Chapter 1:

Not many things please him as much as screams and boy, there's no shortage of those on Pandora. Sure, some are prettier than others, but all give him that sweet satisfaction, like scratching an itch just right.

Bandits and engineers, those are his favorites. They're the sweetest scratch on the tumescent scar of his psyche. But he can't always have his sweets, and he can't always scratch the wound. Not now. Not since he met her, the siren, and the rest of the fool's dead set on finding the vault.

I'm just along for the ride and honestly? Vault hunting's not my thing. I gave up on glory and heroics years ago along with shirts and table manners, and him, he's just happy to have someone to murder with. If there's a loot filled monster at the end of this he's fine to smash heads like pumpkins right up until the end but for me there's hollowness in a dream gone by, lost in pain and purple too long ago. Now she's the reason I stay.

She's nearby, he can tell, almost able to trace her path from the sound of screeching bugs and the whoosh of chubby varkids being hoisted into the air. Drawing nearer, buzzing with energy, shouting over the chaos and laughing about it, she's wonderful and music to his ears, pretty enough to hum to. Maya is the reason we're alive, that's for sure, but she's also the reason I'm freezing my nipples off in the damned tundra. I swear this idiot using my hands has something against sweaters, or maybe he just likes having a reason to set himself on fire. Either way I-

"On your left-," Maya's voice cuts through the noise and he stops humming.

I hear it before I see it and swing on an instinct, severing the varkids gullet before it leapt on top of me. The bitch is still alive and angry, but that doesn't faze us a bit. He lets out a sick chuckle as the gore streams from the things throat and it thrashes on top of us. As far as he's concerned a blood shower is as good as any and he thinks of letting it bleed to death before its incisors are chomping on his mask, pulling hard enough to wear the straps.

"Gah-that's MY pain pillow!" A swift kick to the abdomen and it shrieks, losing its grip on his mask. The sound bounces in his ears, ripping his face into a twisted grin and spurring him on. From his back he shifts onto broad shoulders and kicks the fat mosquito off, the steel sole of his shoe almost breaking through its sensitive skin.

Its legs kick in the air as it writhes on the ground and even I would laugh. The damn thing is stuck on its back and it's pissed to all hell and he's cackling just thinking about the sound it'll make when he pops its head like a green zit. The chubby varkids shrieks of terror and annoyance goad him on, stroke some sick nerve that makes it hard for him to compose himself in his glee, but ignoring the euphoria of it all he shows a little mercy and caves in its skull with a heavy boot and blows a raspberry for emphasis.

The guts stick to the metal toe of his boot like strings of cheese pulled off a good pizza and he briefly considers the taste before her voice comes into focus again.

"Krieg!"

He turns and sees Maya, jogging towards him, panting and wiping sweat from her brow. There are blood splatters on her combat suit and the sticky residue of mutated varkids making a mess of her hair, but still the sight takes me back a step and I stare at her blood-caked cheeks and drink in her sweaty, messy beauty.

"Whoo," Maya breathed out, resting her hands on her knees before composing herself and turning to him, SMG in one hand while the other brushes hair from her face. She straightened and set me with a look, still obviously high from the action and somehow focused on me, "That was a little close, don't you think?"

Not really, but these chubby bastards can really pack a punch. Maybe more of one if she hadn't told him. I want to tell her we got this, but he's got my tongue.

"Nngh, I can't drown in their weak MEAT sauce-I TRIED!" He says this while yanking the axe back out of the varkids neck, shouting the words over his shoulder as he labors and then admires the congealed gore hanging off it when he pries it free. He grunts and turns back to her, voice low like he's imparting wisdom, "Their tomatoes are too green for this chef."

"Oh really," Maya says absentmindedly, swiping through her digi-map while we grunt over a corpse, "Because back there you didn't seem to notice that chubby sneaking up on you-", she cocks her head when she looks at him, a playful side eye, "That is, until I told you."

He mumbles something about it not being easy being green and she shrugs, taking the time to reload her assortment of Maliwan weapons while Axton's voice plays over the comms system. My outer half openly gawks at the pretty colors of the elemental tech, musing under his breath about glow-stick nipple tassels while I second the sentiment, personally thinking Maliwan tech looks like kids water guns, but keeping my mouth shut, knowing full well the bite of their electricity, the memory of being struck by that same gun still fresh.

It's funny to think that the sticky, blue-tattoo snaked hands that he's so obsessed with getting a taste of were the same ones that probably should have killed me a few weeks ago. Life is funny that way and I think about it constantly, even more when we're alone.

Maya motions for us to get a move on, having listened to Axton's instructions while we zoned out and drooled over digits, and we set out along one of the pot-holed pavements that count for a road on Pandora."You've been daydreaming again."

Her eyes are ahead of us when she says it but he jerks his head in her direction to listen and she meets our eye. "It's a little bit obvious. Bugs aren't doing it for you, huh?"

The accuracy of this nearly surprises me, but it's nothing new. After being stuck with me for so long Maya could read the outward me better than the others, knew his habits and his urges and sometimes parsed my meaning through his drivel. Hell, sometimes she even made sense of things I couldn't, or conjured up something that made sense regardless.

She could probably feel the tension seeping off of his twitching hands, unsatisfied with bugs and cold. He wanted something hot with vocal cords he could pluck, he wants to play her a string concerto with someone's neck, he wanted to kill something with a face and a pulse and he wanted heat that didn't exist in the tundra. Sometimes all this pent up want results in a spectacle of self mutilation and psychotic grunting, but it's worse when we're at odds.

He starts most of it really, screaming at nothing, trying to kill every bipedal with a pulse, setting us on fire. I'm the punching bag in a pinch but the jokes on him because I can't feel a thing and he's the one with bruises. Too bad pain gets him off.

Somehow she has the patience to give a damn and she seems intrigued by our back and forth, able to scrounge up a rapport with a maniac while I bite my nails off in agonizing embarrassment at everything I say. And worst of all she seems to have come to the conclusion that its external, all this noise, like all this crazy is just a craving, a need to kill like a rabid animal, a quota of quashed skulls to be checked off a mental score like a sadist's shopping list, and I feel a little alone for the assumption. I'm shaking the sides of the grocery cart he's pushing me around in and she's more concerned about finding the meat aisle.

He puts a finger under his chin like he's deep in thought and mumbles a response as we walk. "Hm, can't forget ground beef for the bolognaise…" Our brows wiggle when we turn and look at her and he smiles behind the mask, she seems to sense our light mood and throws a smile our way before gunshots up ahead ruin the moment.

Gunshots.

He almost sets off running towards the noise but the glow of her tattoos flaring with power at our side keeps his mind on track, keeps him in line as Maya tenses and he bends down, hunching and clutching the axe before following after her, sprinting towards the uproar. They duck around a boulder and she motions for him to be quiet but they both hear it, some poor souls being torn apart by jumbo pests and some rushing in like idiot bandits do, guns blazing against hungry incisors. Axtons voice comes through again and even with the hum of anticipation wracking our skull I can understand the words 'hold fire'.

But that's not fair.

Turret-humper wants us to stay out of sight and let the bugs do the work but there's no fun in that, no meat or heat or pleasure in waiting while those greedy parasites eat through fresh spaghetti organs and over season his meal!

Maya hears the smack of our lips as we shake from anticipation and pulls her attention away from the scene. The twitch under our eye was a giveaway and I swear I see her flinch, giving us the once over before trying to say something, maybe calm us or maybe encourage us, I won't ever know because before she can say anything a meaty finger that I no longer own touches her lips, silencing her.

I'm mortified hunched over her like this, drooling and touching her like a sick freak but she knows what's got our blood up, she knows why my body's hot and it's not her, it's the three course blood feast beyond the rock that's just waiting for his carving knife.

He thinks he's a chef in the archway of a kitchen and he's dragging us both to hell to get the perfect meal, no ifs ands or buts. He shushes her and she allows it, too shocked to respond in the moment it takes for him to make a kissing noise against the inside of the mask, letting his finger boop her nose. If she didn't love us we'd be dead but given the look we're receiving we might be anyway.

She fumes and deflates and he leans in close to her ear and breathes, "Bon Appetit," with a breathy laugh before ducking around her, giddy from the touch but itching to get his axe in on the filet mignon while her angry blue magic turns up the heat, oven roasting a nomad midair before we can sink serrated pseudo-teeth into the poor bastards arm and whet a bloody appetite.