[Deadlift’s Deaddrop]

“Why are these guys still alive?!” Jack shouted angrily as he jabbed the bayonet of his new rifle into a scav and pulled the trigger for an execution.

“Hell if I know. Sure makes things fun, though.” Wilhelm said nonchalantly as he shot another scav in the head with the snipe he gained from Jack. “I mean, it’s not like they put up much of a challenge.”

“These plebs can’t handle the truth! They’re noobs!” Fragtrap laughed as he gleefully gunned down several scavs at once with his spinigun. Lucky bastard. “So, who we gonna get to sign for the posters? We can’t kill all of them.”

“He’s up there. I got him.” Wilhelm said as he started jumping up the wrecked lifeboat ship across the canyon from the prison barge to the group’s right. When he got to the top, there was a scav in a top hat impatiently waiting for him. “Got a package for you. Sign or I’ll kill you.”

“Gladly!” The scav said before taking the clipboard Wil produced from his Echo along with the posters, and he signed for them. “Now piss off before Deadlift decides to kill ya.”

“I don’t like that guy, kill him would ya?” Springs called over the Echo, and without blinking, Wilhelm immediately put the rifle to the guy’s surprised face, and pulled the trigger, spraying gore everywhere and sending the posters flying as if they were fired from t-shirt cannons. “Right then, lets take those posters and put them up all over the place. We’ll give them what they paid for, even if we shoot them in the sternum while we do it.”

“I’m really starting to like you.” Wilhelm commented with a smirk as Jack sighed and picked up a poster, which was the one of him and actually said ‘Something, Something Stars!’.

“Huh...makes me want to stab people.” Jack commented with a grin.

Fragtrap picked up another poster that slowly drifted down to him, and it was the one he shot. “It’s...so beautiful! I feel inspired! I feel amazing, new! Like something’s about to-Personality detected, deleting-And suddenly I feel empty! So empty~! Wah~ ha, ha, ha~!”

Wilhelm picked up one that had caught itself on his foot when they exploded outwards. “Why’s this one got a cat on it?”

“Oh, I overexposed the last set of pictures, but considering it was me being a total rube and photocopying my bum, probably for the best it didn’t turn out somehow.” Springs commented.

“I did not need to know that.” Wilhelm deadpanned. “Though, I can probably guess why. You were gonna give a little photo to a certain somebirdy.”

“Hey, good idea! It was a splendid shot after all, even got my-.”

“Th-that’s enough! No talking all pervy with the opposite sex when it comes to your nethers.” Jack interjected with a blush lighting up his face.

“Oh come on. It’s not the first time we’ve had a raunchy employer.” Wilhelm reminded Jack. “Remember? Eden-6? That one employer that drugged you at the end of the mission? Lucky for you, Saint was deployed for maintenance and warned me so that I didn’t take any of it. You weren’t awake for it, but the bitch got what she deserved.”

“Wait, what? Oh...aw shit you mean that cute rottweiler?! I thought her competition got to her! Man what a bitch, was considering actually tapping that one too...though it explains why I had no fucking idea what happened that night.” Jack admitted.

“I kept trying to tell you. Ya didn’t want to know after I told you that you got drugged.” Wilhelm informed.

“Well all you mentioned was the bitch was dead, and I was drugged, I didn’t draw the connections because I figured I must’ve taken her drink instead, and the guys burst in or something crazy that usually happens with our jobs.” Jack replied.

“You two are so awesome! Can I be the third wheel?!” Fragtrap pleaded.

“Not on your operating life.” Wilhelm said. “Though, we have been looking for a minion.”

“I will be your busboy for eternity to be part of this bromance!” Fragtrap stated.

“Okay~...not awkward at all.” Jack commented.

“You sausages are hilarious. I’ve got all that recorded for later, gonna laugh so hard again. I’ll pay you extra if you feel like sharing any funny stories. Just put those things up wherever and come on back whenever.” Springs informed, and we all quickly set about slapping up the adhesive-backed posters on the walls everywhere.

“Okay, next I believe the Princess wanted the Black Box of the crashed Dahl prison barge; Bridget.” Fragtrap stated as he turned to the crashed ship on the other side of the canyon.

“Oh...a canyon...and a jump pad...okay, good luck, I’m gone.” Jack turned to head back to Springs’ place, only for Wilhelm to grab the collar of his black leather jacket.

“You’re not getting out of this that easily, kid.” Wilhelm said before lifting and tossing Jack onto the jump pad, sending him flying over the canyon, screaming like a little girl, and having him land on his back on the hard metal floor of the downed prison ship’s ripped-open hull. Wilhelm then stepped on the jump pad, himself, soaring gracefully over the canyon to land just a few inches from Jack’s fetal-positioned crying form. “Suck it up already, geez.”

“No-place-like-home, no-place-like-home, no-place-like-home~!” Jack cried as he hugged his knees to his face as he rocked back and forth before Fragtrap landed bodily on him, producing a satisfying crunch before sending Jack rolling.

“That was fun!” Fragtrap cheered as Jack gasped for air inside the oxygenated environment of the ship, and took out another health hypo to heal his broken ribs. “There aren’t any jump pads planetside.”

“Holy shit Fragtrap! What’re you made of?! Claptraps are made of cheap recycled aluminum!” Jack shouted in anger as he got up from the floor.

“I am the original prototype CL4P-TP! Made of 50 percent steel, 50 percent titanium, 100 percent awesome! All of my inner robotics are mostly steel, but my outer chassis is titanium. I guess it’s why despite all the punishment; I’m still operating.” Fragtrap informed, getting Jack and Wilhelm to blink in surprise. “No, seriously! I’ve been gunned down, kicked, tossed into gorges and otherwise inescapable and unsurvivable situations more times than my limited memory storage can count, but I’m still rolling along!”

“Why didn’t they make all Claptraps as tough as you? I mean, sure, they’re annoying, but fact is having a fragile steward bot is just counterproductive.” Jack commented and Fragtrap folded his servos.

“I, am too much awesome to replicate! Also steel and titanium are heavy, and Hyperion wanted the CL4P-TP line to be accessible to the public. Sucks for them huh?” Fragtrap joked, laughing maniacally before he started rolling into the ship.

“Frag’s got serious hardware. Good titanium is hard to get these days….” Wilhelm mused as he followed after Frag. And Jack, not wanting to go over the gorge again, tagged along.

“I HATE THIS MOON!” Jack screamed as he flew up another section of the mostly hollowed-out ship from yet another jump pad. Deadlift was obviously fucking OBSESSED with the things!

“Get used to it.” Wilhelm said. “Come on, Echo says it’s just up ahead, anyways.”

The place was unusually enormous inside, it would seem Deadlift wanted this barge mostly for the fact it was mostly empty space, and several sections actually had ZERO gravity beyond the initial entryway. Fragtrap explained from his information database was that it was so the ship could hold so many prisoners, they could actually be clustered into giant balls of people in the zero gravity areas. Dahl was all kinds of fucked up…. As one Hyperion joke went, all they were good for was the dumpsters and outhouses that littered the galaxy.

However, the fact that this place was completely empty, was unnerving. Did Nisha and Aurelia kill that many people? Or was Deadlift’s crew really a skeleton operation for some reason? After several minutes, we reached a sealed-off section of the ship which was the heavily secured hall to the bridge, and Fragtrap, despite the zero-gravity conditions, started getting to work. The fact he was able to undo it within seconds compared to minutes with standard Hyperion doors really said something about Dahl’s security standards back then.

When the blast doors opened we floated into the suddenly gravity-held bridge, got off our faces, and entered to find the place butchered. “Shit, looks like Deadlift decided to clean house.” Jack commented as Wilhelm approached an audio log on the dismantled dash.

“Let’s see what the dead lips have to say.” Wilhelm said as he took the device into his Echo and pressed play.

“That bitch Zarpedon’s offered me some good money for the Bridget’s Black Box, so Squat, or Thrust, if you’re listening to this, it’s being kept in the safe in the aft half of the ship, don’t want that bitch just swooping in and taking away a payday like Dahl always did back then. Gotta get to the port side entrance, them girls been making mincemeat of the crew and I’ve gotta show em my conviction!”

“Wow, he certainly did, considering we saw his huge corpse in the entryway.” Fragtrap commented, the big, fat enormous space-suited idiot was perforated with enough bullets to leave him kangaroo swiss cheese.

“Aaaaand now we backtrack, the opposite direction. What is it with dead guys and hiding shit in inconvenient places?” Jack asked in annoyance, just before the bridge lost power. “Ooookay...not...totally creepy and ominous.”

“It’s the ghost of Deadlift! Wah!” Fragtrap wailed, before suddenly all the air in the ship seemed to start venting, sucking us out of the Bridge, down the empty expanse of the interior of the ship, and almost out the port side entrance we came through before the vacuum ended, and our Oz kits had to kick on. “The ship’s power! Without it, it can’t maintain its atmosphere!”

“But what caused it to fail is the question.” Wilhelm commented as he looked around for any active atmosphere, their shitty Oz kits only had less than a minute of air after all. Thankfully, the ship’s emergency protocols managed to initiate with reserve power as several air bubble nodes rose out of little niches, and Wil led the group to the nearest one as they all activated automatically as their protocol dictated, beings this was a prison barge the designers likely didn’t want the prisoners to die too easily..

“Spread out! Set the charges!” A deep, gritty voice shouted over the Echo, and dozens of scavs poured into the ship from the port and starboard entrances. “Remember, they need to be several dozen feet apart along the inner hull for maximum effect!”

“Holy shit! It’s a demolition crew!” Jack whisper-shouted the obvious as he crouched behind cover, Wilhelm and Frag deciding to follow since there was easily 30 or more of the thugs spreading out.

“We need to find the black box as fast as possible.” Wilhelm whispered as he jumped to another point of cover. “I’m estimating fifteen minutes max, but since they’re talking about spacing the charges, make it ten. Have to be high-explosives for a distance between charges like that.”

“Oi! Got some weird ones ‘ere!” Shit! They spotted us already!

“Whoever they are, doesn’t matter, kill them or let them leave, either way the ship gets gone.” The dark voice ordered, and was followed with plenty of agreeing voices.

“You ‘eard the boss! Git lost! Saved bullets means saved money!” One of the scavs shouted, and we promptly made to follow the waypoint.

“Jack, now’s a good time for what you’re good at.” Wilhelm whispered to Jack

“Damn it, convincing doubles are so hard to conjure! I could get them to walk out while we skulk into the hull, but they’d fade the moment they get too far.” Jacked prepared to cast when Wil flicked his horn, getting Jack to hiss.

“Not what I meant, kid. The other thing you’re good at.” Wil stated, pointing at his lips and Jack blinked.

“O-oh, right. Diplomacy. Ugh...I hate trying to parlay with thugs. Ahem. Excuse me! Parlay!” Jack called out and the Scavs seemed about to shoot when the biggest one held up his hand for them to wait.

“Oi, I said get lost. Whatever ya gotta say get it out now or we’ll shoot.” The apparent leader said in irritation.

“We just need to fetch something Deadlift hid in the aft. It’s worthless money-wise, but our employer wants it for historical reasons.” Jack insisted and the scav tapped the side of his shotgun thoughtfully, before waving us off.

“Git it over with quick, we’ll delay the explosives for 15 minutes instead of the planned 10. Now off with ya!” The scav shouted, and we promptly sped towards the back of the powered-down ship with haste. Thankfully that recorder had coordinates attached for Echo use, but it still gave a general area in the starboard aft near one of the engines. But finding the safe wasn’t an issue, and neither was smashing it open to find a black box about one cubic foot in size along with assorted goodies that we had no time for.

We then ran towards the starboard exit of the ship, jumping out and running only for the thing to explode shortly, sending us flinging towards some buildings as green corrosive explosions overtook the Bridget, both blasting her to pieces and melting the fragments into slag heaps.

“THAT’S FOR MOCKING ME DEADLIFT! Jump pads are so last decade! Porters are the future!” The dark and gritty mysterious voice shouted angrily. “So enjoy the rest of your pathetic life with just the ENTRANCE JUMPAD!”

“NO~! My ship!” Deadlift cried out as he rezzed from the nearby New-U just in time to see the Bridget explode. “My dreams! My Aspirations~!” He cried out as he fell to his knees, flinging his fists into the air furiously. “RIP~!” Title Card: Deadlift vs. RIP

That was cut off, though, as Wilhelm snuck up behind Deadlift and shot him with the Nukem, doing considerable crit damage and killing Deadlift instantly. “My rocket!” Wilhelm mocked.

“That was totally MLG!” Fragtrap appraised while Jack had facepalmed, his hand covering both eyes.

“James you cheeky sonuva...let’s just go.” Jack grumbled as he turned to walk away.

“Here you are, one mysterious box full of knowledge of potentially catastrophic nature.” Jack joked as he placed the one foot cubic black box on the crate nearest Luna, who was the most worried apparently when Deadlift’s ship went up in green flashes of light.

“Thank you. You went to great lengths and unexpected risk to obtain this for me. I will pay you in a moment, just let me….” Luna wirelessly connected her Echo into the box, and after watching the screen for several minutes, she seemed about to implode in despair. “They...they never planned to hold up...thank you. Now I know Dahl was truly vicious in this, and that it wasn’t just the call of a single corrupt higher official. Trust me, when things finally settle around here, we’re declaring war on Dahl once we get enough capital going.” Luna then entered something into her Echo, and our Huds flickered for a few seconds. “There, I’ve given your Echos the Master Code. Now your inventory spaces will be much more manageable and capable of holding more loot.”

“Luna~! That was for executives only!” John suddenly called over Echo and Luna laughed lightly.

“Oh please, you would’ve given Jack access if it turned out he was family anyway.” Luna commented and John pouted over the visual.

“But that’s...ugh, fine. Whatever. But I’m not telling Tassiter that three mercs got access to all the Echo’s unrestrained features without paying out the rear. And Fragtrap, be careful. That code is applicable to your OS, we don’t want you suddenly going genocidal interplanetary ninja assassin again.” John warned, but already Fragtrap was laughing maniacally and muttering of his plans to free robokind, getting John to sigh and hang up.

“Thanks, ma’am.” Wilhelm said politely.

“Tis nothing. Now, let us head to Concordia now that Springs’ vengeance has been enacted, in excess at that. Springs, wouldst thou, oh my….” Luna paused, and we saw Springs being dragged by the tail by a very stiff-winged Athena towards some private rooms.

“Talk to the pegasus! We’ll catch up-!” The door slammed and we all just stared for a moment, before moans could be heard and we all politely moved to the launch bay for the moon zoomies, which was just a fancy name for buggies.

“Okay, what happened to make the birdy drag the roo off for some fun time?” Wilhelm asked as we got into a second zoomy next to the one Aurelia and Nisha were already in, Fragtrap having offered to accompany Luna as an escort much to Luna’s quiet dismay that Jack hadn’t offered instead.

“Well after she gave us this robot vibrator.” Nisha said as she held up an Orbatron. “She gave Athena a picture of something, and then the griff went all ‘pomf’, and dragged her off.”

“Don’t let Fragtrap touch that, or me.” Wilhelm warned. “Trust me, it’s worse on Fraggy, but I still feel it. Personally, I don’t like it. It’s why I didn’t remove those organs.”

“Yes, quite. I’d rather not watch you have an orgasm just from touching it. If I want such a show, I’d head to the slum cities of Promethea.” Aurelia dismissed. “Also, Springs said to mention you should watch it on the cybernetics or whatnot, something about rust disease around your eye.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll remember that. Pffft.” Wilhelm replied angrily. “Just watch, I’m going to become a mighty death machine, and I’ll still be killing while you’re all dead of age or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, just keep reminding me of that while I’m the one calibrating something in you and you’re stuck sitting in a chair for several hours while I do it.” Jack grumbled from the driver seat, starting the zoomy up.

“Beings we art without need of air, we shall meet thee on the other side of the chasm!” Luna yelled over the engines, and then led Fragtrap out by the hand like she was his caretaker or something, and then somehow began flying without even moving her wings, carrying Fragtrap like he was weightless.

“Whoa! Princess! Magical moon powers go~!” Fragtrap cheered over the Echo. “All you need~, is a little faith, trust, and pony dust~!”

“Thou art a silly jester Fragtrap.” Luna giggled and they all shook their heads as Jack and Nisha both pulled the zoomies out of the garage and into the airless expanse, the vehicle’s contained air-bubble system supporting their Oz kits so they didn’t have to worry about air while out of an atmosphere. “We see the jump, tis truly too great a gap for jumping on thine own power. We suggest hitting the shattered bridge at full speed to make it.”

Following Luna’s advice, Jack and Nisha gunned the thrusters as they hit the ramp, and something erupted beneath them, almost totalling the zoomies and sending them flipping end over end and crashing so hard into the moon from the spin velocity the zoomies were crumpled. Thankfully the intense spinning had jettisoned the passengers out into the air, crashing across the area as the kraggons all roared in fear and took off.

“Art thou okay?!” Jack heard through ringing ears, and someone helped him up with levitation. “What is that foul beast?!” Luna, having sufficiently helped Jack, and apparently the others, up, drew attention to the cause of the group’s near-deaths in questionably safe vehicles, to see a massive creature that looked like a fusion of acid, lava, rocks, and radiation, rising up out of the deep canyon they’d just jumped. It promptly opened it’s enormous maw, and let loose a frighteningly familiar keening roar. Title Card: Iwajira, King of Kraggons.

“Well...we’re fucked.”

Author's Notes:

Yay, back again. DJ's situation really sucks, I mean, he's going through a serious transition in his life and he still wants to work on stuff, what a trooper.

Thanks again to DJ A String, my Co-writer on this for driving ideas forward and making things happen even in adversity