#rhac

The train trip to Opportunity was way longer than expected. When they told him that he will be travelling by train, Rhys expected it to take about two or three hours at most. But here he was. Sitting on an uncomfortable seat with muscles itching from lack of movement. He and the other four Vault Hunters have been on this train for about six hours, without any information about their whereabouts what so ever. Rhys tried to ask one of the guards passing him in the wagon, but he would always get the same answer. “We will be there soon, sir. Please just wait on your seat.” Once more he tried to use his ECHO eye to see if he can get any hints about how far from the city they were, but since this was his first time on the planet his eye wasn’t fully collaborated with the land yet and so it could show him nothing but blur of useless information.

Rhys sighed and looked around at his four companions. They were sharing this small space for almost seven hours, but none of them have spoken a word.

Nearest to him was sitting a girl with blue short hair and yellow shirt that was missing one sleeve. Her arm was covered in a tattoo matching her hair with its colour. She was reading some old-looking book. Rhys tried to look at the name, but it was written in a language he didn’t recognize.

On his other side was a handsome looking blond man trying to fix something on his turret that he’d deployed after an hour of their trip. Rhys had considered offering him a help with that, but decided against it. After all, he wouldn’t let anyone touch his mechanical arm either.

In front of him was sleeping a short man with funny looking beard. His snoring seemed to be louder than the train itself. Rhys was tempted to wake him up, but he valued his life too much for even getting closer to the guy. Even though he was short, Rhys considered him to be the scariest of them all. The guy had more muscles than the mutated cows on Eden 5.

And then there was this… person, sitting right next to the sleeping cow guy. He was dressed in black thin armour and had a helmet covering his face. He was not moving. At all. From the first moment, they got in the train until now, Rhys did not see this person move. It was freaky, but fascinating at the same time.

After a quick self-convincing he decided to talk to the girl.

“Hey.” Rhys greeted her, moving to sit closer.

“Hey.” She replied, her grey eyes never leaving pages of the book.

“Ehm...” The brunet cleared his throat. “The book you are reading. It looks… Interesting.”

“It is.”

“What is it about? “

She sighs, understanding that he will not leave her alone that easily, and finally looks away from the book turning her attention to Rhys. “It is about mystical realms and the effect they can have on one’s aura and mana.”

“Oh” Rhys replied not knowing what he had expected. “That’s, nice. Aura and stuff. Really cool.” Smooth one. God the day he learns how to talk to girls will be the day skags will start writing gay romantic poems.

The girl raised one eyebrow. She was about to move back to her book, but then she noticed the mechanical arm and pointed at it. “You made that yourself?”

Rhys looked at his arm, as if just now realizing it was there. “Oh. This? Well, I had a little help with the basic structure, but yeah. I did most of it on my own.”

“Can I have a look?” She grabbed the arm without waiting for permission and started inspecting the separate parts. “Is it connected to your nerve system or just the arm muscles?”

“Both, actually. It allows it to react on both conscious and subconscious impulses. I also have it synchronized with my ECHO eye, so I can use it as a computer.” He turns on the projection of map from the projector built into the metallic palm to show his point. ”This thing can come really handy in combat.”   Rhys chuckled to himself. “Pun intended.”

To his surprise, the blue haired girl smiles back leaving his arm be and looking back into his eyes.

“Those are hard to find these days. How did you manage do get one?” She asks this time pointing at his ECHO eye.

“My dad was a scientist. He gave it to me when I was ten years old. Saying it will improve my chances to follow in his footsteps.” Rhys looked away to stare at his black shoes. “But you can say things didn’t really turn out as he’d expected.”

The girl was silent for a moment not sure how to respond to that. “My name is Maya.” She says after a second of thinking. “It is really nice to meet you. You seem to be a nice guy, for a Vault Hunter.”

“Rhys.” He smiled, shaking her hand. ”Same goes for you.”

“So, tell me Rhys. How did you end up working for Hyperion?” Maya asks closing her book.

“Well.” He rose his hand running through his hair. “I was kinda hoping that it would get me to meet Handsome Jack.” Rhys paused looking at blue sign with the man’s face. “I really do admire the guy you know? I was thinking that working for him would be a great experience.” At this Maya laughed.

She´s got a beautiful smile. Rhys thought, blushing a little. “You are lucky that the man decided to hire Vault Hunters. Must be a dream come true.”

“Heh. Guess you’re right.” He smiled looking at his shoes. “Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of things the guy does that I don’t agree with. Still, it only took him a decade to turn Hyperion into what it is today. And I think that’s admirable. “Maya shrugs mumbling something that sounded like, guess you’re right, under her breath.

“And what about you?” Rhys’s eyes finally leaving the floor and turning back to her.”What made you join?”

She stayed silent for a second thinking about her answer. “I came to Pandora to find more information about sirens. Because this place seems to be their origin. But I had no luck with coming across any valid clues, only this one guy talking about a siren that used to live here. Unfortunately, she got killed by Hyperion a few months ago. At least that’s what the official records say, but the rumour has it that she is still alive. Hiding, because she knows Hyperion is after her.” There was a brief pause before she continued. “Anyway, I have been running out of resources, and the pay check Hyperion offers is hard to say no to.”

Rhys nodded. “So you really are a sir-“ He got interrupted by a loud noise of something landing on the roof. They wasted no time getting combat ready, standing up from their seats, loading their guns.

Rhys’s attention got caught by a movement coming from the sign with Handsome Jack saying “Welcome Vault Hunters.” It was revealing another sign. Handsome Jack was on it still smiling, now with a murderer’s grin. Rhys’s heart stopped when he read the new red sign.

Welcome Vault Hunters. To you doom.

                                              (nothing personal)

Part 2 - Daddy's lil monster

 There were two loader bots charging up right before their shocked eyes, and more sounds were coming from the roof. Rhys spotted the black armoured Vault Hunter moving to the window and climbing his way up after the sources. He wanted to join him, but got interrupted by Maya who caught his sleeve and dragged him down on the floor to cover just a second before the robots started shooting at the spot where the two of them were standing. New turret was deployed responding them with the same number of bullets.

Mayas tattoo glowing in light blue as she pointed her finger at the nearest loader bot. “Freeze.” She yells and the unfortunate thing is trapped, levitating in dark purple bubble, unable to move. Rhys wastes no time before he starts sending his bullets into it. They manage to destroy him unusually fast. From Rhys’ experience, you need at least one full gun magazine to wipe out a single Hyperion loader bot, but now with Maya´s help he only used a half of it.

There were more of them coming. Rhys looks at Maya, waiting for her to make another bubble but she just shook her head. No more bubbles. Reloading his SMG Rhys aimed for the red light placed in the middle of robots’ head. Their weakest spot. This time it didn’t go as fast as before, but he managed to take down two more robots, before running out of ammo and switching for pistol. Luckily Maya was still there, helping with dealing the damage. The total count of destroyed robots by the duo was five.

The two remaining Vault Hunters meanwhile took out the other four loaders, the smaller one now shooting into the door with maniacal laugh. It takes him only a moment to get them opened and once the passage is clear they all run into the next room, the last Vault Hunter in black armour joining them, his sword covered in fresh blood.

Rhys’ heart freezes at a sound of s familiar voice coming from figurine sitting in a red chair in the middle of the room. But Rhys didn’t hear what it was saying. His full attention got caught by the enormous amount of explosive that was stocked in the room. Without a second thought, Rhys turns on his ECHO eye to its maximum performance.

He likes to call this his “ultimate ability”. By connecting all data it had received, and after analysing the possible outcomes, it allows Rhys for a few moments not only to predict, but to see next moves of his enemies as well as the future shape of his surroundings. Right now, it was calculating the unavoidable explosion and its outcomes, leading him into the safest position by the window granting him 1.028 % of survival.

He gets into the position just to hear Jack´s voice say, welcome to Pandora kiddos followed by an explosion that throws Rhys to the wall hitting his head hard and knocking him out into the darkness.

 It was raining outside when his mother was murdered by local bandit’s gang, god knows what she did to piss them of. She was well known for her sharp tongue so the chances were that she just said the wrong things to the wrong people.

His father would've always say that she was going to get herself into a trouble if she wouldn’t keep some things to herself. And so here she was. Lying in a pool of her own blood in the middle of their living room, her empty eyes looking at her son and husband who just got back from the grocery shop.

The bags his father was holdingfell on the floor as he was running to her. “Call the medic!” He yelled back at his son, who immediately did as he was told. But Rhys knew it was pointless, she was already gone. And so was the rest of his father’s sanity.

Before the accident, his parents had a great plan prepared for Rhys. He would go to college, get his diploma and follow in his father's footsteps into becoming a famous technical developer. To increase his chances, his father replaced Rhys’ biological eye with an ECHO eye of his own creation.

But with his wife dead, Rhys’ dad had a change of mind. He determined for Rhys to become a solider, who's quest will be to get rid of all bandits in the known universe. As impossible as the idea might sound, he truly believed that his son will be capable to achieve that goal.

“You are still too weak.” He commented one day, looking down at Rhys who was laying down on the ground (again) after being defeated by the robot (again) that his dad made for him to train with. “You need to become stronger. You need to become strong enough to knock someone out just by punching them with your…” He paused for a second “fist.” At that, he turned on his heel and walked away. Rhys didn´t see him for a week after that.

When he finally returned, he grabbed his son and led him into the lab. Rhys’ attention got caught by a silver robotic hand laying on the working table, and so he didn’t notice his dad holding an injection, until he felt sharp pain in his neck. His knees buckled and Rhys slipped into unconsciousness.

When he woke up, his left side felt like it was set on fire. He looked for the source and saw the silver arm from earlier attached to the left shoulder. His father ran to him when Rhys started screaming.

“Oh. You’re finally awake.”

“YOU CUT OF MY ARM!” Rhys’ eyes wide open, staring at the silver thing lying next to him.

“Would you calm down?” His dad replied, the same monotone voice as always. “I had to replace your arm. It was too weak.”

“YOU CUT OF MY FUCKING ARM!” Rhys continued yelling, his voice full of panic. Tears making their way into his eyes.

“Listen young man.” Clearing his throat, he continued. “Soon you will understand how big favour from me this was.” He paused for a second, focusing on his son’s new attached arm. “I will give you some time to adjust. Come to the kitchen when you are ready, we have to do some tests with it.” At that he left, closing the door behind him. Rhys waited until the sound of father’s footsteps subsided in the hallway. Than he started crying.

As much as Rhys hated to agree with his father, the hand was indeed very useful. Not only it increased his physical strength but now, after few adjustments, he could connect it to his ECHO eye, gaining for himself an access into every machine that was running on ones and zeros. They returned to their training and things started looking a little better.

That was until his dad tried to cut off the other arm in his sleep.

Rhys woke up in the middle of the night, feeling a pressure on his mattress. Scream escaped out of his mouth when he saw a figure kneeling above him, holding another injection. He pushed into his father’s chest with all his strength. Underestimating his new gained power, he pushed him way to hard and so his father – who obviously did not expect Rhys to do that – ended up falling backwards, hitting his head on the sharp corner of the bedside table.

And so, Rhys watched his second parent die in a pool of blood.

After that, Rhys decided to leave his home town. He sold his house and used the money to buy an equipment that allowed him to become a proper Vault Hunter.

The first time he’s heard about Handsome Jack was on one of his missions on Eden 5. His task was to assassinate the head of a small bandit camp. Rhys got the quest from the mayor of some random town that had been having lots of troubles with the group for almost half a year.

When he was done shooting a hole into the guy’s head, he heard news from the radio that had been turned on before he got into the room. They were talking about Hyperion’s new CEO and about how he was doing some massive changes within the company. Rhys chuckled when he heard his name. Handsome Jack. What person with sane mind would want to be called like that? There was no way his mother had given such name to him.

He didn’t pay much attention to him at first. CEOs come, CEOs go. That’s a known fact.

But over time, Rhys heard more and more about him. About how he focused on mining eridium, about how Hyperion’s every gun was now a top sale, or about how they were on a constant need for new employees.

And so, Rhys ended up searching his name on the ECHO net. And couldn’t get him out of his mind ever since.

Handsome Jack was perfect. He was fearless, he was respected, and he claimed for his life goal to be whipping all bandits out of Pandora, planet Rhys had never heard nothing but stories filled with psychos, mass murders and fauna that can kill you the moment you set your foot on the land. Rhys has become obsessed with him.

The day he saw the poster, saying the Handsome Jack was looking for Vault Hunters, was the luckiest day in his life. He decided to take the picture – of Handsome Jack with his arms wide opened, inviting every Vault Hunter to join him on Pandora – with him after staring at it with his jaw dropped for almost ten minutes.

He was going to work for Handsome Jack himself! He will be able to look him into the perfect mismatched eyes, and who knows? Maybe he will even talk to the guy.

Rhys smiled for himself. Maybe the universe didn’t hate him that much after all.

 Part 3-  I am sorry

Universe despised Rhys. And its way of saying that was making him wake up with his head half buried in the snow, and ears ringing as if he’d been listening to malfunctioning megaphone in headphones on the maximum volume. But he was still alive.

Rhys groaned and dug himself out of the white dirt.

He set a moment in the snow, waiting for his head to stop spinning, while trying to connect the previous events.

He was on the train. Going to Opportunity. It was s trap. The train exploded. It was supposed to kill him, but it didn’t.

Unsure what to do now he stood up and started walking in a random direction. Snow was cracking heavily under his shoes, while Rhys tried to move forward as fast as the white material allowed him to. It didn’t take a long before he heard noises coming from one of the broken wagons.

Rhys immediately started running that direction, ignoring the burning pain in his left leg.

He saw Maya laying on the ground, stuck under an iron pillar, her tattoos glowing light blue as she was trying to move the thing away from her torso with her magic. But the fact that she was bleeding heavily on several places sure was making it difficult for her.

She gave up on her trying when she spotted Rhys. Her lips moved as if calling his name, but no sound reached Rhys’ ears. He ran to her, tripping over his dysfunctioning leg. Yeah, that’s definitely broken.

Rhys joined Maya in trying to get the thing away. Together they pushed with all their strength, but it was immediately clear that even if he had his arm fully charged, only the two of them would never be able to lift it up. It was just too heavy.

Judging by Maya’s changing face expression, she was thinking about the same thing.

“I…I can go and try to look for help. There might be someone-” He tried to stand up but Maya grabbed him by his sleeve shaking her head. There was something sad in her eyes when she pointed at the gun Rhys had tucked to his belt.

Rhys was confused for a while, looking at the gun and then back at Maya, not understanding what she wanted from him.

His eyes widen in surprise when the realization hit him. “You can’t be serious!” He shouted leaning away from her. “There has to be some way.” Maya didn’t say anything, so Rhys continued. “I’m gonna go up there, I’m gonna get some help and we will get that thing off of you.” He tried to stand up again, but she only tightened her grip.

“You are a Vault Hunter, Maya.” He was pretty much yelling at this point. “Vault hunters don’t give up. We fight till our last breath, until there is no other way, and, and even then! We go and make our own…” Rhys’ voice was shaking as the tears started making their way into his eyes.

“I am done fighting Rhys. I am stuck under a train in the middle of a frozen desert.” Her voice was weak, easily lost under the sound of frozen wind.

Rhys didn’t answer. He wasn’t even looking at her, his eyes set on the white cold ground, head shaking.

“Rhys, please.” She whispered “Don’t let me…. Bleed to death slowly. That’s not…That’s not how I wanna go.” When he didn´t move, she continued with weak voice. “There is no one around here. Handsome Jack had his reasons for waiting with the explosion until we reached this location.” Rhys shook at the name. He really wanted to hate the man for being the cause of his current situation, but in the same time he did understood his motives. He finally met with her tired, gray eyes. There was so much sadness hidden in them. But no fear. Maya wasn’t afraid of death.

“I don’t wanna do it.” He said. His voice abandoning him. “I really don’t.”

“I know. I am sorry Rhys.”

He nodded. Fingers running through her blue, blood soaked, hair before slowly standing up, reaching for his gun. His flesh-hand was shaking way too hard for him to hold the weapon in it, so he put it into the robot one instead.

“Goodbye Maya.” Rhys whispered, tears running down his cheeks.

“Bye Rhys.” She smiled.

The smile did not leave her lips even after Rhys pulled the trigger.

Harsh sound of gunfire echoed through the frozen land, spreading the message of young girls’ death into the wide world, making all other noises go silent. But after a moment, it just got lost in the wind.

Rhys stood in the same position for a couple of moments before his knees betrayed him and he fell onto the frozen ground next to the dead girl. He didn’t even know her for that long. And there he was, kneeling next to her dead corpse, crying over her death, tears freezing on his face.

As a Vault Hunter, he should be used to people dying around him. He should, but he wasn’t. Rhys never really got to enjoy killing like others usually did in this kind of job. He wasn’t built to be a Vault Hunter, but his father did great job making him think that this was the only thing in his life he could do properly. That killing people is the only way for him to ever achieve anything.

He stood up, ignoring the growing pain in his leg – which seemed to be way more intense now when the adrenalin was washing away from his body – and headed away from the corpse. Not even considering picking up the gun. It used to be his favourite weapon. He did many modifications on it, making it to be one of the best guns he had ever have. But now? After using it to kill Maya? There was no way he would ever use that one ever again. Plus, if the rumours were true, Pandora was drowning in weapons. It wouldn´t take him long to find, or create, a proper replacement.

He noticed a light, coming from behind him. First, Rhys blamed it at the flames that were still surrounding some of the destroyed wagons. But there was something off. Was it even possible for the flames to be blue?

Rhys turned around, when the light started to grow more intense. “What the-” He watched some form of blue energy raising from the place where he left Maya’s body.

Without thinking, Rhys started running away from the source. But the leg hurt him like hell and he only managed to get a few steps away before a flash of blue light hit him, rising Rhys up from his feet up above the ground.

He saw nothing but white. He felt nothing but cold before the energy started spreading through his whole body, making it impossible to do as little as breathe. When his vision came back to him he was floating in the air, the blue light he saw earlier was now surrounding him. It was the clearest colour he had ever seen. It was so scary, so beautiful, so energetic all in the same moment. And yet, it left him completely numb, his brain being too overwhelmed by trying to process the situation Rhys was in, not having any time to produce proper emotions.

Before he managed to figure out what was happening, it was all gone. The blue light, the energetic feeling…Only thing that stayed was the cold.

He was lying on the ground again, without any idea about what just happened, unsure what to do now. When the cold started soaking in, he got up with a sight.

Rhys knew that there was no point in trying to figure out what had just happened to him. His life was filled with crazy stuff like that, he gave up on trying to understand them years ago. His life was weird. Weird things happened to him, practically on daily basis.

Plus, right now he was too cold, too sad and too tired to even care about anything. All he wanted to do was find some safe warm place, curl up in the corner and forget that the rest of the world ever existed.

Still, he couldn’t get rid of the awful feeling, that this weird experience was going to have some really bad consequences.

 ***

 “What do you mean one of them survived?”

“That there is a person whose life functions maintained untouched even after the explosion.”

“Don’t be a smartass Angel. It doesn’t look good on you.” Brown haired girl on the screen rolled her eyes as Jack leaned his back on the table while holding his chin with the left hand. “Did you manage to locate them?”

“No. Not yet. The storm is blocking my signals. We will need to wait for the weather to calm down before I can contact them.”

Awesome. This means that there is a pissed Vault Hunter running around in the Southern Shelg, and Jack has absolutely no control over them. “And I don’t suppose you know which one of them it was, do you?”

She shrugs. “Nope. No Idea. Could be anyone.”

“Well isn’t this just fricking perfect?!” Jack turns away from the huge monitor he has been using to communicate with his daughter and starts walking around the table. “First there was that fiasco with Maliwan catching our spy, another of our eridium mines got taken over by some cock-sucking bandits and now I gotta deal with some piss stain who just won’t stay dead after I fucking tell him to!”

Grabbing his gun Jack shoots his whole magazine into one of his targets he had someone to set up all around his office. He did that after Angel suggested that shooting into his employees every time he needs to cool down his temperature might not by the best idea if he wanted to keep his number of stuff in the same way it is.

Jack knew she was right, but still. It just wasn’t the same without all the blood and begging being involved.

When he turned back, Angel was still watching him with unamused expression on her face. “What do you want me to tell them when I manage to establish contact?”

“I don’t know.” Jack responds in frustrated voice throwing his hands up, still holding on that gun. “That it would be lovely if they just could jump off the nearest cliff and break their fucking neck or something.”

“I don’t think that would help us to achieve anything. Besides, even if I would succeed in persuading them into doing so, I don’t suppose anything would happen to them. Judging by the odd way the gravity works on this planet, they would just walk away after that in the same shape they were before.”

“Angel, what did I just say about being a smartass?” She smirks back at him with raised eyebrows. Jack could not help but see himself in that expression. Sometimes he wishes that the two of them weren’t so alike. She would be way easier to deal with, if she hadn’t had inherited so much from him.

But she has a point. Getting rid of a Vault Hunter is never that easy, especially when they expect you to come after them. He needs to be smart about this. “Alright. We are going to have to do this right.” Jack continues, the left hand back on his chin. “You will gain their trust. Help them reach Sanctuary. We can use having someone who will listen to you in that forsaken city.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Helping another Vault Hunter to join the resistance? Wouldn’t we be just playing into their hands?”

Jack just waived his hand dismissively. “Nah, they are going to get there anyway. This way they will at least have a feeling that they can trust you. And I am pretty sure we will be able to use that in our advantage.”

Angel nodded with pensive expression. “All right. I think I can do that.”

“I know you can, sweetheart.” Jack winked at her. “Just let me know when you find out who exactly are we dealing with, will ya?”

Nodding again, she mumbled something like, as you wish, before the screen turned off.

When he was alone, Jack returned to his computer. There was so much work for him to do, even before the fuck up with assassinating the Vault Hunters. He opened his e-mail with the conversation with Maliwan. It was time for him to turn the charms on and someone to manage to get Hyperion back on good terms with the elemental-focused gun manufactory, before they manage to turn it into an armed conflict.