Borderlands 2: Starlight DLC Pack

by the-pieman

Chapter 16

Once he had finished his bowl properly, Anthony stands up and heads for the Fast Travel station. To his surprise Claptrap is there, waiting for them and looking at Pinkie who’s looking at him in return.

“Greetings, Vault Hunters! I’ve heard you’ve been very helpful to everyone here in Sanctuary, and made sure we didn’t die here - and for that, you deserve a reward!” He waves for them to follow and, bemused, Anthony consents as the little robot begins to gesticulate wildly on the way to his normal hidey-hole made of garbage and refuse near Zed’s place. “I have a secret stash hidden very, very far away from where I currently am! In order to find it, you will have to perform a series of devious challenges. First, collect a few brown rocks for me. Then, defeat a badass skag.” He claps his hands together, and tries to look serious. “Then, pilfer the lost staff of Mount Schuler. THEN you shall bring me the head of the Destroyer of Worlds, and THEN YOU SHALL DANCE FOR MY ENJOYMENT! HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA--"

As he speaks, the ponies are nodding, and the quest requirements begin to appear on all three of their HUDs.

Collect 139,377 brown rocks
Defeat Ug-Thak, Lord of Skags
Pilfer lost staff of Mount Schuler
Defeat Destroyer of Worlds
Dance, dance, baby

The two ponies nod and tear off for the Quick-Travel station once Claptrap begins to cackle, and so it’s only Anthony who’s there as the crude, ramshackle metal plating in the corner falls apart to reveal an old mechanical locker-like device.

“Ah... right... so, uhm, just pretend you didn’t see that!” Claptrap commands of Anthony, who’s too busy trying not to laugh and facepalm.

As the ‘quests’ vanish from their HUDs, the ponies confusedly walk back to Claptrap’s home and stare at the Stash machine and then at the robot. “Yeah.” Anthony mutters. “He’s a moron, just go with it.”

Rainbow Dash, of course, looks over the tiny locker. “Uh, why would we wanna use that storage? We can just leave whatever over at Scooter’s, and he’ll keep an eye on it for us.”

“And, we’ve got the Crimson Vault!” Pinkie reminds Dash. “That’s got a ton of space, too!”

Claptrap gives a weary sigh. “Well, you can use it to share weapons between my minions! Specifically the ones, that, uh, that you would control.” he pauses for a moment. “Look, it’s-”

Anthony cuts off the robot. “No meta crap, Clappy. That’s gonna wait for later.”

“What? I was going to say it’s for trading with other possible iterations of this universe! What’s meta with that?” The front of the locker falls off. “Ah, crap, I need some welder...”

“Don’t worry, it may not be of much use to us.” Anthony says, rolling his eyes. “The likelihood of us actually being able to use this is low, considering-”

RD examines the locker and, accessing it via her ECHO, finds an orange-grade shield inside, her eyes widening, and shows it off to the group. “What... where the heck did this come from?”

“Ha-ha!” Claptrap yells triumphantly. “I told you it worked, meatsack!”

Anthony for his part, just stares at the shield. This is the first time anyone’s accessed it in Sanctuary, the only way it could have anything in it is if... “Holy fuck.”

Hesitantly, he takes a spare Blue Grenade mod he’d bought and inserts it into the Stash’s inventory. Then the trio of hunters and the robot stare at it with bated breath.

For nearly a minute, nothing happens, then it looks like it’s being picked up, then just... vanishes. A stack of empty magazines falls into it, then falls out again onto the ground, all of them standard ones from the trash heap around the stash. “Oh, darnit! I tell everyone not to just throw crap into the Stash! I even told me that!” He grabs one of the magazines, scrawls something threatening-looking on it in marker, and throws it through.

Anthony sighs and returns his attention to the shield Rainbow had taken. It’s called... “What the heck is an ‘Avalanche’?” He had absolutely no idea what it was, what its specialty was... all he knew was it was their first Legendary Roid Shield by Maliwan, and they got it from... whoever was on the other side of the Stash. This raised many questions, but given the design of the shield, the one thing he knew about it was it had decent stats and was a Roid shield, a good match for Pinkie since she kept ending up in melee combat. Whoever these others were, they were helpful.

“We ought’ta give something in exchange, right?” Rainbow asked. “I mean, we kinda did, but a Blue doesn’t equal a Legendary of the same level.”

“What do we have to give though?” Pinkie replies thoughtfully. “You think they’d like Eridium? We could pay in that after we help Moxxi.”

Anthony ponders this. “Yeah, fair’s fair, but I’m not sure if we should pass off Eridium.”

“Oh, you should never put Eridium into the Stash! Idunno why, but it always makes something go weird and wrong!” Claptrap yells, waving his arms frantically. “I’ve never seen something so horrifying since the last Japanese movie I watched, and that was on the Adult network!”

“...Noted.” Anthony states. “Well, since that’s definitely out, how about cash? We could pay them the shield’s worth minus the worth of the grenade mod.”

Rainbow nods. “That sounds fair. Let’s do that.”

Once the whole party is in agreement, Anthony takes the money out of his banking SDU and transfers it into the Stash. At the shield’s level and rarity, subtracting the grenade mod, Anthony ended up shelling out around $500,000 for it. Practically nothing at this point, but it was also relatively low-level despite its rarity and, assumedly, its effectiveness.

A few moments later, the money disappears into the Stash, replaced a moment later by a piece of neatly-folded paper with the word ‘thanks’ on it in messy handwriting.

After receiving the message, the trio of Hunters, Anthony in a slight daze, head for the Quick-Travel station. Upon getting there though, Rainbow Dash notes something. “Hey, you said there was a way to... change what skills we pick? How do we do that? I want some more points in Speed Freak, but... I already spent earlier points elsewhere.”

Anthony nods and leads the group out of the small building and to the Quick-Change station, a kiosk with a large screen and several various appearances for a humanoid stick figure. “You can use this to, for a price, refund all your earned skill points and reset your trees. You can always change them to another set if you have the cash to do so.”

Pinkie looks it over, then nods, grinning. “Well, that sounds pretty neat-o!” she says, and Dash looks interested as well. Anthony didn’t feel he needed to respec; he’d been weighing his options pretty heavily on them from the beginning.

Once they were done, they head to the Fast Travel station once more to head out. “Off to the Dust!” Dash yells, hitting the interface button hard.

Moments later, they reform outside Ellie’s Garage, and she waves to them in passing as she heads for her own projects, stops, then turns back to the group.

“Hey, did y’all fergit about that spiderant repellant from the reserve?”

Anthony slaps his forehead. “Ah, damnit, that’s right, we... okay, we’ll do some missions for Moxxi and then get right on that.” Anthony says placatingly.

“‘Sno hurry, ah jess wanna clear out them bugs afore they git too bold. Ah’m a second-date-minimum kinda gal, y’know.” she says.

Anthony nods and the trio continues on, coming up on where the ECHO minimap pointed them to. They made their way across the Dust in a Technical, finally arriving at the entrance to the Highlands. Waiting there is a trio of Cara-Vans, and a lone ‘guard’ in the form of a standard outrunner, with the machine gun turret. Absolutely useless against other cars, really, unless you got the driver in the face with enough of the bullets.

“Oh, are you the mercs Miss Moxxi sent?” the lead Cara-Van driver yells, leaning out of his van nervously. “We’ve got the full shipment, mostly the pepper and the various salts and herbs from the Highlands.” he says.

“No prob.” Dash says from the driver seat, Anthony taking passenger and Pinkie in the back as usual. “When those robbers see us, they’ll flip!”

“Oh, thank goodness! Those Hodunks have come in and wrecked our last three attempts at delivery, and the harvest for most of the herbs is just about finished!” the Cara-Van driver explains. “Let’s get this show on the road, then, and keep an eye out.”

What the Hodunks want with the random seasonings is lost on Anthony. Maybe they just want revenge on Moxxi. After all, if she goes broke she’d have no choice but to go back... That’s a much more devious plan than he expected from the country hicks... Well, they wouldn’t get the chance.

With a final check that all their guns are loaded and armed, the trio gives the OK sign and their entourage begins their slow trek across the desert road.

The Vans stay in the middle, the Outrunner acting as a scout now that there’s a decent guard on hand. Several minutes into the slow drive, the roaring of incoming engines alerts the group, and the outrunner zips back, gun firing behind it as it swerves to avoid incoming fire. Four heavily modified Outrunners and a pair of Technicals, all covered in the Hodunk’s signature color scheme, are charging towards the caravan.

Over the ECHOs, Anthony hears something that stalls his brain entirely:

“Hand over them spice Cara-Vans!” Tector Hodunk shouts into the communicator, “Ah’m makin’ spiced rum, and mah beer ain’t spiced enough yet!”

Dash almost slows to a stop in surprise, looking over at Anthony in confusion. “Uh... that’s not how you make spiced rum, right?” she asks, for clarification. The young man can do nothing but shake his head in pure bafflement as Pinkie twitches all over, face contorted into rage.

“You’re ruining Miss Moxxi’s business over the wrong recipe!?”

“Papa, turn around your little strike team or the Dust will be splattered with the sheer amount of retardation your little “plan” has in it.” Anthony says, deadpan. “One chance, you fucking idiots...”

“Ah’m not an idjit, ya fuckin’ idjit!” comes the ‘witty’ retort.

With a sigh, Anthony uses the Technical’s launcher to hurl an explosive barrel at the foremost Outrunner, and uses the distraction to fire at the vehicle’s tires, the Sloth busting a big hole in the thickened tires. The Outrunner begins to swerve a bit, now having a dead wheel and a heavily dented front frame.

“Y’all won’t keep me from mah rum!”

“That’s not how you make spiced rum, you dingus!!” Pinkie screams at the Hodunks, unloading a three-round salute in the direction of the outrunners and Technicals, the rockets going all over the place as she begins screaming incoherently.

“For one...” Anthony says, adding more gunfire of his own, “You’re using beer.” His calmer attitude allowing more precise shots. The shots from his sniper not doing as much damage to the cars themselves as Pinkie’s triple-shot corrosive launcher, but what he could do was...

The words “Critical” in dark red flash across his HUD as he watches one of the Technical drivers in the back slump over, and the car the dead Hodunk member was driving swerves off to the side and almost tips over. The Hodunk in the passenger seat pushes the dead driver out of the vehicle and takes the wheel for himself, while Dash peppers the frontlining outrunners with machinegun fire from the Technical itself.

A few short, furious seconds of fighting later, and all but one of the outrunners are scrap, and only one of the Technicals is still going, but it’s smoking.

“Ah, damn you all! That’s it, Ah’m comin’ out mahself!” Tector roars, and the sound of an unearthly scream of an engine, pushed so far past its limits that it’s coming out the other side just fine, fills the air.

A massive, rebuilt Lancer skims across the sand, gigantic, deep-treaded wheels digging into the loose earth with ease as it advances with the implacable strength of a glacier and the terrible speed of a landslide.

Also, it’s better armored than every one of the defending vehicles combined.

“Okay... that’s a problem.” Anthony states, thinking about how to stop such a monstrosity. “There’s gotta be a way to do this without taking that thing head-on...”

Dash snarls. “No way am I gonna be outdone by a brick on wheels!” she declares, getting a worried look from Anthony, “Hold on tight, and get ready to shoot everything you’ve got; hammer that side panel as we come in, I’m gonna ram ‘im!” she yells, swerving around, before yelping as a zzz-OWNTCH noise comes from the turret atop the tank and a lance of crimson energy strikes the Technical, leaving a nasty scorch mark and some molten metal behind.

“We are not armored enough to take many more of those!” Anthony yells. “Put your ego aside and- ego!” Anthony grins and gets on the ECHO. “Hey, Hodunks. You wanna trade?”

“Trade what?” Tector asks after a moment, presumably to get Jimbo’s reply.

“What say we give you the spices, if you can beat us on your own raceway...?”

A short silence goes over the air. “Papa Hodunk says, ‘It’s ahwn’.”

“Alright, everybody stop.” Anthony commands. “We’ll settle this with a good old-fashioned race.”

Rainbow, looking a bit disappointed at not getting to completely wreck the other vehicle, slowly grins at the challenge of outpacing the monstrous Lancer. “And what are the rules of this race?” she asks smugly.

“Simple. First one around the track five times wins. Now then, let’s move out to the speedway.” Anthony replies. “This will be interesting to take part in.”

Anthony waves for the Cara-Vans to keep going while he does the race, and the Lancer leads the way, showing it to have surprising speed; it’s almost keeping up with the Technical, which is already more than twice as fast as normal thanks to Dash. On top of that, it’s turning on a dime, which is impressive even to Anthony.

But... Dash also had a decent boost to her Nitro due to skills and her relic, so if they needed to, they had a trump card. Best to save that for later and give them a surprise rather than play their hand right out of the gate. Besides, he had another plan, based on whether or not the main Vault Hunters had done a particular side-quest.

“Aww.... stank! Those hooligans tore up the track! I done fergot that... still, this baby’ll go right over that bridge, broke’r not.” Tector comments, his voice loud enough to be heard even without the Echo comms.

Either way, both vehicles end up on the track, barely an inch between them, the start of the racetrack broad enough for them both, if only just. Anthony, hoping his plan will work, checks the straps holding him safely into the seat he’s in.

Pinkie, not having much of a strap in the back, is instead perched on a hill of rock overlooking the track. If things went sour, she was Plan C.

“Alright, onna counta five!” one of the Hodunks shouts. “One! Two! Four! Seven! Nine! Two! Five!” he chants, throwing off the Vault Hunters in time for Tector and his Lancer to steal the lead, Dash screaming about dirty pool the whole way as she rushes to catch up. She’s barely faster, but she doesn’t dare risk getting pancaked by a side-swipe, and can’t get ahead.

Anthony, experiencing this, is more than a little nervous. They were going very fast. If she hit the nitro and didn’t make a turn in time, they’d definitely smash both the car and themselves against the solid-rock walls of the track. They couldn’t risk going too fast on any turns, which meant the more agile Lancer had the advantage yet again. Unless... “Dash, we’re smaller! We can’t take tighter turns, but we can fit between them and the wall! Max speed as soon as we make the turn and we can blast past it!”

“Idunno, Anthony; I might have to use the boost and go up the wall!” she says, sounding unsure - which is understandable, there’s a good chance that plan wouldn’t work.

“There is another option.” Anthony thinks aloud. “But I’m not sure if it would work. What do you think of our chances of the car surviving if we do take the wall?”

“Uuuh...” she thinks for a moment, the fateful turn coming closer. “Idunno, there’s a ninety percent somewhere in there, and I’m not sure it’s in our favor, but if he drifts even a little, we’re gonna be flatter than that Krieg guy’s abs!”

“Well, we still haven’t used either of our trumps, and we still have Plan B, should we risk it?” Anthony asks, figuring the speedster would be better at the snap decision.

She grits her teeth, then aims for the wall. “We’ll find out!” she floors the boost, the burst of speed insane even by their already fast-moving standards, and the whole Technical rides up the wall to make the turn with no problems - unfortunately, the cliff lining it cuts out right after that point, to make way for the first crossover point.

“This thing may not survive the fall!” Anthony says fearfully. “Is there something we can do to cushion it?”

“Nooope!” Dash screams in reply as free-fall kicks in and both Vault Hunters come screaming down (literally, in Anthony’s case) and hit the ground in a bone-jarring crash. Surprisingly, the Technical is, mostly, okay. It’s gushing a bit of smoke, and there’s a faint crackling of flames, but nothing the built-in fire suppression system can’t handle.

Both of them start whooping and hollering with glee, until they realize that they’re barely fifteen feet ahead of the massive Lancer, and the turret is lining up on them.

“Okay, we just need to avoid the turret fire and we should be able to keep this lead just long enough for the first part of this plan.” Anthony assures Dash. “Just weave a bit every once in awhile so he can’t get a good aim.”

“Gotcha!” Dash replies, “I’ll need you to tell me when and what direction to go; Ellie never installed rear-view mirrors!”

Anthony turns around and, leaping quickly into the turret seat, straps himself in there and aligns himself to face the Lancer and its turret. He didn’t have any way of returning fire other than some explosive barrels, but they’d have to do. Taking a deep breath to calm down a bit, Anthony focuses on the turret and begins relaying its movements. The thing he was most glad for about the car was the gyroscope-based turret seat, meaning he wasn’t flipped around like crazy whenever a turn was made. Hurling barrels at the Lancer and aiding in the dodging of the seemingly-endless torrent of lasers from the Lancer, they manage to keep their lead, even if it was a small one. After several more turns, the vehicles zoom up to the bridge which, as Anthony planned, was blown out due to the efforts of the other Vault Hunters during a sidequest of their own. This was trump-card one, and if it didn’t work...

The Technical, as expected, flies over the gap as it boosts, and Anthony has time to watch the Lancer speed up as well... and still not make it across, instead falling into the area beneath it. Anthony crows with victory, up until they round the corner and realize that the Lancer is now in front of them, and already turning to face the right direction.

However, Anthony spots that a few of the less-impressive welding seams on the armor appear to have snapped open. It seems the tables have, in fact, turned.

While their foe was ahead of them, and now had its turret facing forward, the Hunters were free to go on the attack. Though there was now little chance of them outpacing the Lancer, they could certainly fight back. By hurling barrel after digistructed explosive barrel, aiming for the seams and chinks in the Lancer’s outer shell.

Without warning, beeping mines begin to slide out from under the Lancer, triggering a moment before Dash’s Technical gets to them and threatening to blow the Vault Hunters sky high. As such, she starts having to swerve, Anthony calling out the mines’ locations as they come, thanks to his higher vantage point.

After dodging several mines and nearly losing their car by just barely avoiding several explosions, Anthony decides he’s had enough. Setting the barrel-launcher controls aside he pulls out his Sloth. The bullets may not be fast, but hopefully they’d do well enough.

The second he sees the next mine drop, he points it out. As Rainbow Dash swerves to avoid it, Anthony looks down his scope and, taking aim as fast as possible, pulls the trigger. The shot, while powerful enough to detonate the mine early, was too slow to trigger it directly under the Lancer. However...

He swaps weapons, and lines up his Widow Maker, waiting for the next mine. It’s no Sniper Rifle, but the bullets are far more than enough to detonate one as it’s sliding out, making the back of the entire Lancer jump a little. Evil, smug grin in place, Anthony gets ready for the next one, but no further Mines come forth. However, at this point, the Lancer is taking the wider turns, leaving just barely too little space for them to try the wall trick again on any curves; for all their idiocy, the Hodunks are fantastic racers.

Still, the Vault Hunters weren’t out of plans. Using more barrels to burst holes in the Lancer’s armor, Anthony eventually makes a hole wide enough for his next trick. “Get us close, we need to get closer!” Thankfully, the repeated usage of the order makes it clear to RD how important their next move was. Dash hits the nitro and zooms forward, and then kills the nitro early just moments before they smash headfirst into the back of the lancer. “Grenades! Throw them in!”

As they go to throw in their entire payload, a sudden blast wave emits from the Lancer, shoving the entire Technical back and nearly obliterating the front of it. It’s still running, but the cloud of smoke is chokingly thick, and streaming out right over Dash’s side of the vehicle. “Anthony, you’re gonna have to get them ready before we get that close again, another hit like that and we’re screwed!”

It was a bit early for Plan C, even at this point, so Anthony had to rethink how they could do this. Maybe... maybe they didn’t have to get very close just yet... But that would require timing and really good aim, not to mention...

“How good’s your throwing arm?” Anthony questions as he pieces together their next strike.

“Pretty good; whatcha got in mind?” she asks, waving away more of the cloying smoke from her face, trying to see well enough to drive.

“Well, if you can fastball one of your Mirvs inside that thing, we could do some serious damage. They should home in, they just need to be going fast enough.”

“Gotcha!” Dash replies, and glares through the haze, prepping her grenades. “Alright, I’m gonna speed up, you get ready to throw, too!” she says, before hitting the gas pedal and beginning to chuck the grenades as fast as her arm would allow.

Anthony, having a less maneuverable grenade mod, has to wait a bit longer before tossing his in, but with a trio of mirvs going off inside, the addition of three Rubberized Bouncing Betties would definitely cause damage in a wider area even if they’d do less initial structural damage.

Moments after the payload goes in, the Lancer begins to slow down noticeably, and Dash has to make emergency dodges as huge hunks of armor begin to fall off, being shed to reveal... a smaller, more normal-sized Lancer within the outer shell, a pissed and bloody-looking Tector on top, with a massive dual-launch missile system deploying around him, and he’s facing the Technical. His meaty hands grip the controls, and he yells something into the howling wind of the racetrack-

BA-BA-BADOOM!

A trio of corrosive rocket blasts smash into the partially unarmored front of the APC, and Tector never gets to fire his missiles, Pinkie’s triple rocket barrage obliterating the vehicle and leaving the huge man screaming in agony and fury as Rainbow Dash’s ride swerves around the pools of corrosive goo and heads for the off-ramp. They may be winning, but Dash knows the Hodunks aren’t likely to be good sports about this method of losing.

Fortunately, They still had one trick left, and they had only gone around the track three times out of the agreed five. “One more gentle speed-up!” Anthony orders and, as Dash gets up behind the now-slowing Lancer yet again, Anthony swaps to his Fire SMG and begins peppering the remaining visible Hodunks with fiery bullets, the car and crew now on fire and well on their way to becoming an inferno, Anthony gives his final order. “Now let’s get this done before they pull some trick and tear our ride apart.”

“Actually, I’m just gonna split, Anthony. Tell Pinkie to hop down at the cliff ahead, and then I’ll boost us back into the Dust!”

“Alright, alright, just figured we might as well finish the last lap and a half but whatever.” Anthony concedes. After sending Pinkie the message, Dash does just as she stated and the trio is back in the Dust, the Hodunk clan completely defeated, as well as their prize vehicle wrecked beyond any form of repair known to the local solar system.

Anthony couldn’t help but feel like bragging. Calling up Moxxi, he informs her that her spice vans won’t be having any more trouble. And the Hodunks won’t be a problem for a while either.

“Wait, you destroyed the Megatank?!” Moxxi replies in a shocked tone. “They’ve been usin’ that thing to terrorize everybody out near the Dust for ages! I’ll betcha a bunch of the other clans out there’ll be happy with you three. Stop by the bar, and I’ll give you your rewards, and the next assignment, if you want it!”

“You got it, we’ll be there in no time. And by the by, if they do start causing problems again, we’ll just have another race with them.”

“And by race, we mean totally blow the hay outta whatever crazy car they slap together!” Rainbow adds and the three Junior Vault Hunters share a high five.

Comments

[Shattered_Moon]

New chapter! WOOOOOOO!

[Divan1229]

We don’t forget your presence here. Nice chapter.