simple trigger by chewing on the gun’s handle. Several bullets later the gun clicks. “Uh, it’s broke, Anthony.”
“Nuh-uh.” Pinkie insists. “You just gotta reload it!”
Anthony stares at Pinkie and just nods slowly, a bit disturbed with how quickly Pinkie is catching on to things around here.
“How do I reload it then?”
“It’s a Tediore.” Anthony explains simply. “Chuck it.” Rainbow gives Anthony an odd look but hurls the gun, spitting it out, the gun landing a few meters away. The gun sits there for a few moments as the group stares at it. After a few seconds there’s a decently-loud ‘boom’ and the gun explodes.
“Uh, Anthony that didn’t wo-ghlable!” Rainbow was cut off by the gun reappearing in her mouth in a flash of digistruction. Dash looks at the marked ground where the gun had exploded, then down at the gun in her mouth. “Wha’ wassat?”
“Tediore. Fastest reloading guns on the market.” Anthony says. “You just throw it, and it ‘reloads’ by exploding and digistructing back into your hands. Er, mouth.”
“That... ush ahshum!” she says, before letting it go, where it gets caught by an auto-holster.
“Yeah, figured you’d like that if you don’t wanna use your thumbs. But seriously, everything on this planet is built by humans, for humans, so you’ll want to get the hang of being bipedal eventually.”
“Whatever. This is good enough for now.”
“Yeah, you say that while holding a Level one, white Tediore smig.” Anthony comments, rolling his eyes.
“Better than what you got!” Dash says.
Anthony just quirks an eyebrow and holds up his yellow-white gun. “Better huh? This is a Hyperion pistol. The guy who makes them is a jerk to end all jerks, but it’s damn good.”
“Oh yeah, what’s it do?”
“Oh oh oh! Does it explode into confetti!?” Pinkie asks excitedly, now amusing herself by switching between four legs and two, getting better at the transition.
“Nope, doesn’t explode. It’s got reverse kick.”
“Reverse kick?” Rainbow asks, and admittedly unless you’re familiar with weapon lingo it does sound weird.
“Well, take Pinkie’s gun. It’s a Jakobs. You can fire with it, but when you do, the kick of the bullet firing makes you less accurate the more you shoot. Jakobs has by far the most kick out of all the guns. Watch.”
Pinkie hands Anthony her gun and Anthony aims at a shelf of ice, holding the gun as steady as possible. He fires two, three, four, five bullets in rapid succession, each one straying further than the last, putting scattered holes into the ice shelf where the bullets made contact. By the end of the demonstration, Anthony could barely hit the broadside of a barn, even with the ECHO’s auto-centering.
“Now watch what a semi-automatic Hyperion pistol can do.” He says, grinning as he whips out his own gun, passing the Jakobs back to Pinkie. He aims at the wall again and holds down the trigger on his own weapon and, while the bullets start off flying randomly, the gun stabilizes in his hands and starts shooting bullet after bullet right into the ice shelf, the last three bullets being consecutive bullseyes. “That’s Hyperion. Just fire for a bit and you’ll land just about every shot. As long as you keep firing. A direct opposite to other manufacturers.”
Pinkie and Rainbow are indeed impressed with the accuracy of the gun, but... “I prefer mine.” Dash says. “It’s a lot easier to... uh...”
“Reload.”
“Right, reload.”
“So what’s mine do?” Pinkie asks excitedly, handing the Jakobs back to Anthony, who takes the gun.
“A fine Jakobs pistol. When it comes to a firefight, these babies will tear through enemies. High strength, high-power bullets. And...” He walks up to the ice shelf where they had been practicing and indicates the Hyperion bullets compared to the Jakobs. “If you look here, you can see how deep the Jakobs pistol sent its bullets into the ice. It started scattering near the end but they still penetrate much deeper than the Hyperion gun did, despite its accuracy. You hit someone with a Jakobs, it’s gona do some damage.”
“Ooooooo~ooooh...” Pinkie sing-songs as she looks over the gun in her hooves.
“So what guns are the best?” Dash asks. “They seem pretty different.”
“Oh very. No two guns are alike unless specially made.” Anthony explains. “The manufacturer may determine what the gun is best at, but it’s stats are determined by the sum of its parts.”
“Parts?”
“You know how I mentioned I wanted that assault rifle earlier?”
“Yeah? Hey, you were gonna trade me for that thing! Not cool dude!”
“I was joking, I swear!” Anthony holds up his hands in defense. “Anyways, I wanted it because of its barrel, mainly.”
“You said it was...” Dash starts.
“Vladof!” Pinkie finishes, happily, recalling perfectly.
For his part, Anthony couldn’t imagine Pinkie was paying attention as she was making a snowpony at the time, but shrugs it off. “Yeah, Vladof guns are the opposite of Jakobs in a way. Instead of firing a few, high powered shots, Vladof is all about more bullets. You don’t need better aim or stronger impact, what you need is to churn out so many bullets that aim and power doesn’t matter. And those are my kind of weapons, honestly. More dakka, as they say.”
“You sure know a lot about guns.” Rainbow Dash comments warily. “I thought only gryphons had them.”
Anthony grins. “I’ve spent a good couple months of accumulated lifetime playing Borderlands. I know my way around Pandora. Mostly.”
“Anyway now that the lessons are over... what do we do?”
“We find some Bullymongs.” Anthony says, “That’s what Maya said.”
“Which one was Maya again?”
“The super-pretty lady with the glowy stuff all over her!” Pinkie says, helpfully.
“Uh, okay... and what exactly is a Bullymong?”
“Oh oh oh oh oh! Lemme guess, lemme guess! Is it a giant creature with four arms and two legs and covered in fur?”
That gives Anthony a start. “Uh, yeah. How’d you guess Pinkie?”
“Oh, there’s one right over there!” Anthony looks up to see a group of four bullymongs prowling around their dens, awakened by the gunfire. “They look angry and really fluffy.”
“Yeah! Bullymong fur is great!” Claptrap yells over the ECHO. “It’s useful for all kinds of things, especially drying up robot tears!”
“Robots don’t cry, Claptrap.” Anthony deadpans.
“Shows what you know, meatsack!” Clappy cheerfully counters.
“What did you call me, wingnut-brain!?” Anthony yells into the ECHO, unfortunately getting the attention of the bullymongs. “Claptrap, I’m going to get to Sanctuary and swap your eye with your upload port.”
“That’s really violent, and kinda offensive!” the ‘bot’s chipper voice responds. “I think I’m gonna go hide under some scrap metal instead of giving you pointers now.”
“Pfft, I can handle some stupid Bullym-ohgo-!”
“ROOOAAR!!” the first Bullymong, having been coming down the cliff, catches Anthony in the side with a hurled chunk of ice which breaks on impact, but not before slamming Anthony back several feet. If he hadn’t had a shield to take the brunt of the damage, he’d be in big trouble.
“Slingers... of fucking course.” Anthony groans as he gets up, noting that since the ponies were closer, they were the new targets. A few missed shots later, Anthony manages to land a couple bullets in the bullymong’s foot, then chest, then face and the HUD gives a flash saying ‘Critical’ signifying a direct hit. Anthony is about to continue firing when ‘click - click- click’
“Sonofa-...”
Rainbow runs up to the Bullymong and bucks it in the face, the melee attack doing significantly more damage than Anthony’s bullets. The Bullymong roars and collapses, though it’s call is heard by it’s family.
All six of the Bullymongs, including two of the midget-like young, all come thundering towards the trio, intent on ripping them apart, murder in their beady eyes.
Anthony reloads as fast as he can, which actually takes nearly a full minute due to the practice not being one he’s done in real life. Ever. Now he wished he’d grabbed a Tediore.
Speaking of, Rainbow shoots a bunch of the Bullymongs in the chest and arms, before hearing the clicking of an empty gun and chucking it... missing by a mile but hitting one of the Monglets with a direct, explosive hit.
“I uh... meant to do that!”
“Brag later, live now!” Anthony says as the bigger Bullymong is now on the ponies and followed closely by it’s friends.
Pinkie, mostly forgotten, has discovered the second property of Jakobs guns: firing as fast as you can pull the trigger. With this discovery made, she rushes around behind the charging bullymong and shoots it in the back, point-blank sending more than a few bullets through the Bullymong’s tough hide.
The Bullymong roars in pain, swatting at its own back as much as its overmuscled arms can, one of the slingers chucking ice at the pink menace. Pinkie, for her part, is giggling, as she slaps another set of bullets into her gun with an almost disturbing amount of prowess for a being who’d never even seen a gun before that day, and unloads another five rounds into the back of the Bullymong’s head, splattering blood and brains all over Rainbow Dash, who cries out in confusion and disgust at the sudden torrential downpour of gore.
“Get used to that feeling Dash.” Anthony yells as he runs forward to join Pinkie in taking care of the smaller ones. He looks up at the top of the cliff and sees a Bullymong picking a huge chunk of ice out of the ground. “Still got slingers!”
“On it!” Dash yells as she runs around the now-dead Bullymmong in front of her, and starts spraying at the one currently flinging ice at the group.
“Extra damage if you hit ‘em in the face!” Anthony reminds. “It’s their weak spot!”
Pinkie and Dash, regrouping at the start of the hill, train their fire on the slinger while Anthony aims his rapidly dwindling supply of pistol ammo at the heads of the oncoming small horde.
The three slowly back towards each other, laying down fire left and right, Rainbow Dash finally going bipedal to get a better grip on her SMG, Pinkie laying in some shockingly precise shots, and Anthony spending his bullets like they’re made of money.
After some time, the entire group is finished with the bullymongs, though the battle had taken a large toll on their resources. Panting from the unfamiliar exertion, Anthony lands in the snow. “Not... bad for... first fight.”
“That was awesome!” Rainbow yells, pumping a forehoof in the air. Adrenaline is running strong in her veins, making her heartbeat match a distressed jackrabbit’s.
“I agree, that was fun... but a little messy.” Pinkie agrees, staring at the now-brown snow. “So, now what?”
“See that bar on the bottom of your HUD?” Anthony asks, getting confirmative nods from the ponies. “When that fills up completely with cyan, you level up.”
“Yeah, part of my bar is up from a bit ago.” Pinkie says, and Dash notices the same.
“The more kills you get and the more skilled you are with the kills, the faster you level up. Also it increases based on how high level your foes are.”
“I don’t think we’d be able to do that again soon, I’m out of ammo.” Dash says, and, checking his own stores, Anthony says the same, leaving Pinkie the only one with any bullets left. “How do we refill?”
“Buy bullets, or find them.” Anthony informs. “And I don’t have any cash.”
“You think they’ll take Bits?”
“Doubtful. Just search these piles of bones and stuff.”
Dash gives an exaggerated ‘ugh’ but begins to kick over bone piles, Pinkie reaching into snow banks and rummaging through the frozen bushes, while Anthony checks out the dens, to see if the Bullymongs were all taken care of, which they had, thankfully.
“I found something!” Pinkie yells, pulling out a battered-looking Vladof assault rifle.
Anthony and Dash hop down to where Pinkie was searching and Anthony takes the Assault Rifle, placing his pistol into a pocket. He’d have to get a holster at some point. “Yeah, this’ll do us for a bit. Huh, still fully loaded too, only missing a few rounds. Bullymongs must’ve got the drop on the poor schmuck.”
Dash looks it over. “Duuude, can I try it?” she asks, holding out her hooves for it.
“I thought you said you didn’t need a gun?” Anthony taunts her.
“Yeah, but that one’s bigger! That means it’s a better gun, right?”
“Not always, actually. It’s not the size of the gun, it’s the stats, make, and manufacturer. And rarity of course. This one’s white and level one just like all our other guns. The only difference is it’s an assault rifle, which I could definitely use a bit better for medium range than the pistol.”
Anthony takes the rifle and gives the Vladof barrel a quick spin, and it makes about two rotations before jamming. “Eesh. Or I could if it was in better condition. That’s the problem with looting from bodies.”
“Wait... we’re graverobbing!?”
“No, we’re taking things that the deceased no longer need.” Anthony clarifies for Rainbow. “Big difference. And besides, they’re all just respawning anyways.”
“Define ‘respawning’ for me real quick.” Dash says, questioningly.
“Well, imagine if you died... and could come back.” Anthony says. “Your body, once registered in the New-U Station Network will be digitally reconstructed in the event that you die.”
“So we’d be rebuilt as robots!?” Pinkie asks, very excited at the idea.
“Not quite. We’d uh... well, we’d... I actually don’t know how it works. But I know it works, we just need to get into the New-U station. Claptrap said he did it for us already but since he can barely open doors half the time, I say we do it manually.”
“Hey! That is a false accusation, sir! I can open doors 78.999% of the time!”
“And the other percents, the doors lock down and shoot at you.” Anthony deadpans.
“You have no proof, meatling. Oh, wait, I was sulking! I’m going back to that now.”
“Please do, at least you’re quiet.”
“I will give you the silent treatment!”
Anthony looks at Rainbow and Pinkie. “Thank God for that.”
“You’re kinda mean to him, Anthony.” Pinkie admonishes. “He’s just trying to be nice.”
“You haven’t had to listen to that voice call you ‘minion’ for a combined total of several hours.” Anthony folds his arms. “Anyways, we should really be looking for money and vendor trash.”
“Axton said that too, ‘vendor trash’, what is it?” Pinkie asks.
“You know what a white elephant gift is?” Anthony asks.
“A gift for an elephant with a skin problem?”
“No, it’s something you give to someone as a gift because you don’t want it. A gift that you give away not to be nice but to get rid of it. Like a battered hat or... an assault rifle that jams after two spins.”
“Oh. But why would you give that to an elephant?”
“It’s called a white elephant because... uh... well, the idea is that you can’t do much with a white elephant so it’s considered a worthless gift, so anything given as a worthless gift is called a white elephant.”
“Human speech is weird.” Dash comments, looking at Anthony strangely. “And what does that have to do with vendor trash?”
Anthony takes a deep breath to explain in simpler terms. “Vendor trash is a term we use for objects that have little value, and the only use we have for them is selling them to vendors for money. It’s trash to us, but we give it to vendors for money. So it’s vendor trash. Junk that we trade for money.”
“Oh, like a pawn shop?” Pinkie suggests. “I love browsing pawn shops! There’re all kinds of neat things ponies-”
“Yeah, like a pawn shop.” Anthony interrupts. “Only all the merchandise is guns and shields and grenade mods.”
After a bit more explanation, Dash and Pinkie catch on. “So this spinny-gun is vendor trash because it doesn’t spin?”
“Exactly! We can give it up for money which we can use to buy better stuff.”
“Ooooooooooooh, okay!” The two ponies say, finally understanding. Though Pinkie interrupts. “So why is all this stuff we find in these piles vendor trash?”
Anthony sighs. “Because it’s all used, broken or failing stuff. I mean, if a gun worked fine, don’t you think the person holding it would have killed the Bullymong instead of being killed?”
“Okay, that does make sense.” Dash admits. “But that one over there is Green, isn’t that good?”
Anthony tromps over to the pile with a green light coming from it and finds a basic grenade mod. It’s tag indicates it’s for a level three though, two levels too high. “Clearly the Bullymongs got the poor sap before he could pull the pin. But hey, finders’ keepers.” Anthony may not be able to use it now, but If he doesn’t find a better grenade mod before he is good enough to use it, he’ll have something to fall back on.
“Kill it if it’s charging at you and finders’ keepers... yeesh, what kind of place is this?”
“Welcome to Pandora, kiddos!” comes a charismatic, and very haughty voice over the ECHO. Anthony knew that voice well, better than Claptrap’s, and the sound of said voice made his blood run cold. “Woah, waitasec... are these really your names, or just what your retarded psycho friends named you? Ant-Berry? Raindrops? Purple Pie? Man, I’ve heard some doozies in my time but this beats ‘Flesh Stick’ by a long shot! You oughta just shoot yourselves in the face now... hohohoh, god. I needed a laugh. You seriously think you scum-lickers are vault hunter material? That Truxican dwarf at least has a headcount! I give you guys two minutes out there. Tell you what-”
“Jack, you shut your goddamn mouth before I rip your tongue out with a bandsaw!!” Anthony yells into the ECHO, but the yell is discarded by a bored sigh.
“Uhg... thirty three.”
“What?”
“I’ve heard that threat thirty three times now. I have this big, old-school whiteboard by the radio seat here, with tallies next to all the threats I’ve gotten, and I gotta ask... do you guys all have a big book of Vault Hunter threats you gotta make? Because I have to admit, that would make for a hilarious read.”
“...” Anthony, shocked by the fact that Jack said something that doesn’t even seem remotely scripted, is rendered speechless. This isn’t a Jack double or something with pre-programmed dialogue. He’s talking to the real Handsome Jack.
“Anyways, good luck getting to Sanctuary, you’re gonna need it. Oh, and have some presents! I’m sure you could do with a better, more... ‘bombastic’ welcome to Pandora!” He gives an evil laugh, before the connection severs.
Anthony, wide-eyed at the very-real disguised threat, gulps and turns to the ponies. “Duck and cover, now!”
The two look confused for a second before six pods, one that had, ironically, been launched with them earlier, finally stop skipping across the atmosphere to drive down at the land around them, rapidly disgorging dozens of loaders at the wildly unprepared trio of outsiders. And, to add insult to injury, a New-U station constructs out of one of the Loader pods, meaning there’s no escape, even if they were slain.
And there’s no backup coming from the other Vault Hunters this time.
“Goddamnit, Jack...”