Rhys fumbles his way into being a hero, which sucks, but at least he has soap now. Axton is kind of hot if you're into incredibly divorced 26 year old adult men who keep saying "Cool story bro" Zer0 is so nice to Rhys. They're helping him so much. He doesn't even know.
Also under the cut:
“Look, these are two fresh human heads, not even a day old. Buy one, get the other half-off. How often are you going to come across a deal like this?” Rhys never thought this was where a life of pursuing business would take him. But the former Lanceman who paid out the bounties only looked at the heads with disgust and refused to take them. He at least paid out half the bounty, and was kind enough to suggest they try Doctor Zed’s clinic.
Zed’s was easy to find, which was a relief, as Zer0 had insisted that he continue to carry the head they’d given him, despite having room in their storage deck. They made no secret of enjoying his discomfort, with their stupid smug sideways smiley faces. Even knowing how unhinged people on this planet were, lugging around a human head made Rhys feel like a freak. Enough so that he was almost relieved to enter the clinic and find it grungy, dimly lit and splattered in blood and viscera– it made selling this thing seem reasonable. He just hoped he’d never need medical attention while he was down here.
“And how’d you say you killed ‘em?” the “doctor”, Zed, asked. The man matched his workspace, he wouldn’t look out of place as the killer in a horror movie.
“Zer0 here decapitated them both—quick, clean strokes. Instant death.” Rhys assumed this was the sort of kill a mad scientist would want. Zer0 lurked behind him, holding up both heads for display. They’d agreed to let him do the talking and hadn’t even fought him on his ten percent commission.
“Hmm… I don’t have anything in the works that needs a head…” Zed rubbed his chin with a gloved hand, leaving a streak of blood on his medical mask.
“Right, but what about when you do need them? You gonna settle for some random bandit’s head? These are Hyperion heads here, that guarantees they had a great diet, no major head trauma, no history of eridium use.”
“I’ll admit, it is tempting.”
Rhys gave his winning grin. “Trust me, I’ve worked for Hyperion, they may be a bunch of assholes, but they take care of their employees’ heads. You won’t find better.” “Do they stuff all of yer heads with those cybernetics?” He stepped closer, plainly studying Rhys’s head, now.
“N-no. That’s optional.” Rhys couldn’t help but notice the buzzaxe leaned against the medical cart, within Zed’s arm’s reach. He hoped all the blood in this place had been just from cutting apart cadavers, but now that he was considering it, would a corpse’s blood spatter that way?
“I admit… Was kinda curious about the effect those had on a human brain…”
“Oh, well, I can’t guarantee whether they have cy-cybernetics or not, but...” He resisted the urge to take a step back. Keeping up the confident facade was getting difficult.
“They will sell fast, / Many others expressed interest. / Time is limited,” Zer0 cut in unexpectedly.
He forced himself to smile and nod. “Yeah, and…” He floundered for another selling point. Usually he was good at this. Usually the client wasn’t some sort of axe murderer.
“You know the rumors, / Of Hyperion’s workers, / Forced to be robots.”
“Exactly.” Rhys was quick on the uptake. “They start with small implants, stuff we’d never even notice them putting into us. Some guys up on Helios are walking around with more metal than brain matter. There’s a good chance that one of these heads here has at least a chip or two in it.” Zed considered this for a moment. “Oh, what the hell? I’ll take ‘em!”
When they got outside again he was half tempted to thank Zer0 for their help. Maybe he would have even complimented them on their sales tactics. Thankfully, they destroyed that urge immediately, “When you end up dead, / I’ll know what to do with you, / It seems he’ll pay well.” They projected a winky face.
“That’s not funny,” he said, thrusting their cut of the money out at them. “And despite what you may think, I don’t plan on dying here.”
Zer0 pocketed the money without looking at it, shot him a red glowing “LOL”, and walked away. He wished he would have taken a larger percentage, if they didn’t even care enough to check. Maybe it was them who robbed him in the first place…
Between the bounty and the heads, the money proved to be enough to buy everything he needed, from toiletries to a basic storage deck holster. Even a second outfit and a quick-change subscription. Sanctuary’s prices were far better than Helios’s, though the clothes here were used and sported some suspicious stains, and everything else was off-brand and of questionable quality. Even the soap smelled vaguely wrong.
He split up what little money remained and tucked part of it in his insoles. The rest went in the storage deck. He’d have to find a way to make more before he ran out of food money, unless he wanted to live off of old Atlas MREs, which he didn’t.
For now, Rhys returned to the Archives to stow what he couldn’t fit into his storage deck and give himself some quiet to write up a report to Jack. The place was still deserted, the other Vault hunters must have been out searching for leads on Roland. Fruitlessly, he hoped. Or maybe they’d find a corpse, that would destroy the Raider’s morale.
He sat down on his bed and began to draft out a message, trying to present his mission to Southpaw as if it hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Any correspondence with Jack couldn’t seem like a waste of time, Jack’s time was valuable. Millions of dollars every minute valuable.
But, really, all he’d gained there was proof that Wot was insane, unreliable, and dead. Rhys tried to fill in the gaps by highlighting his own value, how he’d made himself appear useful to the Vault hunters–scratch that, the bandits, Jack would prefer they be called “bandits”–and how that could be used to Hyperion’s advantage. “They trust me, they’re willing to rely on my ECHOeye. I could use that to lead them right into a trap, if you had one in mind. I have a few ideas of my own, I might be able to hack some of their systems. Gaige uses a homemade bot and Axton’s turret’s security is probably way out of date, if I hacked either of thos–”
His writing was interrupted by a bright flash and a boom, coming from the center of the room. One second, everything had been still, now papers were flying everywhere, and the floor was slightly on fire, rimming a scorched circle. In the center lay a blood-covered, slightly smoking human figure.
Stunned, Rhys deactivated his ECHOeye, stood up, and approached cautiously. The woman was skinny, red haired, and blue-tattooed. And still breathing.
Okay, so maybe Wot wasn’t completely out of his mind.She sure as hell resembled the villain in that “Liberation of New Haven” reenactment on the ECHOnet, except, smaller and less sinister.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, prodding her with the very tip of his foot, ready to leap away if she moved or started another fire. Her lack of response was unsurprising, there was a lot of blood.
For a long moment, he just stared at her, expecting something to happen. For her to get up, or disappear again, or burst into flames. Instead, she just lay there.
He glanced at the door. It remained firmly shut, no one else had come running to investigate the sound. Without their Commander around, no one really had a reason to show up here in the middle of the day, did they? So, he was alone with Hyperion’s greatest enemy, back from the dead, and she was helpless. Opportunity had just up and landed in his lap.
The thing to do–the thing Handsome Jack would want him to do–would be to kill her before she woke up. All he had to do was smother her with a pillow or something, and pretend she’d arrived here only to die of her wounds. Though, smothering was a bit personal, too hands-on… His stun baton was charged up again, that might be enough to kill her… Or he could just keep his mouth shut, and wait, she might die on her own. Could he still take credit for that? Jack would want him to take initiative… Okay, fine, he could do the stun baton. His hand found it at his belt. He grasped it, making no move.
Lilith was scrawny, not a muscle on her. For someone fabled to have burned countless people alive for fun, she didn’t look dangerous. And she certainly wasn’t dangerous right now, which was more reason to seize the moment and kill her. It would be so easy, he could take off her shield first to be sure, returning it when he was done.
She wouldn’t feel a thing, right?
And he’d already killed at least five bandits, each time feeling nothing but a sense of victory, what was the problem now? It wasn’t like he’d be a murderer, this was war.
He managed to get as far as touching the stun baton to the side of her head. He couldn’t make himself push the button to activate it. Kicking himself for cowardice, he turned around and searched up a first aid kit on the wall. Inside, there was a single insta-health, maybe enough to stabilize her. Again, he hesitated. It was one thing not to kill her, another altogether to save her. Still, he found himself jabbing the needle into her arm. Then he ran out of the building to find help.
———
Afterward, when Lilith, still unconscious, was being taken care of at Zed’s, Rhys ducked out of the clinic, onto the street and finally messaged Handsome Jack. “Lilith is alive and just appeared in Sanctuary.” For the moment, Southpaw was unimportant.
Jack’s response took a while. “Thought she’d show herself, now that Roland’s missing. She say anything about that?” He sounded pleased, but unsurprised.
“She’s injured, she’s been unconscious since getting here.”
Jack laughed. “The Bloodshots must have done a number on her. If she wakes up, she’ll put you on Roland’s trail. Let me know when that happens—I’m gonna need the Vault hunters out of Sanctuary for a few hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and I don’t need the intel from those assassins anymore. They’re probably smoking husks at this point. Also, I have a surprise for you, coming up. Like, a perk. You’re gonna love it.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m looking forward to it.” If he even deserved perks, at this rate. He’d even walked with the Crimson Raider’s carrying Lilith to the clinic, watched as Tannis injected her with a syringe of eridium. More because he felt obliged to at that point than anything else, what with the soldiers already praising him for his “quick actions”. But it made him look like even more of a traitor to Hyperion. He sighed, feeling deeply tired as he started toward the Archives. The sun was down, and there wasn’t much he could do now but hope no one else found out.
“Hey, if it isn’t the hero of the hour!” Axton’s voice shattered this hope before Rhys had cleared town square. A second later he was being clapped on the back. “Nice job, man.” “I-” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. He turned to see Axton, Maya, Salvador, and Krieg. The four were grimy with sweat, dirt, and dried blood, they must have just gotten back into town. “I hardly did anything, to be honest. Just-just was in the right place at the right time, y’know?”
“And maybe saved the entire Pandoran resistance,” Maya said. “That’s more than we managed today.”
“Yeah, don’t gotta be fake humble, dude,” said Salvador.
“Flagellate your principal!” Krieg gave a barking laugh and clapped Rhys on the back about three times harder than Axton had, almost knocking him over.
“C’mon, we’re headed to Moxxi’s,” Axton said. “I’m sure we could get you a free drink or two. In celebration, or whatever.”
“Is it really a night to be celebrating anything? She’s uh, she’s still hospitalized, and Roland’s missing…” Honestly, though, a drink sounded good about now.
Axton shrugged. “Look, in the past couple days, I’ve survived an exploding train, fractured my skull, took nearly ten bullet wounds, and got mauled by a skag. Situations like this, you gotta take the chances you get. Also, it’s Friday.”
———
Rhys had never been so miserable getting free drinks while random strangers occasionally approached to tell him how lucky it was that he was around. How the hell did everyone already know? At this rate, news of his “heroism” was bound to reach Jack eventually. If it hadn’t already. Maybe Jack’s “surprise” was a bullet to the head. Or worse, Jack had some creative ways of killing people. This could be the sort of thing where they’d still be finding his body parts a decade from now when he was a cautionary tale: the stupid jackass who was too soft to kill a mass murderer and win the war for Jack, after Jack had trusted him…
The other Vault hunters had quickly lost interest in his dour company and he snuck off and find a couch in a quiet corner, going mostly unnoticed by the other patrons. This should have been a bar on Helios. These should be Hyperion employees celebrating him…
He should march right back to Zed’s, shoot Lilith, and flee town. He had a better chance of surviving the Pandoran wilds than surviving Jack, for what little that meant… He sat there brooding until Axton found him again and took it upon himself to lift his spirits. “What’s a good looking guy like you doing in the sad loser corner?” he’d asked, and soon he was on the couch beside him, regaling Rhys with anecdotes from his life as a Dahl soldier.
At some point, Axton had slung an arm over his shoulder. Rhys leaned into him, he was completely willing to see where this ended up. Axton might be former Dahl, current bandit, and the sort of divorced guy to wear his ex-wife’s wedding ring on a chain around his neck, but hey, there were worse distractions. And fine, he was hot if you ignored about seventy percent of his personality. Or if you’ve had a couple drinks and needed not to think about anything other than how Jack would kill you.
“So we’re fighting Vladof on Hestias, and they assign us to protecting this local dign-digni-dignit… VIP. He’s gotta dumb name, like, Jeppery Hands or something? Jepps. Guy’s a total douchebag, he insists on being addressed as ‘my lord’.” “What, like he’s in Bunkers and Badasses or something?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Axton laughed. “He was really serious about it, nade his servants bow to him and everything? Yeah, he had actual servants and everything.”
“Is that kind of thing normal on Hestias?”
“Nope. He was a total jackass…We called him Jazz Hands and it would make him so mad…” He broke off into a laugh. “So, Jepps is small time local government, no one really needs the prick, but he was in Dahl’s pocket, and they didn’t wanna have to find a new guy, I guess. And there was this rebel group Vladof was funding, right? They wanted him dead. So, of course Dahl brass decides we gotta keep him alive, protect him at all costs, you know how corps get? They’re all ‘We lose this shitty backwater and your whole squad gets…Gets the firing squad.’”
“Yeah, sounds about right.” He tried not to think about that too hard. He was supposed to be focusing on being charming and engaged until Axton started making out with him, or whatever. Not on the various ways Jack might execute him.
“Yeah, I bet… Jeez, Hyperion must…They must be pissed at you. Especially after Lilith, imagine the look on Jack’s creepy mask-face when he finds out. Damn, knowing what I know now, wish I’d tried outright treason when I still had the chance…”
“Oh, yeah… It’s…” Rhys took a long drink. Whatever this stuff was, it managed to be both overly sweet and slightly rancid, and it burned like drain cleaner. Normally, he’d take this as a warning not to keep drinking it. “So, uh, this Jepps guy?”
“Yeah, Jebbs. Total asshole. My squad’s getting killed at every turn trying to keep this dude safe. And like I said, Vladof’s been funding this-this rebel group, the ones who are after Jebbs, and we know they have a base out somewhere, but here’s the thing: that part of Hestias is a shitton of jungle, giant trees blocking out the sun, toxic clouds, man-eating plants everywhere, these monsters with con-concentric-concen…teeth in a bunch of circles, like, whirlpools of teeth, you know those things?”
He nodded absently when he realized Axton paused. With his thoughts on the Lilith issue again, it was getting hard to follow Axton’s story. He wondered how protected she’d be in Zed’s clinic. Maybe he could still fix this. What if he poisoned her? Less hands-on that way.
“I saw a guy get blended by one of those things once, it was nasty…” Axton trailed off briefly. “...Where was I?”
“Uh…” There was a ton of eridium on Pandora… Eridium poisoning was a thing, right?
“Oh, right. Hestias. Yeah, the jungle there is almost as much of a death trap as this place. And the rebels are hiding out there. Hestias is a real hellhole in general, so…” Axton went on, but Rhys forgot he was trying to be engaged and charming.
Wait, no, eridium wouldn’t work, that’s how Tannis healed her… How’d they poison the Atlas CEO? Oh right, Axton.
“So I put a tracker on Jazz Hands, and we ditch him in rebel territory. The enemy captures him, and takes him straight to their big secret base.” Axton laughed, and Rhys figured he should laugh too, here. “So, we get like twenty bots, load them up with explosives, and send them after the guy. Boom! I end a three-year-long conflict overnight, and no more Jebbs–Jepps–Jazz hands.”
“Wow.” He’d already forgotten where this story had even started. …Using someone else to solve his problem, though… There was an idea…
“Of course, since I did it the ‘wrong way’ Dahl got pissed. And then, after Tantalus, where I…” He could hire an assassin. Probably. Someone like Zer0. Except not Zer0, because they were a huge asshole. And they wouldn’t do it.
“...which eventually led to my dishonorable discharge and order for my execution, but hey, it was goddamn awesome.”
Huh. There was a single person in this city who was absolutely sympathetic to Rhys’s cause, and he was still tied up in the gun store. A trained soldier, just like Axton.
When there was a long pause he realized that Axton had finished his story. He gave what he hoped was a charming, engaged grin. “Sounds like it.” Damn, Axton had some cool scars. Really added something to his whole face…area. “So… You’ve been doing this whole, uh, this whole action hero thing for a while, then?”
“Ten years,” Axton said with a sly grin. “Why? You into the whole action hero thing?”
“I’m open to finding out.”
Axton’s face was inches away from Rhys’s, now. Rhys started to close the distance, when an epiphany hit him: Marcus’s would be closed, right now. No one would be there. Except that soldier.
“I-I’m gonna be right back,” Rhys said, rising suddenly from his seat, spilling the rest of his drink on Axton’s lap. “Sorry! I-I gotta do a thing.”
———
Zer0 didn’t return to Sanctuary until it was well past dark, taking the fast travel into Pierce station.
It would be too late to get payment from Hammerlock, they’d have to wait until tomorrow. He’d given them several bullymong-related jobs and they’d knocked them all out in one go, in the process experimenting with methods to quickly dispatch the ugly beasts with both blade and gun. Now they were an expert, and the bullymong population outside the city was cut in half—and a fourth of that was literally.
All in all, a productive day. They were already in a good mood when they saw the Hyperion, shuffling down the street outside the station. He, of course, failed to notice them.
The Hyperion had yet to prove boring, Zer0 thought he might even be as entertaining as someone could be, outside of a fight. Whatever he was up to, they wanted to see it play out. They followed.
Rhys ended up at Marcus’ Munitions, the store shut tight for the night. They heard an “Ugh” as he tried the door, found it locked, and switched to his cybernetic arm. He cursed loudly when the door handle snapped off.
Zer0 chose now to speak up, taking the last few steps to put themself next to him. He smelled of alcohol. “What are you doing?”
He flinched, dropping the door handle. It clanged on the sidewalk. “What are you doing?” He demanded. “Are-are you seriously, actively stalking me?!”
They put a finger to his mouth to shush him. The “stalking” accusation wasn’t new. Usually it was true, and the accuser was seconds from death. “You were quite noisy. / Curiosity gripped me. / Are you robbing him?”
“No! Why would I do that?”
“Because you are drunk. / Your judgement, inhibited. / Perhaps it seemed fun.”
“I’m not drunk, and I wasn’t going to steal anything, okay? I-I was gonna-” He paused, looking back at the street. “I was gonna kill the Hyperion soldier in there.”
“Really?” They tilted their head. This guy was full of surprises.
“Not because I’m like-like you or anything. I’m not a murder-happy psychopath.”
“Of course not.” Zer0 projected a “>:(”. They’d been trying to be nice to him all day, but he was making it hard not to be a little bit petty. True, they enjoyed killing as much as the next assassin, but there was an artistry to their kills that was missing from the average merc’s.
“This-It’s just basic human decency. You people are torturing him down there. Someone’s gotta take things into their own hands and step up and fix that… You hear how I’m a hero now? That sort of thing is the heroic thing to do.”
“Is that what they say?” They wondered how he’d gotten that idea. Betraying Hyperion would put him in the same category as that Claptrap, wouldn’t it? No one was calling Claptrap a hero. “...Fair enough.” With a slide of their hand they digistructed four kunai and carefully selected one imbued with the corrosive element. That, they jammed into the edge of the door, next to where the handle had been. The Hyperion watched in confusion until the metal began to melt around it.
“You’re helping me?” He sounded far from grateful.
“You clearly need it,” they said with a smiley. “You’re likely to get caught, alone. / Now, keep your voice down.”
He hesitated, staring at them in disbelief, then gave a defeated “Okay. Sure.”
They opened the door once the acid had done its work, then stepped aside. “Use your ECHOeye. / He may have security. / An alarm, or worse.”
He stood there blinking for a moment while the ECHOeye flickered on. “I don’t see anything.” He started to walk in, Zer0 stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Go forward slowly. / Keep scanning in—”
“Can you not?!” He hissed, turning on them and stumbling on the first step. They caught his arm before he could fall.
“You are much too loud,” they said, projecting an extra-bright “LOL” in his face. If he was going to be so hostile, they were going to have fun with it.
“You can go now, you know?” he hissed, shaking them off. “Thanks for getting me in, but I don’t need help.”
“I would like to watch.”
“That’s really weird.”
“You may find yourself grateful. / When you mess this up.” He would absolutely mess this up. The only question was how far they’d let it go. They needed him alive, and it was probably better he didn’t completely despise them. Beyond that, though…
Rhys just sighed, looking around the room. His ECHOeye hadn’t flickered back on, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. They grabbed his shoulder again when he started toward the range. “Before you go in. / I want to know your intent. / How will you kill him?”
He pulled away. “I… I was thinking I’d shoot him a few times and run for it?”
“He wears a good shield. / You will need to bypass that. / And silence is best.”
“Uh huh. What do you suggest?”
They lifted their sword. “In the throat, perhaps. / Or, you could just strangle him. / He’s safely restrained.” They expected him to balk at the suggestion, but he surprised them once again by grabbing for the sword. They pulled it out of his reach, flashing him another smiley as he stumbled. Then they handed it to him. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
In the range, the soldier was still tied to the target, fast asleep. Rhys had to clamber clumsily over the counter to get in melee range. There he lined up the blade with the soldier’s throat, froze, lowered the sword, and squeezed past the soldier to cut his binds on the back of the target mount.
“That’s a risky choice,” Zer0 observed, leaning casually forward on the counter to watch. It was what they would have done, if they’d cared enough to kill this guy. Give him a fighting chance.
“I-I’m not killing a helpless man.” He fumbled with the sword, not confident enough to cut the bonds with one clean stroke, and lacking the control to easily saw through them. The soldier’s breathing was unsteady, his face a little too tense. He was fake sleeping, Zer0 realized. Rhys didn’t realize this.
“He might wake Marcus.”
He ignored that.
“He’s doomed anyway.”
He ignored that too.
“Watch out,” they warned as he finished cutting the bonds. The soldier leapt to his feet and turned on the unprepared Rhys, who scrambled backward, holding the sword out in front of him unsteadily. The soldier eyed him with wild desperation, looking for an opening. Of course, the guy wanted a weapon first.
“You’d best finish it,” Zer0 said. They doubted the soldier had been trained to face a sword, unarmed, and there wasn’t a lot of room for him to maneuver—in lieu of the usual painted lines on the floor, each lane was divided by waist-high concrete barriers. Even a complete novice should have been able to stab him, this was a training wheels situation.
“Can you shut up?” Rhys shot back. “You’re not helping.”
“What is the problem?”
“I can’t do this,” he hissed, barely keeping the sword lined up with his foe. It swayed in his hand, either from fear or inebriation. Maybe both.
“You’ve never stabbed anyone?” They feigned shock.
“Of course not!”
“You’re new to killing?”
“Is that surprising?”
“The Hyperion?”
“We weren’t all stabbing each other in the back! Some of us got by on charisma!” He seemed to have forgotten he was trespassing, he was being much too loud. “Now’s a decent time to learn. / Use the pointy end.”
The soldier gave up on acquiring the sword, instead springing over the divider to his right, sprinting for the counter, and diving over it. Zer0 cloaked just in time to trip him on the way out the door. Two shots in the head, and it was done.
“What the—?! Who’s there?!” they heard Marcus call from somewhere further back in the store.
They activated Decepti0n a second time, and watched Rhys. Predictably, he panicked, abandoning the sword as he threw himself over the counter, fell on his face, got back to his feet, and ran for it.
Zer0 calmly picked up their sword and left, hearing Marcus make it to the range as they were headed up the stairs. “Son of a bitch!”
They found Rhys again leaning against Pierce Station, catching his breath.
“That will be your death,” they said, projecting a frowny face at him. “You are soft, indecisive. / Both traits are fatal.”
“Yep, kind of getting that.” He slid down the wall into a sit, balling up his hands in his hair. “If you’re gonna gloat, could you do it somewhere else?”
“I am not gloating.” They were, a little. “And you will get mugged, like this. / Hurry and get up.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. Jack…Jack’s gonna kill me anyway.” When he looked up at them, his eyes were watering, and they regretted following him here. If he ended up outright crying, they’d leave.
“Probably not Jack. / I was thinking of bandits. / Or perhaps skag pups.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Thanks.”
“How drunk are you?”
“What?” “Can you make it home?” They couldn’t just leave him here to have his ECHOeye dug out of his head by enterprising scavengers, they needed him in one piece.
“Yeah. I… That… Pandoran drinks are goddamn poison, but… I’m fine.” He got to his feet, wobbling a little. “I’m fine…”
“Come on, I will walk with you,” they decided. “So you’ll live longer.”
