The Mane six are called to look at Mysterious ruins Celestia has discovered, and get transported to Eridian ruins on Pandora, hilarity and adventure ensues.
As Celestia takes a leisurely flight across a rather mountainous region of equestria, she notices a purple glow coming from a cave on the side of a mountain, When she enters she is invited by floors, walls and ceilings made of squarely cut blocks of a strange stone with purple lines of what looks to be some sort of energy flowing through it, she calls the mane six to come look at it, and call upon them to find out what it is and what it's purpose was. The ponies accidentally trigger a teleportation sequence teleporting them to the eridian ruins in caustic caverns on pandora.
"Is this the chamber you told us about Celestia?", Twilight asked as the Mane six led by celestia approached a small opening in the side of a mountain. "Yes, it is my dear student, I'd like you to figure out what it does, and report back to me when you are finished. I will return shortly, but for now i have business to attend to at Canterlot." and with that Celestia teleported away in a flash of bright light. leaving the Mane six alone to investigate the strange chamber. With that the group entered the cave, not quite knowing what to find. The inside of the cave was made up entirely of square blocks with strange glowing purple lines flowing through them and there was a large pyramid in the center of the room made up of smaller blocks than the walls. on top of the pyramid was six rather slender statues of humanoid shape all surrounding a purple orb levitating inside a beam of light leading from a cylinder in the floor to a cylinder in the ceiling. Pinkie instantaneously ran up to the orb.
"Ooh What's this? its glowing!"
Twilight groaned and said "Pinkie leave that alone, you don't know what you are do-" Twilight was inturrupted by a flash of purple light and her own consciousness slipping away.
"Ugh... My head" Twilight moaned as she got up off the floor of square stones.
"Huh, That's strange the stones aren't glowing anymoOOOHSWEETCELESTIA!" She exclaimed as she realized they weren't in the chamber anymore, but they were on top of a tower of square stones, much like the ones in the previous cave except these ones weren't glowing.
There were one or two of the slender humanoid statues nearby although a few looked ruined, and a few crumbling stone arcs spanning from the spire to a few small towers of the stones. There were what looked to be mine tracks, with a few mine carts nearby. Twilight looked behind the spire to see a large lake of a green bubbling liquid. She also saw a large Building made of metal and a tiny shack near it. There were dead trees littered about the landscape and above her was the ceiling of a cave, and a hole with metal support beams sticking out where it reached the surface. As the other mane six regained consciousness and were soon rendered speechless by their surroundings Twilight could only stare, mouth agape at the dark ruined landscape of the cave that lay before them.
"Yep," Applejack said "I think we all see it, now are we gonna get moving or are we just gonna set here and stare?"
"Shh!" Rarity said
"What do yo-" Apple Jack halfway said before rarity interrupted her.
"SHH!!" Rarity hissed, "I think I hear voices!"
A few minutes of loud bangs later a group of four two legged tall beings about six feet high with lanky forearms and long legs, emerged from a warehouse by the shore of the acid lake.
"Are those... humans? But they are only legend! mythical creatures!" Twilight exclaimed to the other ponies.
"Well apparently not Twilight or they wouldn't be standing right there" Rainbow explained.
"Ugh, this place is dangerous, I was almost varkid food back there!" one of the humans yelled.
"Well, maybe if you'd taken out the larvae quicker we wouldn't be in this situation!" another complained.
"Stop fighting! Varkids still chasing us!" The bulkiest of the group said as a seven foot tall yellow insect emerged from the ground leaving a large molehill like pile of dirt where it had breached the surface.
The creature had two pairs of mandibles one next to it's mouth, and another above it's mouth slightly behind the others. The insect had wings and wing covers on it's midsection and a tail with a circular shaped thorax in the middle of it. The thorax had three glowing circles on each side. The insect's tail ended in a sharp point.
"Incoming!" one shouted as they all pointed what seemed to be some sort of rod with handles on the side that shot small projectiles of some kind at the insect.
The insect fought back by firing large balls of spit very rapidly at the group of creatures. One of the humans seemed to use some sort of magic to imprison the large insect in some kind of floating orb of darkness, much to The ponies' surprise as legend never said they could use magic, as many eqrestrian myths regarding them tended to state that they couldn't.
one of the humans threw down a small rectangular object then a robotic weapon sprang up from it and started firing the small projectiles at the bug. Another just swung around his sword, then appeared right behind the creature and stabbed it in the thorax, and with that the creature was felled. Rainbow Dash stared at the group with pure admiration of their bravery and strength as Fluttershy hid herself behind Rainbow Dash.
Only seconds after the last one a large group of the insects appeared from the warehouse, but these ones were only about four feet, and were green. The humans reacted by switching their weapons to different versions of the ones they had used before. these versions seemed to shoot green projectiles at the bugs that exploded into acid on impact and ate away at the bugs' natural armor. The creatures attacked by moving their four front legs into the air and swinging them before charging with impressive speed at the humans. The humans took these insects down much easier and quicker than the last one. One of the humans just threw a small ball at one of them and the insect promptly exploded and dropped one of the weapons the humans were using and a bar of the same mineral that the orb back at the chamber was made of! one of the humans grabbed the bar, and ignored the weapon. Just as they were about to kill the last of the insects a large tentacled creature with many eyes appeared and began swiping at the group with it's tentacles! The group promptly shot it in it's eyes and it soon limped over and fell back into the earth where it came from.
"Well, now that that's over with, now what the heck is "In the digger's shadow" supposed to mean?" one said, a puzzled look on his face
"I dunno, but seeing that this place used to be a mining facility it could be anywhere. Let's just keep going and see if we find anything." another one said.
"Sounds good to me!" the bulkier one said.
"Hello!" Twilight exclaimed "I hope I'm not interrupting anything but could you please help us down from here!?"
"Erm, is that purple horse talking to us, or am I just hearing things? Better yet, what are horses doing down here?" one asked the others.
"Yes, She is talking to you!" Rarity exclaimed,"Now get us DOWN FROM HERE!"
The group of ponies and humans are still in the caustic caverns and Twilight explained how they got here to the humans, Much to the humans suprise, as they didn't know there were vaults on other planets.
"Okay, so lemme get this straight, you are Talking magical unicorns and Pegasi that were teleported here by a vault in magical pony land-" The one called Axton was cut off by Twilight.
"Equestria." Twilight corrected.
"Yeah, Equestria, same difference, Ugh, well I guess these guys are trapped on this planet now, I honestly don't know of any way off world. Anyway, I can see the unicorns helping us, but not the others, at least the unicorns could use guns with their magic but the others i don't know, Pandora isn't the kind of place you can just walk around without a weapon." Axton finished.
"Wait, What do you mean there isn't any way off this planet!? We need to get home!" Twilight asked in pure shock as the thought of being stranded here didn't exactly sound very good to her, especially with the idea that this planet was rather violent flying through her head.
"Well, the entire story behind the hordes of bandits up on the surface is that they couldn't get off this planet after the Atlas Corporation forced the Dahl Corporation to give up their hold on Pandora's resources and leave. both corporations have left Pandora long before today, the bandits used to be family men, miners, workers now just reduced to petty thieves, murderers, and in the case of the Rats, cannibals. So really you fight the bandits, or die. So, anyway, let's address the main problem at hand here, hooves can't pull triggers."
"So everyone on this planet was abandoned? Forgotten? Marooned? That's terrible, I feel bad for them, but they'd probably kill us, even if we did try to help" Twilight thought, with other thoughts also going through her head of what had happened to them after the corporations left that drove them to such lengths of madness.
"We could have Marcus cook up something custom, like a trigger adapter of sorts." The one called Maya said. who had explained how she could use magic prior to the conversation taking place now.
"Who is Marcus?" Twilight asked.
"Marcus is someone we know back in Sanctuary that sells and repairs guns. He is an arms dealer." Axton explained.
"Guys, Maybe we could find a better place to continue this conversation, Sanctuary perhaps, but for now let's get going, before more threshers arrive." Maya said.
"That is good idea." The one called Salvador said.
"Lets get going then" Axton said as the group began moving back the way they came.
On their journey back to the fast travel station the group encountered more of the varkids, these ones were smaller, but still had wings, exept the wings on these ones were too tiny to use for flight, and they could only use them to glide. The smaller larvae stage of these insect creatures fought by running up to the vault hunters and pulling their sharp tail up over their head and stinging the vault hunters, much like a scorpion. A few of them went into some sort of a pupal stage before the vault hunters shot them. The vault hunters took them out rather quickly this time making sure all of the larvae were truly dead.
The acid bubbled vigorously in the backround as they walked across the gloomy landscape of the cave. There were a few crysalisks on the path back, the humans took them down quite easily, as the ponies took cover in a cave waiting for the fight to die down. The crysalisks were creatures three legged creatures made entirely of crystal and they fought by shooting tiny shards of themselves at attackers, with the occasional large crystal, that embedded it's self into the ground then grew larger and exploded, unless it was shot first. Their bodies deflected bullets, and the yellow crystals on their legs kept them alive, these yellow crystals were the creatures' only vunerable point and all 3 of them had to be shattered before the creature dies.
"Do you really think we should trust these guys, we've only known them for like five minutes." Rainbow Dash said.
"Look, If they had the intent to kill they would've done it already Dash. Just look at what they're doing to those creatures out there." Rainbow peeked outside of the cave to see a large mass of exploding crystal heading towards the cave. she quickly moved her head back into the cave out of surprise.
"Point taken" Rainbow Dash said quickly, her heart still racing from seeing a large hunk of crystal hurled by an explosion towards where she was standing.
The creatures were no match for the humans knowledge of combat and weapons, and were defeated rather quickly, the group started heading for one of the large doors, much like the ones on the metal complex in the center of the large cavern, they walked through the doors and the more silent one known as Zer0 turned some sort of valve on the wall.
"What does that do?" Pinkie asked
"It shuts the doors" Axton said.
Inside the room there were what looked to be vending machines that talked, but only dispensed ammunition, guns, medical equipment, and some sort of barrier to protect yourself from enemies, The humans had called them sheilds, but they weren't at all like any sheilds any of the ponies had seen, back in eqestria they were mainly used as fancy decoration for the more wealthy ponies homes, and looked nothing like these. There was also a yellow machine that Axton instantly had walked up to, and pressed the finger button on it, then a holographic map popped up in front of him.
"Ooh what's that!?" Pinkie asked turning to the machine.
The yellow machine was about 4 feet tall with a blue glowing circle 2 inches in diameter on the front, about three and a half feet up on the machine. It also had an antenna on top that had some sort of holographic globe on top of it, A hologram of the words "Fast Travel" were above the globe.
"That's a fast travel station, It allows us to instantly teleport to any other fast travel stations." Maya explained
"So the machine casts a long distance teleport spell on us?" Twilight asked
"Erm... Not exactly, let me ask you a question, have you ever heard of electricity?"
"Like the stuff lightning bolts are supposed to be made of?" Rainbow Dash replied, a confused look on her face as she tried to find a connection in her mind between teleporting and lightning, although she had no luck there.
"Okay, so they've never seen modern technology before, fine. Have you ever heard of a gun before today?" Axton asked. Contemplating how to explain how electricity and technology works, and then having the thought of telling them to just not question how it works, but he quickly pushed the thought out of his mind.
"Well, I'd heard the griffons had come up with something to that extent, but it isn't anything like the ones you use, and are only used for ceremonies, or a show of power, not for combat." Twilight said, the thought that the guns the griffons used also tended to explode when they fired also flew through her mind, although she decided against mentioning it.
"Oh great, these guys are accustomed to a world five thousand years in the past, and now we have to catch them up to speed." Axton said, sighing afterwards, a look of slight irritation on his face, but it only lingered for a second.
"You know, we could always dump that job on Tannis, She knows a whole lot more about it than we do. Plus the knowledge about how these things work isn't exactly needed to survive here, we really only need to teach them how to use them." Maya said, liking the idea of letting someone else do her work for her.
"Who the hay is Tannis?" Applejack asked, not liking the idea that there were soo many people in this 'Sanctuary' place that she'd have to meet and get used to before she could really get comfortable here.
"Tannis is a sociophobic scientist back in sanctuary, she has been studying the vault here and it's connection to eridium, the mineral that your purple orb that teleported you here was most likely made of, you can ask her any questions you have about the new technology at work on this planet, or the vault." Maya explained. "You'll get to meet her in a few minutes, once we get to Sanctuary."
"So are we just going to keep chatting away here, or are we gonna get going?" Axton said, ready to push the button on the fast travel station confirming their request to be teleported to fast travel location 'Sanctuary'.
"Yeah, let's get going, I'm getting tired of sitting in one spot" Rainbow Dash said.
"Okay then", Axton said, pressing the button. They all were atomically deconstructed, to be exactly reconstructed back at the sanctuary fast travel station.
"It may not look like much, but I guess this is your new home now, Seeing as you have nowhere else to stay." Axton opened the door to the building in front of the group. Most of the ponies didn't know what to expect, seeing as they had never even seen a human before today, forget a human living area. There were lots of beds and lockers in the first room the ponies visited along with a desk with various tools on it, a woman was tinkering with them. The ponies noticed that Salvador and Zer0 had left after they had gone through the fast travel, Axton had said that Zer0 had probably went to train, and Salvador probably went to Moxxi's to get a few drinks.
"Oh Tannis, these are our new recruits, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie pie." Axton said pointing to each of the ponies respectively as he said their names.
"Who permitted you to bring animals in here?" said the woman.
"Tannis we can explain, these aren't animals. They're TALKING animals." Axton said.
"Yeah, Talking animals that you have to fill in on any questions they have about modern technology and weaponry." Said Maya with a slight smirk.
"And why am I going to teach horses about technology? Do you have any idea how stupid you sound right now?" Tannis said, quite angered that the vault hunters would leave her to talk to animals, although she did prefer the comfort of animals much more than she did people.
"Wait a minute, since when are we animals?" Rarity asked angrily, being quite offended at being called an animal.
"Since you got teleported to our world where you look exactly like a kind of livestock people used to use for travel." Axton explained. Not willing to mention that the livestock they were being associated with were also rather dim witted, and easily startled.
"Fair enough." Rarity said, still not quite happy with the response she got. Tannis was in a daze wondering weather she had just heard the unicorn in her home talk or not.
"Well, I'll go see if I can't get Marcus to make us those trigger adapters. See ya." Said Maya, heading out the door to the town outside. Knowing she'd probably be a few thousand poorer when she came back, visiting Marcus's shop tends to do that to you.
"Di- Did the unicorn just talk?" Tannis asked, shocked by the fact that the vault hunters weren't lying when they had said the animals talked.
"Well, yeah they wouldn't be TALKING unicorns and pegasi if they didn't talk and now would they?" Axton said.
"I guess they really are going to enlist these ponies as vault hunters in the crimson raiders." Tannis thought, sighing because of the fact that they had gone to such lengths to take in strays to join the raiders. this time literally.
"Well, I guess it's time to show you the upstairs and meet everyone else." Axton said to the ponies.
"Welcome to the Hot dog gorilla cage!" Said a large muscled man sitting on a couch by the stairs.
"Err. yeah. That's Kreig, he is a little... Crazy." Axton said. Not entirely willing to mention the fact that he was shredding bandits with only a buzz saw and screaming about how shiny his new meat bicycle was when they had found him.
"Crazy is one word for it." Said a small girl tinkering with some machinery over at a desk in the corner of the room that thy had entered. in the center of the room was what looked to be a large map of this region of Pandora. marking Hyperion and Crimson Raider encampments. There was a lanky man sitting in a chair with his legs crossed, drinking beer in the corner opposite of the girl. There was also a large muscly man in the room, doing one armed push ups on the floor.
"Are those... Unicorns, and pegasi, and ponies?" The girl asked a look of confusion on her face. as she had never seen a unicorn or a pegasus before, but ponies were also rare here on Pandora.
"Girls, Meet Gaige, inventor and anarchist. Over there in the corner opposite from her is Mordecai, He is a professional sniper, and alcoholic. and over there is Brick, He controls a squadron of bandits called the slabs." Axton said, pointing out each one as he said their names.
"What's up with the horses?" Mordecai asked.
"They're our new recruits." Axton said.
"You have got to be kidding me."Mordecai thought,"Heh, ponies in the raiders, that's a laugh." He thought to himself, a smirk on his face.
"Raiders, Meet your new recruits, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie pie." Axton said, "They can explain how they got to be here themselves, They CAN talk you know."
"Wait just a minute, ponies have hooves." Mordecai said.
"Yeah, I see what you're getting at Mordy, but Maya is working on solving that problem, she's haggling Marcus into building some sort of trigger adapters for the earth ponies and pegasi. The unicorns won't be needing them, as they can just use their magic to fire the weapons." Axton explained, Rather proud that he and his group had really thought of everything the ponies would need.
"Erm... Just one question, where are these ponies gonna be sleeping tonight? We've only got 4 extra beds, and six ponies." Gaige stated, knowing the only reason there were that many extra beds at the current moment was because Lilith was kidnapped, and Roland was brutally murdered.
"Well, Me and Fluttershy can sleep on clouds outside, so that's two less beds you guys need to worry about." Rainbow Dash said, Not minding the fact that she wouldn't have a roof over her head as she slept, that was rather trivial for a pegasus, seeing as she would be above the clouds as she slept any rain that came along wouldn't matter.
"I'm fine with sleeping on a cloud... if that's okay with you guys." Fluttershy said shyly.
"Wait, You guys can walk on clouds? Cool." Axton said, The pegasi never really mentioned that clouds were solid for them, it just isn't something that comes up in conversation, Plus the fact that it was common knowledge back in equestria.
Just as Axton finished talking the door could be heard opening downstairs. "Back with the adapters!" Maya said, eager to see how well they worked for the ponies, as she been dying to see how the ponies would fare in combat. "I got a good eighteen of the things outta him, Apparently Marcus had a lot of scrap lying around, so he just quickly forged up a few. Cost me a lot though. But I have a feeling it'll be worth it to have more allies on the battlefield."
"That's great! We should probably try them out tomorrow though, It's getting late, and i haven't gotten a good night's sleep in eons, Anyone else feel like sleeping?"
The others all welcomed the idea of getting a good night's sleep for a change, and all decided to take a rest, mainly because tomorrow would be the day they'd been planning to raid the Hyperion info stockade for information on Lilith and The Warrior's whereabouts. It'd be a good test of the ponies' skills in battle, and the beginning of their new careers as vault hunters.
"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.
Kreig and Gaige turned the valves beside the pipes, as Mordecai came in again on the ECHO "Cool. Now, hit the other pumping stations and raise the pressure 'til that pipe's fit to burst. Then you can bust the pipe, get to the stockade, and find out where the warrior's buried." And with that he left the vault hunters to their work, as they each got in their vehicles and made off for the 2nd pumping station.
About halfway there, another ECHO transmission came in, this time from the recently deceased leader of the Crimson Raiders, Roland! "Hey, buddy! It's me Roland! Let's kill Handsome Jack then we'll ALL go out for milkshakes!" and with that the transmission suddenly ended, only to be quickly followed up by a transmission from none other than Handsome Jack! "Naw, I'm just playing. He's still really dead. Grabbed his ECHO unit when I left. Just wanted to tell you that Lilith is doing a bang up job charging the- Holy crap are those ponies!?" Handsome Jack laughs hysterically for a few seconds. "That's a new one! Job too tough? Send in the ponies! Nope, can't say it with a straight face. Either way, I'd just called to say that I'm really close to awakening The Warrior, which means you, and all of the other bandit scumbags, are really close to dying. Just wanted to confirm that, just in case you couldn't get your witty bitty bandit heads wrapped around that." And with that the transmission cut off leaving the ponies in pure astonishment that someone could be THAT much of a jerk. No one was that mean back in Equestria. Then again, no one was a human back in Equestria. The ponies were finally beginning to see the close relationship between humans and violence, but at least they weren't all bad.
"Y'know what. You're right. that guy is a jerk." Applejack said.
"You thought that was mean, you didn't have to hear the story about how he scooped out a guy's eyeballs with a spoon. Right in front of the guy's children no less!" Gaige replied, Her skin crawled at the thought of someone getting their eyes scooped out, honestly, she killed people almost every day. Yet the thought of mutilating someone while they're still alive like that still freaked her out a little.
"We will make him scream in agony as we strap him to the torture table of death and put the knife into his knee. Laughing all the way, as we slowly extend the cut down to his ankle, then do the same to the other leg. He screams out for mercy, but gets none as I reach for the bone saw and stick it in hi-" Kreig yelled, before being interrupted by Gaige.
"Kreig? KREIG! Okay. Kreig. We don't need to hear the story of us metaphorically mutilating Jack. Kay?" Gaige said, Feeling rather unsettled after hearing THAT.
They arrived at a small elevator under a roof, with a button next to it. they all gathered onto the elevator and went down into the underground pumping station. They exited the elevator and walked down the brightly lit hallway. there were some stairs there, and as they walked down them they noticed some SGT loaders, farther down where the hallway expanded into a room. The loaders were no match for the ponies' new found battle skills, much like the last group they had to take care of. and they quickly got to the pressure valves and cranked them as far as they would go. They'd decided to get out of there quickly, because the fact that they were in an underground Hyperion complex didn't exactly seem very safe.
As they'd headed to the third pumping station, they'd shot up a group of skags, leaving a few of the ponies wondering where the bullets for the vehicles were stored, as they hadn't noticed storage of any sort for it. Then again, they hadn't noticed any car storage on any of the catch-a-ride machines, but yet that dispensed cars just fine. So none of them decided to question it.
They'd reached the third pump station, and stayed a distance, and hid behind a rock to observe what was guarding the station before they'd charged in. There were a few surveyors flying overhead as what looked to be a few Hyperion hawks and some soldiers guarded the inner complex and a few ION loaders, they'd have to take those out quickly, and a group of SGT loaders guarded the outside, nothing out of the ordinary, then a super badass loader strayed into view from behind the complex. "Okay, are we all ready? Same as last time right?" Gaige said, waiting for a response from the ponies, but got none for another twenty seconds.
"Okay, I'll be the first to say it here. We can't just charge in there with that still in commission! It'd be suicide!" Rarity said, not quite sure of what the super badass was capable of, but what she did know was it wasn't something you'd want to charge in at.
"So we stay here and shoot at it?" Pinkie said, almost confused at the sudden change in plans, as she'd wanted to just rush in, but yet she still needed the group to help, as she knew full well she couldn't kill them all on her own.
"Well that shouldn't be a problem, just shoot at the joints and eye and hide behind the rock when it's gun arms heat up and you should be fine, once the firing from it stops, peek out again to shower it with bullets." Gaige said, "alright, you guys ready now?"
"Less talking more death! I need to cut the souls of mine enemies in half as i chop through their disfigured spleens!"
"Ookay then, Taking that as a yes. Let's go!" Gaige said as she deployed her Deathtrap so he could do some of the work for her. then she popped out from cover taking a few shots at the metal monstrosity with her pistol before going back behind cover to reload. Fluttershy got to work quickly with her sniper, and Rarity was taking down the enemy quite efficiently with her "stick to cover" tactics. Twilight was mainly playing support, blocking enemy shots with walls of magic, and ripping a few robot's limbs off with the pieces of the numerous shattering magical barriers in the process. The rest mainly just peeked around the corner, fired a few shots then ducked back behind to reload. During the process of them hiding behind the rock, A large amount of the attacking bots and Hyperion personnel were killed. The Super Badass had already taken about ten seconds of constant fire, when Rainbow Dash, Sick of hiding behind that rock, Took off, shooting up into the air at blinding speed, before being shot a few times before her shield went down, then she fell. Shot down by the loader, and it's advanced trajectory computing technology.
"Sweet Celestia, RAINBOW DASH!"Twilight screamed, before her horn began to glow brightly, as she prepared some of the most advanced quick healing spells she could conjure at the moment, leaving Rainbow in a respectable state, with only a broken wing and a few burns from the Hyperion Loader's deadly incendiary rounds. Twilight turned to face the loader after examining and cleaning Rainbow's bullet wounds. Before jumping out from behind the rock, and quickly vaporizing the loader with a huge amount of magical energy in a large lazer beam, before promptly passing out on the ground as her vision blurred and her legs seemed to fail her as she fell, and was unconscious before she hit the ground.
