Alongside my companion were four other men: one tall and lanky white guy, one shorter, built Latin dude, another Caucasian but with no notable features, and a tanned bruiser type that was a few inches shorter than myself and nowhere near as muscular. And all of them, including Trev, were wearing their cobbled-together kits and had their guns and close combat weapons on their persons.
It looks like I'm not the only one prepared for shit to hit the fan all of a sudden. That aside, I wonder who these fellas are... Well, thinking isn't going to get me any answers, so I might as well approach them and find out.
Although curious about why there were four more people added to the meal, I didn't give it much thought since I couldn't care less... as long as I wasn't suddenly covering the bill now. Hence, I continued my stride and walked up to Trev and the other unnamed men.
"Yo." I greeted simply.
"Hey, how's it going, Vic?"
"Not too bad, I just got done cleaning and getting those two new places of mine in order, you?"
"Another boring shift, just the way I like it." He paused for a second to gauge me before he asked. "You care if we add some numbers to the outing? I owe them, so I figured since I was taking you out I might as well have em join us."
"Not at all; the more the merrier, I say."
My dark-skinned friend was relieved, so he began introducing each of the men one by one. "Great, let me introduce you to my buddies on the guard then. This is-"
Once he finished his brief introductions, I found the tall, lanky guy was called John, the short, stocky Latin dude was named Dick, the other Caucasian was Josh, and the big bruiser's name was Buford.
"And this here is, Vic, the new guy in town."
"It's nice to finally meet you in the flesh, Vic. Trev here has been yammering on about you nonstop since he came back from his extended break, haha." Buford said, smacking his buddy's shoulder.
"Has he now, hopefully only good things." I replied, trying to hold my laughter back after big ole Buford nearly caused Trev to stumble.
"Of course."
After the introductions were out of the way, I shot the shit with the group for a couple of minutes outside Jerry's before the bunch of us headed on inside. The second I stepped through the doorway, I found there were quite a few more people visiting the restaurant from earlier in the day. Not minding the increased numbers, we headed to the counter and ordered a feast and a couple of rounds of drinks, which ended up costing Trev a whopping 400 bucks. But he was happy to spend it after getting that fat tip from me today.
Right as we got to the booth, I stared at my drink for several seconds whilst I considered whether or not I wanted to drink this piss beer. Although I was in no way a drinker in my past life, I wasn't going to be a stick in the mud, so I relinquished myself to my fate and took part in the festivities as we waited for our food to arrive. The drink wasn't of exceptional quality and tasted pretty bad, like I expected for Pandora, so I held off downing it and just slowly sipped on it while the others enjoyed themselves.
Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long because our piping hot feast came shortly thereafter, and when it did, so did my soda. That I quickly traded my shit beer out for, though not before being encouraged to down it, which I did reluctantly, although reluctantly.
A couple of hours passed by quickly as I was having fun with my new friends, but as with all good times, it needed to come to an end. "Alright guys, I'm out of here. Have a good rest of the night."
"Okay, get home safe, Vic."
"And don't make a stranger out of yourself in the future." Big Buford added.
"Oh, and thanks again for the meal, Trev." I thanked the head guard, who had gotten a little bit tipsy throughout the meal.
Receiving a quiet wave from the man, I took my leave and headed on home with the bags of food I had ordered just before. I had no food in the house right now, so I bought a bunch to go in case the pups and I got hungry.
My stats were pretty insane when compared to the normal person, so a trip that would've taken me ten minutes previously was cut down to just a couple of minutes. Arriving at my front entrance, I unlocked the door to my place and headed inside when my thoughts went to Angel again.
If it were any later, I would've pushed this call off to tomorrow, but it's only a bit after 10, so I'll give her a ring shortly.
Set on checking in with the tech siren and giving her an update in regards to my progress, I entered my first home here in this world and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Sitting there waiting for me was the squad of skag pups, who rushed me and began crying out for the bags of food I brought home.
"You rascals are hungry again, huh? I guess I better get you five fed before I do anything else." I spoke to the pups, who didn't understand a lick of what I was saying... At least not yet.
With a bunch of hungry mouths to feed, I walked over to the kitchen and put the bags of food on the spotless concrete counter. I then brought out several dishes from the cabinets that I had found while I was getting this place in order and filled up five of them full of meat. Following that, I filled up a couple of large bowls with water and set everything down in an easy to clean area, since I was sure they were gonna make a mess of the meal.
"Hey, hey, hey, no fighting; you all have your own plates of food." I barked at them.
The moment I got the pups to behave themselves, I headed over to the couch, removed my armor, stripped down to my drawers and tanktop, that I purchased on my real estate trip through town. As soon as I got my kit off, I crashed onto the leather couch, though not too hard. There weren't any furniture stores out here to my knowledge, so I wasn't about to start breaking the stuff that came with my pad when I had no way of replacing most of it.
I took a handful of minutes just to kick back and relax whilst I organised my thoughts, and once I was good and ready, I was about to give that techno siren a call when I found my ECHO communicator began to ring unexpectedly.
*Ring... Ring-*
I had a funny feeling about who it was, but I held off on voicing those thoughts of mine and looked at the caller ID and, low and behold, it was the siren in question.
"It's funny you called me when I was about to call you beautiful. You wouldn't be spying on me now, would you?" I teased, knowing full well that she had probably been watching me all day or at the very least keeping tabs on me throughout a significant portion of it.
"Umm... You caught me." The pretty raven-haired stunner admitted with a ditsy hands-up gesture.
Well, it's not like it's a surprise when I know you kept track of the original Vault Hunters all throughout their journey.
"Oh, you're giving up that easily, huh?"
"Nn." The pretty young thing replied alongside a nod.
"Well, whatever, I don't really care if you want to watch me carve my way across Pandora to reach you. You haven't found it too gruesome, have you?"
"Vic, I'm not some little girl, you know. I've seen plenty of atrocities and evil being committed all throughout the galaxy with my powers."
"Just checking, doll. It'd be a shame if my means chased you off before we could even truly meet."
"If I were a normal young woman, sure, but as you already know, I'm anything but, so your actions have only piqued my interest in you further."
"Ohh, really." I commented before we started going back and forth.
The two of us enjoyed a semi-playful conversation, but we eventually started getting to the meat and potatoes of the call. "So, how come you've gotten so much larger since the last time I saw you, big guy, particularly your muscles?" The young lady asked while a little bit red in the face and running her eyes over my impressive bulging musculature.
Seeing an opportunity to display my gains and tease this little stunner, I flexed one of my guns and asked as Angel flushed further. "Oh, these old things?"
"Yes, those. I don't know of any possible way you could've put on that much muscle mass in such a short period of time."
"Yeah, that's a secret you're going to have to figure out all on your own or wait till I want to reveal it to you, but for now let's just say I get stronger after every conflict I survive and this is one of those effects."
"...Does that mean you're going to get any bigger than this? I mean, I like what I see, but at a certain point it becomes a little too much, you know what I'm saying."
"Hmm, that's a good question. I haven't grown in height at all, and I'm pretty close to maxing out my frame, so I imagine I'll hit the limit of what my body can put on pretty soon."
"I guess that means you'll stop growing after a certain point, but if not, I'll see if I can't help you in that department."
"I appreciate it, Angel." I paused briefly before I began giving her a rundown of my current situation and the plan I had for the coming week. "Alright, let's get back to what we were discussing before we got sidetracked."
"Sure." The pale beauty shrugged.
"So, as I was saying, I purchased two properties here in Fyrestone to use as my base for the time being whilst I'm busy building my wealth, growing my power, and carving out a safe place here on Pandora for you and I to return to."
"We could go to other planets besides Pandora, though I doubt you haven't considered that already."
"I know. But the window to open the Vault is rapidly approaching, and I want to be the one to open it, so obviously we're gonna have to be on Pandora to accomplish that." I took a moment to catch a breath and kept going. "Also, I'm sure a gal with your sort of backstory would love to go on a crazy adventure and go down in history as being one of the legendary figures to open the mythical Vault after being locked up for years... Unless you want to watch someone else take the opportunity from you. I'm sure you've caught sight of another siren, a certain red-headed one that has an interest in opening that legendary Vault."
"Hmm, I suppose you have a point, handsome. That does sound like the experience of a lifetime, and particularly appealing to a caged bird such as myself." She commented while slyly throwing in a bit of flirting.
"I mean, why let me have all the fun when you can join in too, hot stuff?" I responded, unfazed.
"Well, if you put it that way, I guess I can't possibly pass up the opportunity then." She said, smiling and looking to be a little excited at the prospect of some grand adventure on an alien planet.
"All that aside for the short term, I'll be running around the badlands taking out bandits and increasing my money, which I hope I can use to catch a flight your way. But if that's not possible, I'll commandeer a ship from Atlas since they'll soon make themselves my enemy. Unless you know of another way off this backwater planet."
"There is an old Dahl mining ship that got left behind when they departed Pandora, so you could try that potentially."
"Sanctuary is an option, but I'd have to cross multiple bandit-infested regions and take down multiple bandit clan bosses to reach it so it'd be an astronomical undertaking to say the least. And that's not even mentioning the amount of other shit I'd have to go through on my way there nor taking into consideration whatever its current state is."
Although confident in my personal abilities, I knew my limits and what was in the realm of possibilities. "I'm good with my hands and a fast learner, but I doubt I would be able to get an old colossal mining ship flightworthy in a reasonable time frame if there was anything wrong with it."
"You do have a point... Let me check Pandora's history to see if I can't find any other ways off-planet that don't require you going head to head with an intergalactic corporation."
"Do your thing, sweetheart."
Letting the fair-skinned hottie perform her digging of the planet's record, I passed the time playing around with the bunch of skag pups who had just finished having their fill.
After a handful of minutes of playing fetch with the five feisty rascals, Angel came back. "Alright, so I did a little bit of digging and found Dahl had a number of sites across the plant where they left behind Raum-Kampfjet Mark V Gunships. Meaning if you can acquire one of those, you should be able to make it off planet, though you'll have to figure out how to pilot it first before you can even get it off the ground."
"Hmm, and the nearest one is?"
"It's actually pretty close, only 30 miles out west from where you are now.
"Oh, that's quite close."
"Yea, but there's a reason why it got left behind."
And here comes the shit, of course.
"And that is?" I asked, predicting difficulties were going to be coming my way in the near future.
"It has 4 massive Rakk Hives surrounding it..."
"..."
[ Loot Acquired ]
Ammunition: 5,033
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Sorry about the delay. I've been busy irl with work and stuff and writing a new zombie fanfic. Also, I introduced a new monthly poll over on Patreon, and whatever you guys vote for over there will get one chapter written for it. So if there's a work of mine you want to see more releases for, go vote for it.
Usual plug: if you want to read ahead, you can do so on Patreon.