How much he was allowed to tell, Rhys wasn't sure. He was fairly confident that babbling about a mass murdering Hyperion CEO lurking in his brain was a recipe to get himself killed, so he stuck to what Fiona had told him of their 'plan'. Recruit the vault hunters. Worry about what the hell he was supposed to do to dig himself out of this situation along the way.

"So... ha, you know that Gortys core you wanted?" he began, grinning hopefully. "Yeah, well, turns out we found it after all and it ah... leads to a vault... which is, uh, is what we're doing here... finding you I mean... so... I don't know if you might like to... team up?"

He ran a nervous hand through his hair, taking in Zer0's stationary figure.

Rhys knew he'd probably screwed this up already, god knew he wasn't the best at speaking under pressure and certainly not when he was standing right next to a literal assassin... ninja... person, who totally just saved his life.

He coughed, attempting to collect himself, straightening up and square his shoulders. "Yep, so... you're a vault hunter... we open up a vault for you... you take care of what's inside... then bam, it's just riches and guns for everyone, all the money, so much money..."

Still Zer0 didn't move. Rhys could only hope they were thinking, and not just about how much of an idiot he sounded.

"You said we, who else? / Are there others with you now? / Where are they hiding?"

Rhys clicked his fingers, remembering what his sudden and dramatic rescue had helpfully made him forget. Funny how things like that made your mind go blank. "Oh, right, my um... business associate is on the roof."

Somehow Zer0's distinct lack of expression said a lot.

Rhys laughed, a little forced. "Yeah... she might be-" He thought about the drop from the rooftop to the ground outside for a moment. "No, she's definitely stuck up there."

"Hmmm."

Rhys lead Zer0 up the ladder to the loose ceiling panel. He didn't even have time to offer them a boost because they simply nudged the panel off with their sword, then crouched, springing up and out of the garage.

Their feet made only the softest thud as they landed, and he thought he caught a faint 'eek'.

Rhys peered upward, attempting to get a good view but all he could see was the sky above.

"Um," Fiona's voice filtered down, in a tone that told Rhys she was trying her hardest to sound cool and collected, despite very much not being. "Hello. That's a nice sword you've got there... very... blue... are you a vault hunter by any chance?"

Zer0 sounded cool and collected without even trying. "Indeed."

"That is just.. wonderful. Pleasure to meet you properly. Kinda saw you murder a bunch of psychos a while back."

"I tend to do that / So... you can open a vault? / That's interesting," Zer0 mused.

"Well, we can, me and that idiot you were probably just talking to."

"Uh, I can hear you," Rhys muttered, glaring up at the sky. He had a suspicion she already knew.

"Oh hey there Rhys. How's life treating you down there?" Fiona's head popped into view, peering back at him. She was smiling. Somehow that made things worse.

"It's going fine, actually, no thanks to you. Yeah, cheers for leaving me to die by the way."

She shrugged. "You look pretty not dead to me. It all worked out in the end."

"If by 'worked out' you mean I nearly died."

"Nearly, Rhys, nearly," she said, as if that somehow made things better. She was trying to be lighthearted, he thought, to make it a joke so that maybe it was okay. He didn't think either of them really believed it.

"The vault..." Zer0 prompted.

"Right," Fiona said, pulling away from the hole in the ceiling to presumably face the assassin. "You and your colleagues, my finely dressed friend, have a wonderful opportunity ahead of you. The chance... no, the privilege to join forces with some of the best Pandoran minds this world has to offer... and also possibly Rhys... on the business venture of a lifetime! We'll open up a vault, witness the never before seen secrets of an alien race long lost to this galaxy... and then, you know, split the loot and stuff."

A moment of silence hung heavy in the air.

"What? That not selling it for you?"

"If it is all true... / Then I will ask my 'colleagues' / I tire of rooftops."

"Hey, what about the other bandits? Are they all..." she began, but was cut off.

"It's taken care of / A spectacle of violence / Quite satisfying."

Fiona paused. "Alright, yep, so... we'll just meet you back at our caravan then? If you can find it?"

"I'll manage."

Another moment of silence followed. Fiona's face popped back into view. "Do all vault hunters just backflip off roofs like that?"

"I don't know, maybe you should have asked Athena," Rhys grumbled. And not just because he was bitter he hadn't got to see it himself. Because he wasn't. Totally not.

"I want to backflip like that..." She sounded wistful.

Feeling somewhat petty and not entirely happy with the concept of her staring wistfully after his favorite vault hunter, having also left him to die minutes before, he snapped, "Well you can't."

Fiona frowned. She shuffled around, sliding through the hole in the ceiling until she dangled, then let herself drop to the walkway with a metal clang. When she stood up she set a hand on her hip. "I'm getting the impression you're still mad at me."

"You think?"

She sighed. "Well, I'm still mad at you, so that's fine. How about we just forget the whole being mad at each other thing for a while and get back to the caravan?"

It sounded far more reasonable than he wanted it to. Did he want to be mad at her? No, he didn't want any of this... none of it... but here they were, and resentment was just so much easier. It wasn't helpful though, and she was right, they needed to work together if they wanted to get through this, personal grudges meant nothing.

And maybe he deserved it anyway. Her abandoning him. Twice. He had... Jack had... well, if he'd ever bothered to tell them things would be different...

All that mattered to Fiona now was a way out of this for her and her sister, and he had no right to begrudge them that. Somehow he'd find a solution to his own dilemma. Eventually.

"What about Sasha?" he asked, softer.

Her expression tightened itself up, sealing away anything too revealing. Fiona adjusted her hat. "She'll... she'll just have to wait. Gortys called us. She needs us there, we can't just leave her. Sasha's strong and she's got August with her too, even if he's an ass he knows how to use a gun. She'll be fine."

There was a firmness to her words, and Rhys expected it was more for her own benefit that his.

"Alright," he said simply, and walked off toward the ladder.

Fiona hesitated a moment before following. When she caught sight of the bodies on the garage floor she whistled. "Vault hunters are messy."

"Them and Handsome Jack," he muttered. She didn't seem to hear.

Rhys found his stun baton where it had been tossed, folding it up and putting it back in his jacket. He didn't want to look too closely at the remnants of the bandits, to remember what it had felt like blasting them to pieces, squeezing the life from them...

He focused his attention on the door instead. There was nothing for him to hack, but a quick search revealed a leaver that was probably designed to open it. If Zer0 had cleared out the camp they should just be able to stroll out.

Fiona must have been in a hurry because she didn't waste time looting any of the bodies, already at his side. With a glance at her, Rhys yanked the leaver and with a jolt the shutter door began to roll up. He stooped to step under it before it was fully lifted.

The Pandoran sun was as bright and overbearing as it had always been. The camp was silent.

Rhys squinted, a hand raised to shield himself from the light as he activated his ECHO eye. It scanned the area, labelling objects such as 'dead bandit', 'bandit torso' or 'bandit arm'.

Rhys deactivated his ECHO eye. He was pretty sure he got the idea.

Fiona shoved past him, already on her way to the front gate.

It was as long and grueling as the journey had been the first time, and Rhys was certain he was sunburnt when the caravan finally came into view. His clothes stuck to his skin, damp with sweat, and he'd given up trying to disguise his shortness of breath. He was beginning to understand yet another reason why people hated Pandora.

He missed air conditioning. Helios might be full of murderous, corporate scum ready to backstab you in a second, but it had air conditioning, blessed air conditioning, and he was really beginning to miss it. Just that part.

Fiona signaled them to stop, her gaze narrowed as she studied the caravan from a distance.

Rhys was more than happy for the chance to catch his breath.

"Can you see anything with your robo-vision?"

Too tired for a sarcastic retort, he simply activated the cybernetic and ran a basic scan over the vehicle.

"No structural damage... I think Gortys is in there, but I'm picking up some organic signatures too."

"Zer0?"

"Might me."

"Might be," she mimicked. "Can't you tell?"

Trying to keep his irritation to a minimum he switched back to his normal vision, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Look, I'm scanning through metal walls thick enough to keep space out, this stuff works better for electronics or things I can see. I don't have x-ray vision."

"Maybe you should have invested."

"Maybe you should have invested," he grumbled, having no better retort.

Fiona ignored him. She was staring at the caravan, lips a tight line.

"I guess we'll just have to go say hi," she said. "Then if they're bad, we can shoot them."

"I don't have a gun."

"It's a figure of speech. I'll shoot them and you can stand there being useless. Happy?"

Rhys wasn't even sure why he was surprised at this point. "This is a bad plan. It's not even a plan."

"Well what do you want to do, genius?" When he didn't reply she nodded, satisfied. "That's what I thought. Come on."

It would have been useless arguing. With reluctance, Rhys trudged after her across the burnt, red earth, trying not to contemplate the chances of them actually being lucky given their past experience.

Handsome Jack had left him floundering in front of a psycho last fight, so he didn't even know if he could rely on the AI to pull him out of danger a second time. How much of Handsome Jack was even aware of what he was doing? Something must have alerted him to Rhys's predicament. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise.

He couldn't read his thoughts right now though, could he? It seemed... quiet in his head. He hoped that meant he was alone. For one thing, it would be a darn sight harder to plan his escape if the psychopath could hear him doing it.

Handsome Jack is a moron, Rhys tried thinking at full volume. Nothing. Okay, that was promising.

He nearly tripped over his own feet, stumbling as he reminded himself of their current task.

No one shot at them. No one stopped them approaching the caravan.

That was also encouraging. Rhys was immediately wary.

When they finally stopped outside the door, Fiona puffed herself up and put on that 'I totally know what I'm doing' face that didn't fool him for a second. Before he could ask her what the next part of her 'plan' was she knocked.

Yeah, it was absolutely not a plan.

They both stood awkwardly outside and waited.

"Do you think you should knock again?" he asked after a moment.

"No, it's rude if you-"

Fiona was cut off as the door was swung open, startling the pair of them.

It was not Zer0.

The teenage girl before them wore her hair in high pigtails, goggles on her head and grease stains on her skin. She was grinning, hip cocked to the side with a mechanical hand upon it. More alarming was the gun she held in her other hand. "Oh hey! You've gotta be the two everyone was talking about, Rhys and Fiona, right? Ooooh, and you've got a robot arm too! See, we match? Except, you know, mine's cooler and all. Did you cut it off yourself?"

"Uhhh..." Rhys tried, too stunned to answer. He was pretty sure he was staring like an idiot.

"Eh, looks like a Hyperion model, so you were probably too much of a wimp. I could totally upgrade that for you. I can break concrete with mine you know, I bet you can't do that."

Thankfully Fiona put herself together quicker than he did because she took a step forward, arms folded. "Who exactly are you and what are you doing in our caravan?"

The girl's eyes widened, and she slapped a hand across her face as if in horror. "Right, my bad, got distracted there. Name's Gaige - mechromancer, vault hunter, genius. You're friends said they weren't bandits and they had something here that'd interest me, so you know, here I am."

Rhys froze. "Friends... you didn't-"

She snorted. "What, kill them? Pffft, why? Did you know they have the cutest little robot here?"

Fiona lifted her head, attention on the interior behind the girl as she called out, "Sasha?"

Immediately there was a clatter.

"Fi! Where were you?" A familiar face pushed its way into view, and the relief that flashed between the two of them was palpable. He felt like an outsider.

"What do you mean where was I, where were you?"

"Out scouting like we said we would be. Found one of your vault hunters, but when we got back you were gone."

"We were looking for you! Why didn't use the radio?"

Sasha rolled her eyes. "Maybe because someone here didn't trust us enough not to be summoning an army of bandits."

"Hey, that's totally what I would do if I was a bandit," Gaige said. She apparently only just realized she still had her gun out and put it away, stepping aside to let them in.

Fiona didn't waste any time joining her sister. "Glad you're alright."

"Of course I am. And I'm glad you're fine too," Sasha said, sounding amused. She glanced out the door. "Oh, and I guess Rhys is still alive as well."

The last part was added with less enthusiasm. It was too much to hope her feelings to him might have changed.

"Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint," he said halfheartedly, pulling himself up into the caravan and letting the door close.

August appeared to be sulking in the back, and he could see Gortys in animated conversation with what he could only describe as a floating death machine. Zer0 was settled in the middle of the floor in meditation.

Unsure where to put himself Rhys just stood there while Gaige collapsed into one of the seats, legs swinging.

"Am I sensing some kind of drama? Cos I feel like there's some kind of drama going on," she said, eyes flicking between them with a scrutiny that made his skin crawl.

"There's not," Sasha snapped.

"Oooh, right, sure." The girl grinned. She glanced down, and whispered under her breath. "Totally drama."

"Aaanyway, if we're all here and not dead, maybe we could talk business?" Rhys suggested, trying to grab control of the situation. And not just to distract himself from Sasha's lingering glare.

Gaige was... a bit much. How someone so young even became a vault hunter he didn't know, and probably didn't want to find out, but she seemed like the sort of person who could derail a conversation or launch into a monologue at the drop of a hat. That wasn't what they needed right now.

Thankfully Fiona seemed to take the hint and picked up where he'd left off. "We can open a vault, you're vault hunters," she said, leaning back against the wall, "it's a mutually beneficial partnership."

"And we'll even let you have the bigger cut," Sasha added, finding a comfortable space beside her.

Gaige nodded agreeably. "Yeah, Zer0 already filled me in on the deets, I'm all for it. I'm so sick of killing bandits, this sounds way more fun."

The assassin lifted their head at the sound of their name. Slowly they unfurled from their position, coming to their feet. "Sanctuary first / We must tell Lilith of this / She will want to know."

"Whatev, I left some of my guns there anyway."

"Sanctuary... I've heard about that, but..." Fiona looked distant. The name obviously meant something, Sasha had a similar expression and a quick glance in August's direction told Rhys he at least recognized it.

"Floating city, last home of the Crimson Raiders, it's pretty dope," Gaige said, flapping a hand about. "Also, like, every vault hunter I know visits so… if you really do have a way into a vault you'll be the most popular people there. Might want to ditch the Hyperion getup though."

Rhys looked down at his uniform. He supposed he could do without the jacket, the Pandoran weather certainly didn't suit it.

He should want to tear the thing off him, rid himself of any trace of the company that wasn't wired into him. Was it just the familiarity that had kept him from doing so?

He'd worn his Hyperion clothes his entire trip on Pandora... he'd still worn the new one Jack seemed to have fit him in without a second thought.

Vaughn had ditched his own company vest... why had it never occurred to Rhys?

"Enough of talking / We have a destination / I suggest we move," the assassin said, jolting him from his introspection. Rhys let his fingers fall from the jacket's edge. He'd deal with it soon.

Gaige snickered. "Ooooh, someone's impatient."

Zer0 flashed a ':P' emoticon at her. To the rest of them they said, "We have our own ride / Follow and we will guide you / Sanctuary waits."

"Awww, but I want to ride in the caravan!"

"Too bad."

The assassin stalked to the door, head tipped to the side as they waited to see if Gaige would follow.

Sulkily she stood. "Come on then Deathtrap."

At her signal the floating robot Gortys had been talking to rose further into the air, and with a slow turn glided off to join the teen. They both hopped out the door, and with a nod to the rest of them Zer0 followed.

Fiona shut the door.

"Well...," she said, eventually, "that didn't go as terribly as it could have."

((Sooo... it's been over two years now, hasn't it? Sorry about that... not really any proper way to say that.

I feel weird coming back to this, worried about the writing (lets face it, with such a break inconsistency is pretty much a given), worried I've forgotten things, worried it's not as good, worried it's long since anyone cared about this, worried about introducing vault hunters that were never in tftbl... but I meant it when I said I never wanted to abandon this story for good. No promise when the next update will be though.

Anyways, in the meantime Telltale games went and broke my heart by crashing and burning, and guaranteeing no chance of a season 2. Our best bet is that some of the characters make an appearance in the main Borderlands franchise. Fingers crossed for Borderlands 3.))