Discover Top Posts Tagged with #rhys tftbl

Aug 5

Rhys goes to Sanctuary and women are disapproving, suspicious, and inconsiderate towards him in spite of his good-hearted and generous nature. </3

Also under cut:

Sanctuary’s fast-travel station was in the middle of town, a fact that Rhys was grateful for. The edge of the ship wasn’t visible from here; it was easy to imagine that this was a normal city, somewhere flat, with a horizon in a normal place behind buildings. The wind was blowing hard, picking up dust and countless bits of trash with it, but the ship felt perfectly stable. Even so, Rhys couldn’t forget where he was. How did anyone feel safe here, floating thousands of feet in the air? …Then again, he’d always felt perfectly safe on Helios. But Helios wasn’t an ancient mining ship. An ancient Dahl mining ship. This thing was obsolete when they built it, and it was never meant to support a city on top of it. Yet somehow it hung there in the air, and the remains of Helios was in pieces on Pandora. That didn’t make Rhys feel much better.

Acrophobia aside, it just felt strange to be up here, former Hyperion that he was. A few years ago, before the city was airborne, Jack had managed to sabotage the Sanctuary’s shield generator. Everyone had gotten a few minutes off of work to celebrate the city’s destruction. Rhys, Vaughn, and Yvette had even claimed a good window spot to watch the moonshots. The celebration had abruptly ended when the city vanished into thin air, and they’d all had to go back to work, but a bunch of Sanctuary citizens had undoubtedly died while Hyperions popped champagne bottles. Any one of the people here would not be entirely unjustified for shooting him, if they’d known that.

…Maybe he’d yet to recover from plugging himself into that simulation, his thoughts were veering into morbid places. Okay, on the bright side, this was the first time he’d stepped into a Pandoran city other than Lynchwood and didn’t immediately hear gunshots or screams. Mostly he heard the machinery that kept everyone from falling to their deaths…should it sound like that?

Wrapped up in his anxieties, he almost didn’t notice Athena, waiting for him outside the station building. She leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, pushing off when she saw him. The look she gave him was sour, even for her. “Hey, Athena,” he greeted uncertainly, trying to work out if there was any reason for her to be mad at him. “Maya called you here too?” “Yep.”

“Oh. Any idea what this is about?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Oh, that’s…That’s kind of what Maya said.” He gave a nervous, clipped chuckle. “…Did…Did I do something?”

She gave him a long, searching glare, then sighed. “Frankly, unless you’re way more of an idiot than I originally thought, probably not.” She turned, gesturing for him to follow. She led him to a building not far from the station. An ancient-looking sign designated it as the “Sanctuary City Archives”. Its entrance was crowded with flowers, candles, photos, and handwritten notes, as well as a few weapons, the skull of some Pandoran monster, and the sliced-off hand of a Loader bot. A memorial for Zer0, Rhys realized. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Zer0’s a huge celebrity here…”

“I’m surprised that you’re not president of their fan club, all things considered.” Athena said.

He decided there was no good way to respond to that. In retrospect, he had been a little embarrassing about them on the caravan ride. The road got shockingly boring for a death planet, the whole murder rally thing was fresh in his mind at the time. Maybe he exaggerated the story of how they’d saved him and Sasha, changed a few things around—that they’d had so much faith in them they’d thrown him the sword to kill that gargantuan skag with, rather than simply dropped it near him; and no one could prove they hadn’t given him one last glance of mutual respect before walking off into the sunset (nevermind that it had been morning). Even then, his admiration for Zer0 was of a different flavor than that of these obsessive fans. He wasn’t weird about it. One of the fans had written on the wall in large, unsteady print: “zer0, u were badass / i am so sad u r ded / chairy blosoms fall.” He wondered if Zer0 would enjoy knowing about this, or just be embarrassed by everyone thinking they’d died. Maybe both.

“Wow, I didn’t think you’d ever actually leave that place,” a familiar voice said. He turned to see Fiona, approaching with her hands full of shopping bags.

“Oh, hey.” Immediately, he decided he’d be the bigger person this time. He wouldn’t call her out on wrongfully setting a deeply concerned Vaughn on him. “How’s it going? How’s uh, how’s Sasha doing?”

“Sasha’s great. Actually, she was just talking about you the other day. Told me about some of the stuff you’ve been having shipped to your creepy facility.”

“Oh, haha, wow. She…She’s really got eyes everywhere, huh?”

“She gets some shipping manifests, yeah.”

“She’s not, uh, selling stuff like that, is she? I kinda thought, being friends and all, my business would be exempt from her whole infobroker thing…” Technically, Sasha was an infobroker-slash-middleman, catering mainly to Vault hunters and their clients. It was a fitting line of work for Sasha, she’d always been strangely good at knowing things and she had an obvious knack for business. Every once in a while Rhys paid her for some intel—stuff that the Jack AI wouldn’t have access to—but then she’d ask stuff like “Am I unwittingly helping the rise of your evil corporate empire?” and he’d get defensive, and later he start wondering if that’s what she actually thought, and it was always weird to wonder if his friends thought he was potentially evil. So, he avoided that as much as he could.

“She’s not stupid,” Fiona said, “if she sold all the dirt she had on you, someone from Hyperion would have killed you by now. She keeps an eye on things in general, found that, and after everything else you’ve been doing, it sounded pretty goddamn suspicious, so she told me.” “Suspicious?” Rhys’s voice rose in spite of himself. “What, a little extra protection on the murder planet? What evil am I gonna do with instahealths?”

“Hey, I never said evil. But you gotta admit it’s weird. How many instahealths could one guy in his creepy facility possibly need?”

“What’s weird is sending Vaughn to— ”

“Hey,” Athena broke in, “I didn’t come here to play referee for you two. Settle this later, I’ve got things to do.”

“Right.” Fiona brushed past Rhys to go in. “C’mon, dweebus, you’re still not off the hook for whatever this is.”

Rhys remembered that he’d been trying to be the bigger person. Whoops. He followed the women inside and up the stairs, into a cluttered room with a small holographic war table in its center. On one side sat Maya. Across from her was what looked like a shorter, fancier version of Zer0, sitting there with his feet up on the table. On one leg he wore what looked to be an ankle monitor. He barely spared the newcomers a glance before returning his attention to his ECHO device. Rhys could only stare.

Fiona took a canned soda from one of the bags. “You get gummies if you cooperate,” she told the look-alike as she set the soda down in front of him, then a bag of bendy straws.

The look-alike set down the ECHO and grabbed the can. “It’s not even cold,” he complained.

“Best I could do,” Fiona shot back. “If you want it cold, put it in the fridge and wait.”

“Ugh. Whatever.” He ripped open the bag of straws with four-fingered hands.

“Okay, so what’s…Going on here? Exactly?” Rhys still couldn’t take his eyes off the look alike—he really was shaped similarly to Zer0, too noodly to be a normal healthy human. He opened the can, put the straw in, and stuck it up through the bottom of his helmet to sip.

“This is Campion,” Maya said. “We caught him a couple days ago, thanks to a lead from our informant. He was one of the people who attacked Zer0.”

“And he’s just loose? Alive?” Rhys remembered how bad Zer0 had looked when he’d found them—there had genuinely been a moment when he’d thought they were dead. They would have died, if he hadn’t been there. “You’re buying him sodas?”

Maya held up her tattooed arm, letting it glow for a second in demonstration. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s a kid, I try to maintain something resembling a moral compass. Can’t exactly lock him up in our tiny cell downstairs.”

“He says he’s from Atlas,” Fiona added.

Rhys gave a surprised laugh, but all three women were looking at him, expecting something. “Wait, sorry, do you think I have a uh…a Zer0 cosplayer on my payroll? That I hired a kid to kill Zer0? What exactly am I being accused of?”

“I’m not necessarily accusing you—” Fiona put extra stress on that word and tapped her temple in the place an ECHOport would be, “—of anything. Aside from being an idiot.” He shot her a glare. With Maya and Athena here, there was nothing he could say to defend himself, and she knew it. “Never seen that guy in my life.” Campion said, still sipping his drink and once again glued to his ECHO. “If that’s what you’re talking about.”

“You said you’re Atlas,” Fiona said.

“Yep.”

“So he’s your CEO, right?”

“Pfft. No.”

“I mean, I am Atlas’s CEO. I’ve got the documents and everything.” Rhys felt it was important to maintain his position. Legally, or something. If anyone in the galaxy still cared enough to try to institute law.

“I think they’ll kill you if you go around saying that,” Campion insisted.

“What? Who—who’s the ‘they’ in this situation?”

“Atlas.” He said it like he thought Rhys was stupid. “That’s like, usury, or something, right?”

Athena, who'd watched silently up until now, made a sound that might have been a laugh. “‘Usurpation’. At least, that’s what Atlas would have called it to make it sound more consequential than ‘stealing the name of a defunct corporation.’” she said. “Where were they keeping you all this time?”

Campion shrugged. “Asteroid facility three-oh-two.”

Now it was Athena’s turn to be the target of expectant looks. She gave a shrug. “Sounds like he’s part of a loyalist cell,” she explained. “A few hung on after Jack took over Atlas. There was a big one in Old Haven that Lilith and Roland took care of, I cleaned out a few others here on Pandora. I thought the rest of them either disbanded or made the mistake of going directly after Jack. But this one must have held out. Strange they’d make the mistake of coming to Pandora now…”

“Guess they heard you’d retired,” Fiona said.

“I might have to reconsider that.” Athena said, looking at the kid with an expression Rhys hadn’t seen from her before. Sympathy? Pity?

“Wait, seriously? Loyalist cells?” This was all new information to Rhys. He understood that some of the Lance soldiers had gone straight to banditry when Atlas abandoned them, and those associated with Gortys had tried to hold onto Atlas’s power up until the very end, but loyalist cells? Once the corporation stopped paying you, what was left to be loyal to?

“You’re surprised?” asked Athena. “Haven’t you seen some of the ex-Hyperions in Lynchwood?” “Yeah, but they’re not like an actual cell, there.” Were they? Some of them had gotten into a shootout with Vault hunters only a few days ago…

“Every time a corporation abandons a planet, some of its employees are convinced they’re gonna come back for them, if they stay loyal to the mission. Or sometimes it’s that they thought they were serving some noble cause, and they refuse to give it up. And when a corporation completely implodes like Atlas did? You have a bunch of indoctrinated former-child soldiers, current child soldiers, and the once-powerful people who want things to go back to the way they were—or if not that, revenge on the people who stole what they saw as rightfully theirs. Lucky for you, it looks like you’re not on their radar, yet…Just Zer0, for some reason.”

Rhys was almost offended that his Atlas was too much of a small-fry to be noticed, before realizing he should probably be worried.

“What about you?” Fiona asked, voice tinged by concern. “Shouldn’t they have a huge problem with you?”

Athena frowned. “You’re right. I’ll have to make some arrangements, just in case…” She paused, considering. “Though, given the targeting of Zer0, and the fact they never attacked Jack? I’m not sure what their motives are. They might not even be particularly organized.” “No clue who this Jack guy is,” the kid said, finally looking up from his ECHO. “Or you, either,” he said to Athena. “I think we were only here for Zer0, but I dunno. Maybe you were next.” He returned his attention to the little screen, ignoring the stares. He could have had the decency to pretend to feel guilty, in Rhys’s opinion.

“...I think he’s genuinely as ignorant as he acts,” Maya said with a shrug. “It’s likely why we were allowed to capture him in the first place… I don’t suppose you’d have any insight oh him, Athena? Even under the helmet, he looks like Zer0. Same, er, species.” “Species?” Athena looked back at Campion, curiously.

“Or mutation, or product of highly advanced bioengineering, organic robot, whatever the hell process brought about someone like Zer0. Both of them are clearly nonhuman, in the same way.”

“Huh.” Athena studied him. “Atlas did a lot of throwing Eridian technology at a wall and seeing what stuck… But Zer0 never struck me as a corporate killer, much less Crimson Lance.”

It felt disrespectful to speculate on Zer0’s origins, but Rhys couldn’t help but imagine them in this fancier armor that the kid wore, all sleek shapes, smooth edges, and shine. That felt like imagining an entirely different person. It was hard not to think of Zer0’s beat-up helmet as their face.

“Regardless, why would loyalists come all the way out here just to kill Zer0?” Maya asked. “Zer0…wasn’t really…doing anything. Seems like a waste of resources.”

“We didn’t kill Zer0, I already told you that," Campion said without looking up. “They ran off and hid somewhere, and now we got stuck trawling through this gross planet looking for them.”

“You realize, on Pandora, if someone got shot enough to die from it and then disappears, there’s more obvious explanations than ‘they’re just hiding’.” Rhys said. “Like, all the man-eating wildlife, insane bandits, corpse-eating plants, bombs…”

The glare Fiona gave him would have almost certainly been accompanied by a kick in the shin, were she standing close enough.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not trying to be insensitive, I’m just being realistic…”

Fiona looked like she might actually cross those last few feet. And Maya was also giving him a look. “Sorry. I…I’ll shut up.” Admittedly, if Maya actually thought Zer0 was dead, he’d definitely deserve that hypothetical kick in the shin.

“Are we done yet?” Campion asked, unfazed. “I cooperated, I was promised snacks.”

“Yeah, uh, if I’m in the clear, now, I really should be getting back,” Rhys said. “Important Atlas stuff, ya know? Don’t wanna leave that alone too long…” The words came out sounding more forced than he’d wanted, and Fiona’s expression shifted from vexation to suspicion.

“Who said you were in the clear?” she asked.

“He doesn’t even know who I am. And why would I want to start fights with Vault hunters in the first place? It’s bad business.” Of course Fiona already had an explanation for that; he couldn’t fault her for it, it sounded reasonable. She was right about him using the AI. And if Jack somehow got back into Rhys’s head, revenge would be his first priority. With over a year to ruminate, Jack wouldn’t jump straight to murder-suicide with Rhys. He’d go after the Vault hunters. And to put salt in the wound, it would only make sense to start with the one Rhys liked.

None of that made Fiona’s suspicions any less frustrating. If Jack somehow wormed his way back into Rhys’s head, he wouldn’t hide it. He’d make damn sure Fiona was among the first to know.

“Rhys isn’t in on this,” Athena said. “Whatever else he’s up to, finding Old Atlas forces and winning their loyalty would be beyond his capabilities—and he’s right, he has nothing to gain. He’s still a Hyperion stooge, when you get down to it.”

Rhys frowned. He knew this was Athena's way of helping, but did she have to be so insulting about it? “For the record, I didn’t have to show up when Maya called me, I came out of the goodness of my heart,” he said. “But, yeah, unless you have any other questions for me, I’d like to pick up some lunch and get back somewhere that isn’t floating precariously miles above the planet.” He turned to go.

“Hold on, I need to talk to you before you go,” Maya said. She looked back to Fiona, “Keep an eye on Campion, and go ahead and feed him.”

She took him through a door right across the hall. Calling what was inside a “room” would have been generous. There was some concrete flooring on the nearest edge, enough to stand on, but a few feet further in was only chasm. Bits of rebar stuck out over the edge, and below that was clouds. Far off he made out the hazy shape of mountains. Broken walls on either side shielded the room from the wind, but it howled further out. Maya shut the door before turning to face him. “You cannot tell Zer0 about that.”

Rhys put himself as close to the far wall as he could. “Is-is this a threat?”

“What? Why would I—Oh.” Maya seemed to notice the missing floor for the first time. “No, sorry. This just seemed like a suitable place to talk. You can’t hear from outside.”

“Oh.” He tried not to look at the ledge. “I mean, look, I won’t tell them, but, Zer0 might have some input if they knew about this, right? They could help.”

“I already think they either know or suspect more than they’re letting on, but Zer0 doesn’t share anything until they have no other choice. The only reason I ever even saw their face was because they had a concussion, and that was an ordeal. Otherwise, the most personal information I’ve ever gotten out of them is vague references to people they’ve killed.”

“...Wait, with their helmet on?” He was finding it hard to pay attention to both what Maya was saying and how unsturdy this flooring looked. It was cracking in places and seemed to slope slightly towards the edge. “What?”

“They got a concussion with their helmet on?” He managed to tear his eyes away from the abyss. “It’s not a very protective helmet.” “Oh. They uh, implied otherwise, earlier… Anyway, uh, I already told them that I was meeting you here, so I need to tell them something.”

“Right, okay, give me a moment to think about this...”

He stood there, pressed against the wall, trying to convince himself that if Maya thought this was a safe place to be, it probably was. It probably wasn’t any more dangerous than the rest of Sanctuary, it was only more visibly precarious.

That wasn’t reassuring.

“I got it.” There was little conviction in her voice. “Tell Zer0 I needed you to use your ECHOeye to go over some gear from the mercs we killed the other day. We were still trying to find a connection to Lynchwood and Hyperion. There were none.”

“Are you absolutely sure they can’t just… Handle the truth?” he asked. “They’ve…They’ve been better about resting and stuff, I think they’re accepting their limitations.”

“I don’t know.” She held her hands out in an uncertain gesture. “I don’t like lying to them, but I was talking to Athena, and she agrees: maybe Zer0 is calm now, while there’s nothing for them to do, but this? This seems personal. Have you ever seen anyone who even remotely resembles Zer0 before today?”

“I…I don’t know what Zer0 looks like?” He was almost tempted to ask her, but she clearly respected Zer0’s privacy, and he had been doing a good job of that too, so far.

“If there were many stick-skinny, four-fingered non-humans running around the six galaxies, you’d notice. Somehow this has a connection with wherever Zer0 came from, or who they are, and I don’t think Zer0’s going to take that sitting down.”

“True… It just…Feels weird to lie to them about whatever this is. Wouldn’t they be pissed? If they knew?” He already had one secret with the potential to ruin whatever friendship they’d developed over the past few weeks, he didn’t want to rack up a second.

“They faked their own death and made us cover for them. I think this evens it out. If they don’t see it that way…” Maya trailed off for a second. “...Well, ideally, they won’t need to find out. We’ve got a major lead, we’ll take care of this before they’ve recovered enough to involve themself.” She sounded no more certain of herself than before, but the core of her argument struck Rhys as true. Maybe the Vaughn thing had humbled Zer0, but he couldn’t imagine them ever being that humbled.

“Alright. But if they get mad, this was your idea.”

“I can manage Zer0 being upset,” she said. “In the meantime, it would help a lot if you could try to discreetly look into these loyalists and their ties to Zer0? You must have access to a bunch of Atlas files in that place. There may be something on that asteroid facility Campion mentioned. Three-oh-two.”

“I can try. No guarantees, I haven’t bypassed all the old Atlas security…Uh, speaking of, what I really need to do is look into getting us some secure ECHOcomms, Zer0’s gonna start getting antsy if we keep meeting up.” And that way he wouldn’t have to come all the way up to Sanctuary again. Nor would he have to deal with Fiona.

“Good plan.”

He started toward the door, then paused. “Are you sure this is safe? Having this Campion guy loose, here? Sure, he’s a kid, but are you like, locking him up at night, or something?”

“He has an ankle monitor. It’ll alert us if he leaves the building. If he gets out regardless, there’s a fail-safe built in that’ll disrupt the fast-travel. And if he tries to take the monitor off, it’ll give a gradually intensifying electric shock—we’re not being stupidly moral. The only other way out of Sanctuary is–“ she gestured to the sheer drop off the edge.

He nodded, making an effort not to look again. “Right, but what if he tries to kill someone? Or if he’s here to spy?”

“We didn’t survive taking down Jack by being completely negligent, he’s under full-time supervision. As for spying, I’ve been working off the assumption that’s exactly why we were allowed to capture him. He won’t find anything.”

“I mean, he did ‘find’ this” —he pointed a thumb at himself– “Atlas usurper. I’m not a huge fan of possibly being on a weird old Atlas cult’s radar, y’know?”

“I doubt that you’re in significantly more danger than you were before. I mean, you’re already advertising.”

“Right, okay. Still, you...You didn’t think I actually did anything, right?” Maya might not know him very well, but he had Zer0’s trust, and he thought he was pretty good at appearing trustworthy in general. “I mean, to what ends?”

She sighed like she’d been expecting that question. “Yeah, I’m sorry. When Campion admitted to working for Atlas, Fiona insisted we check in on you. She says you’ve been ‘acting weirder than usual’. I didn’t have a good excuse to vouch for you—as far as she knows, I met you a few weeks ago to get some free guns. I have no reason to see you as anything but a reclusive eccentric living in a blood-stained secret facility.”

“Ah, yeah, true.”

“Fiona’s perceptive. Sometimes I think I’m a step away from her noticing something suspicious about me, too.”

“You’re probably fine. I met Fiona trying to steal her caravan while I was still working for Hyperion. So, she…She already has good reason to doubt my honesty.” He’d need to sort things out with her, one of these days. He’d need to sort things out with everyone, really. Even before Zer0, he’d isolated himself from the rest of them enough that he wasn’t sure even Yvette’s “Eridium addiction” theory was entirely a joke. Hell,.it had been long enough that Vaughn was supportive of his crush on someone he categorized as a “serial killer”. And now this? Fiona had never had the highest opinion of him, but she used to at least trust him—kind of.

He wondered what she would think, if she knew the truth. She’d have to feel bad about these accusations, at least for a few days before she got back on his case about the AI. “...We could tell her about Zer0, you know? She can keep a secret. And she’s a good bullshitter. It…might make things easier.”

“I’ve been considering that. This secret might be more trouble than it's worth,” she said. “But for now, I’ll play it by ear. Zer0 might have been right: with Campion here and a highly suspicious inside contact, there might be merit to her believing Zer0’s dead. Or it could bite me in the ass. We’ll see.”

“I guess.” There was the matter of how much he was already betraying Zer0’s trust as it was, today. He wouldn’t push it. “Uh, one more thing, if we’re done, Zer0 asked me to pick up pizza from Moxxi’s while I was here? Where is that?”

#zerhys #borderlands #tftbl #rhys tftbl #zer0 the assassin #fic #p0is0ned

iwishtheygottogether-tournament

Jun 23

I Wish They Ended Up Together Tournament - ROUND 1 MATCHUP 54

Rhys & Handsome Jack vs Gwaine & Merlin & Arthur

Rhys & Handsome Jack (Tales from the Borderlands)

Gwaine & Merlin & Arthur (BBC Merlin)

Voting ended onJun 30

Propaganda:

Rhys & Jack

genuinely what do you MEAN i can pledge myself to jack, betray my friends, become president of hyperion, and still not get the insane villain romance ending. cowardice.

basic context: rhys is a playable character in tales from the borderlands. he works for hyperion, he’s ambitious as hell, and he used to idolise handsome jack, the dead hyperion ceo/villain. then jack comes back as an ai in rhys’ head and spends the game tempting him with power, approval, and the chance to be important. and depending on your choices, rhys can be VERY into that.

the whole thing is already loaded. jack calls him princess and baby, mentors him, teases him, praises him, pushes him toward being worse, and rhys can just keep choosing him. then in episode 4 jack straight up offers to rule hyperion with him. if rhys says yes, jack gets so happy and immediately announces him as the new president to everyone. "it's you and me... president rhys and handsome goddamned jack" like SIR. why are you doing evil wedding vows over the intercom.

i wish the game had let us commit to that path permanently. no last-minute moral reset, no forced falling out, just rhys deciding “actually yeah, i want the power, i want the throne, and unfortunately i also want the terrible man in my head.” let them be evil corporate husbands.

#ended up together tournament #tales from the borderlands #tftbl #rhys borderlands #rhys tftbl #handsome jack #rhys strongfork #rhack #bbc merlin #merlin #arthur pendragon #gwaine

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