Putting Out Fire With Gasoline

By Jixie

Borderlands © Gearbox Software

It was destined to happen sooner or later: the words that Lilith dreaded to hear ever since Maya's tragic death.

"Lilith, hon," said Ellie, approaching gingerly. "We found Krieg's whereabouts…"

"…and someone needs to tell him," Lilith finished, sagging.

It was essentially a suicide run. Scratch that— it was a suicide run. Whoever had the misfortune of giving Krieg the bad news would undoubtedly meet their end courtesy of a sawblade axe.

But it wasn't like they could just… not tell him. Right? Right. They had to. Someone had to.

There was an uneasy silence.

"I suppose we could draw straws." She was only half joking, and glanced at Tannis, hoping for some wacky, off-the-wall suggestion from their resident unhinged scientist.

Tannis took a couple steps backwards, waving her hands. "Oh, don't look at me."

"Maybe— maybe Zero could talk to him."

Ellie's suggestion was not a bad one. Zero had a history with Krieg, they were on good terms, and if worst came to worst, he could hold his own against the rampaging psycho. On the other hand, haiku was perhaps not the best way to find out the unrequited love of your life was dead. Axton might be a better fit, or Gaige… but Axton was fighting his own battles, and Gaige was in hiding, and no one had seen hide nor hair of Salvador for a while.

Pursing her lips, Lilith exhaled slowly through her nostrils. This was a toughie.

Roland would've known what to do.

She found herself thinking that a lot these days, when it felt like everything was going wrong, and the harder she tried to hold things together, the more it all fell apart in her arms.

And maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd have been just as lost and stressed out as she was. He was smart, tactically minded, but he was also human. He hadn't always had all the answers. Maybe— maybe she was just looking back with rose tinted glasses, remembering him greater than he'd truly been.

Oh, who was she kidding? Roland would've known what to do.

Roland wouldn't have gotten his ass kicked by a couple punk echovangelist kids. Roland wouldn't have let them steal his siren powers, like some kind of idiot, when she— when he could've just teleported away.

Maybe she should talk to Krieg. She knew what it felt like: that emptiness inside, that loss that never really completely fades away. The 'what could have been' that would haunt the rest of her days.

Burying her head in her hands, Lilith debated about it for a while longer before giving up and calling Mordecai on the echo. She needed someone to act as a sounding board, and he was one of her oldest friends. (As was Brick, but truth be told, Brick's suggestions were not always… the most sound.)

They were in the midst of reviewing the options when Tina's voice blared over the echo.

"I'LL DO IT!"

"Tina, this is a private conversation—" Mordecai started.

"I said I'll do it! What else is there to talk about?"

"It's gonna be dangerous."

"Ha!" Tina paused, an uncharacteristic, slight hesitation in her voice. "Krieg and I get along. We 'get' each other. We're more alike than— well, anyway. If anyone's got a shot of getting through to him, it's me."

What she meant— what went unsaid— was that if there was anyone Krieg wasn't going to kill in a rage after hearing the news, it was Tina.

It was hard to argue that.

"I don't know if this is a good idea," Mordecai said.

It probably wasn't.

She knew of this place. She'd never been there, but she'd heard of it, stories of thrilling adventure from Roland and then later from Mordi and Brick and once even Lilith.

All these years later, and this place was still called 'Krom's Canyon'. Once a populated bandit camp now a decaying ghost town. Wood steps creaked and buckled under her boots, and the rotting platforms swayed when she walked across them. Tina spent a full day searching every inch of the place for Krieg. Not trusting the scaffolding, she set up camp on the ground deep in the canyon.

Through the ground she could hear the muffled sounds of spiderants tunneling below.

That morning, Tina woke to find Krieg squatting across from her bedroll, watching her intently.

"Howdy, meat puppet."

"Glug glug GLUG, I chug the BLOOD," Krieg replied.

"Right," she agreed, crawling to her feet. "Or, I can make some coffee up in this hiz-ouse?"

"F-Feed the need. A migraine of caffeine is a pickaxe… to the skull!"

She took that as a 'yes', and after starting a fire, started boiling water for a cowboy brew. The resulting drink was muddy and grainy with unfiltered grinds, strong but surprisingly smooth— Tina had this shit down to an art.

"Careful, mug's hot."

He held the metal cup with both hands, seemingly unaffected. Tina blew on her coffee, wisps of steam dancing around her face, and gingerly took a sip. Using his thumb, Krieg pried the bottom of his mask up just enough to bring the cup to his lips, and quickly gulped down the still scalding hot coffee.

They sat in silence for a long time after that, Tina leisurely drinking and Krieg scratching his fingers into the dirt.

"I gots some bad news for you, bandito bro," she said finally.

"The flaying of the skin IS UPON US!"

"Yeah. Pretty much." Tina set down her cup, stood, and stretched. She then proceeded to pace. She'd volunteered for this. No backing out now. "Maya—" God, just get to the fricken' point. "Maya is dead."

"The pretty lady?"

"The pretty lady."

And.

Here.

It.

Comes.

"She has GONE to the star skies! Apart— RIPPED US APART. The— the—" For on, brief, terrible moment, Krieg seemed to be at a loss for words. Then he was up on his feet in a flash. "She is waiting there for ME, in the TEMPLE OF IMMENSITY!"

"I'm sorry."

"Yes. YES! A blood feast of the maggots. The meat puppet is ripped away, the heart of blue will join the Moon Bird over Pandora! We must PREPARE the JOURNEY of the spirit— for her!"

Tina nodded, mumbling sounds of agreement, and was surprised when Krieg reached out one massive hand towards her— his palms and finger pads red and blistered from the hot coffee cup.

"Come now, rabbit head. The ascension has begun! The path is LONG, a treacherous symphony! We MUST WASTE NOT!"

Well. When he put it that way…

She took his hand, only to find herself hauled up into the air and thrown over his shoulder. Tina squawked in protest. "Wait! My gear!"

Rarely did psychos make sense, even when they seemed to have a point. Krieg had been talking in circles for hours, and Tina had no better idea of what he was trying to say than when they'd started. It didn't help that his endless rambling was occasionally broken up by wild uncontrollable laughter, or repeated shrieks of 'BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD', or some rather intensely graphic descriptions of how nice it was when juicy juicy eyeballs popped between his molars.

(As if she'd never eaten an eyeball before. This was Pandora, fer cryin' out loud. They did not 'pop'.)

Together they were lying under the stars, Tina having set up a relatively cozy little camp. (Thankfully, she'd been able to grab her camping equipment, weapons, food stocks and water.) Whenever she thought Krieg was finally settling down, he's start back up again.

There were three things Tina was sure of:

One, that whatever the hell Krieg was on about, he was intensely sincere about it.

Two, he was very concerned with something about a Moon Bird.

"You mean Lilith? The Firehawk?"

"NO! No no no NO NO!"

"Okay! Okay. …Bloodwing?"

"I'll RIIIIIIP OUT YOUR THROAT!"

"Right, 'Moon Bird'. I gotchu, fam."

"The Moon Bird flies around the MANTLE of the GROUND FLESH. Of P-PANDORA! It feasts upon the SWARMS, the SPACE-BUGS! They try to land, to steal our precious bodily fluids! THEY WISH TO DRINK UP! But the Moon Bird— it drives away the outsiders. It keeps the planets insides inside!"

She was pretty sure he was confusing this make believe creature with the Warrior.

Three, she could really go for a nipple salad right about now.

The only way to survive Pandora was instinct.

She woke in an instant to the sound of a skag's huffing wet breath sniffing around, and before her conscious mind had caught up to what was happening, Tina had her pistol out and aimed.

Krieg stood there, a looming shadow in the moonlight, hand out and palm open. The wild skag approached cautiously, drawn by the scent of food, and then hesitant, careful, it opened its mouth just enough to snatch the sliver of dry salt meat from Krieg, then spun and raced off into the night.

Tina stared for a moment, blinked in surprise, tucked the pistol back under her make-shift pillow and went back to sleep.

"We must prepare the meat bicycle for the ascension of her spirit! We must— must PREPARE THE FEAST!"

Even as an adult, she didn't mind hitching a ride on Brick's shoulder or letting him carry her piggy-back, and was still petite enough to get away with it. Krieg, however, Tina felt slightly less enthused about. But she tried to roll with it. He had her camping gear tucked under his arm, too, so that was a nice perk.

From what Tina could piece together, they were committed to Operation: Meat Bicycle.

"So where to first?"

"To COLLECT the tires! Yes. YES! The three largest tires, a gift from the fecund earth!"

"Uh, not to second guess you there, but wouldn't that be a meat tricycle?"

"The— The three LARGEST TIRES!" Krieg insisted.

"Okay. Coo', coo', coo'."

He was convinced that one was out in the badlands, mounted above the Hodunk speedway. Tina was one hundred percent certain that was wrong, but who was she to argue? Who was anyone to argue? No one, not with Krieg, that was sure.

Jumping from one transportation station to the next, then grabbing a Catch-A-Ride, they headed out to the middle of nowhere.

Here was still a thriving population of bandits, completely unfettered since Ellie's Garage had moved. Graffiti branded walls and vending machines and even stone outcrops, making it clear that the Calypso's and the Children of the Vault's message had made it out this far.

Tina maybe didn't have the greatest grasp of sanity possible, but she was hardly stupid. She could see the glaring oversight, the thing that Lilith and the others had overlooked:

The bandits of Pandora had been abandoned by the Corporations. Here, it'd been mostly Dahl, but the universe was scattered with settlements like this. People who'd been tossed aside like trash. People who'd been left to slip through the cracks. Eridium exposure had deteriorated their bodies and twisted their minds, but they were still people. And…

…they knew. They knew they had been forsaken. They'd been ripe for someone like the Calypso's to come and give them a path and some meaning. Handsome Jack had tried to eradicate them. The Crimson Lance had tried to subjugate them. Those creepy ass twins? Offered them purpose.

Spotting a bar— just outside a small shanty town— Krieg pulled the car over, jumping out before it'd come to a full stop. Going only a couple miles per hour, it came to a crashing halt when it smacked into a boulder, and Tina brained herself on the dashboard.

"Thanks, Krieg," she groaned as she stumbled out of the car, rubbing her forehead.

"Insurance FRAUD!" He replied matter-of-factly.

He slammed open the door of the local watering hole, and stood there for a moment, chest heaving as he took in several large breaths.

"I— I FLAY THE BABIES WITH MY MILK-TEETH!"

The bartender grinned at them. "Hrlrlrghrhrl, ghrhrurghlrrrr!"

"Sounds good to me," Tina said.

There were no COV tags here, and she took a seat and opened a tab. Krieg struck up a conversation— if you could call it such— with the bartender, while Tina drank and made moon eyes at an attractive bandit patron.

"You a fine mama-jama."

She grinned at Tina. God, she had no teeth! …it wasn't a deal breaker. "Meet me in the shitter."

"Oh, you don't have to tell me twice."

Not long after they were back on the 'road', and soon arrived at their destination:

A half-rotting tire lying on its side at the entrance of a long-abandoned racecourse.

Krieg was impossibly pleased with himself.

It took them the better part of a week to round up the other two tires, and fashion them onto a frame made of desiccated skag bones and stolen pipe and broken bits of Hyperion tech— probably scrap from the station wreckage, if Tina had to venture to guess.

She had to hand it to Krieg, it honestly looked more like a tandem bicycle than a trike, with all three tires in a row. A meat bicycle built for two, if you would. The fact that the three giant tires were actually pretty disparate sizes… that she kept to herself.

"Awlrighty tighty. We got ourselves a bicycle. What's next, boo?"

There was only silence, and when Tina glanced back over her shoulder, her heart sank.

He stood there with a hollow look in his eyes, and she knew… she knew… that this was not the wild psycho she'd been misadventuring with. This was the inner voice, the man trapped inside the monster.

"A grand farewell," he said softly.

And just like that the moment was gone, and the Krieg that they all knew and loved was back.

They'd built the 'bicycle' in another cavern, one Tina was also familiar with. Once upon a time it had been a shrine to the Firehawk.

Which was funny, considering Krieg's insistence that the Firehawk was not his beloved Moon Bird.

It was also funny, because Tina found herself picking up artifacts and looking at scrawled graffiti and wondering about how Lilith's cult had been different from Tyreen and Troy's. Lilith had allowed her followers to do their thing… as long as they weren't hurting anyone but themselves. The Calypso's encouraged their 'congregation' to go out and wreak havoc.

Still…

She wondered if they'd gotten the idea from Lilith and the Firehawk cult. It seemed too much of a coincidence not to.

Tina screamed in excitement and terror— the best combination, really— as she peeled out of the bandit stronghold in the hulking, viscera covered, blood spattered, spikes and chains and half-buried sawblades vehicle. It was the 'bandit technical' to end all 'bandit technicals'. She'd seen Ellie's 'Double D' on the echonet, but this glorious bastard put that dinky jalopy to shame.

If loving a monster truck was wrong, well, then she didn't want to be right.

Sure, it had nearly cost them their lives. But it'd been so worth it.

It wasn't enough to stick his head out the passenger window, Krieg practically crawled halfway out, enthusiastically swinging his buzzsaw axe at the wind whipping past. "STRIP THE FLESH!"

"SALT THE MUCKABLUCKIN' WOUND!"

"ARRRROOOOOOUUUUGGGG!"

"I know, I know, you explained this already. But. I'm, uh, I'm afraid you've lost me here, macho nacho my man."

"The Moon Bird will FEAST upon this gourmet SMORGASBORD. A delectable BU-BUFFET OF ORGAN MEATS. Then it will GUIDE the spirit! TO THE END OF ENTROPY."

She glanced at the growing pile of animal corpses filling the bed of her beloved monster truck. Krieg stood proud as he tossed another scythid— missing more than half its limbs— in. After three days, the collection of scythids, crab worms, and rakk was going putrid, and they'd gone from 'gamey' to 'I think I'm going to be sick'.

"So, hows we getting it to your big ol' bird buddy?"

His only answer was howling maniacal laughter.

After an injection of the antibiotic, painkiller, non-blood volume expander, synthetic adrenaline cocktail from Dr. Zed's machine, Tina then bit down on one of her leather belts and started stitching.

She hadn't been keeping count of how many times Krieg had nearly gotten her killed. This was Pandora. You don't keep track of that kind of shit.

…but she was pretty sure that he'd managed to break some kind of record. Brick and Mordi never had this many near-misses, that was for damned sure.

"SORRY, rabbit head."

"'s okay, big guy."

When she was done, Tina stood there with her hands on her hips, and all she could think was one thing:

'That is a butt load of propellant.'

This was a terrible idea.

In the history of terrible ideas, it was perhaps the most terrible that anyone had ever had, ever.

Still, they'd gotten this far. No point of letting it all go to waste.

What was she thinking!? What they were about to do was waste everything they'd just worked so hard for!

Tina glanced over at Krieg. Still, he'd been so… so… earnest about all this, and she'd humored him the whole time, out of sympathy. How could she kick him down, now? Besides. She was Tiny mother-lovin' Tina, legendary demolition expert! How could she not blow all this crap up to kingdom come?

With that, she pressed the switch.

It was a few hours before she came to.

When Tina awoke, she found herself lying on her back, having been dragged away from the former-site-of-the-former-Firehawk-cult. Krieg was squatting a few feet away from her, eyes fixed on the still smoldering fires in the canyon below.

There was a look of contentment in his eyes.

Naturally, the explosion hadn't actually sent the bicycle, the monster truck, or the foul rotting mess of meat up into the stratosphere… no, it had just blown it all to smithereens. Tina couldn't tell if he didn't know, or he knew and didn't care. Either way, mission accomplished. Go team.

She sat up, ears ringing, head spinning. They were both covered in burns, their clothes ruined. She was pretty sure her left leg was broken in two places, and it looked like Krieg's shoulder was dislocated. As the planet's premier expert in explosions, Tina'd had a few bad mishaps over the years, but this was definitely one of the worst.

The ground below her shuddered, and suddenly she was aware of the sky. It wasn't the soft muted blue-purple of dusk— no. It was mid-day. The past couple days had been strange, with the light beaming from Elpis and heaven only knows what the Calypso's and the Vault Hunters were up to, she'd been trying not to think about it, trying to focus on the here and now and Maya was dead and…

Krieg looked over at her, and she started screaming.

"You—! Do you have any idea— ugh! Krieg, I know it's tough. I know! I get it! But this crap won't bring Maya back, it won't help her— her soul or whatever get to heaven and whatever the hell you think you're trying to accomplish! We nearly died and now we probably ARE going to die because that crazy bitch Tyreen is about to wipe us off the face of the planet, or bring the moon crashing down on us, or something. We're going to DIE and I just wasted my last days running all over creation for your hare-brained, cockamamie idea to—"

She stopped suddenly, and all the fight went out of her. Mouth dry, she scratched her face and fought back tears.

"I'm sorry."

Wasn't this what they'd done to her? Tina had helped Krieg because she understood, she sympathized. And she also knew what it felt like to have concerned, stressed out, also grieving friends come down on her because for just a little while she'd wanted to pretend like things weren't as bad as they were. To pretend that Roland was still with them. To pretend that Maya's spirit was watching over them.

He stood uneasily, swaying from his injuries.

And then the sky lit up.

They both shielded their eyes, blinking in the sudden, intense brightness, and… as the light dimmed, the moon shone above them…

…a bright and glowing image of a bird emblazoned across its surface.

A phoenix.

A Firehawk.

…A Moon Bird.

Krieg looked at her with a strangely peaceful expression, turned away, and started heading down into the canyon. Tina laughed, shaking her head. Well, if there was a bird on the moon and Lilith was up there, watching over them, then maybe Maya was too.

Or at least, it wouldn't hurt to pretend.