Claptrap Chapter 26 - Shift in Focus

The dark, cellar like area under the guard post was a nightmare. I stared in what would be an unreadable expression had I possessed a human face. Inside, I was feeling a mixture of horror, disgust, and righteous indignation.

My eye had adjusted to allow more light in so I wasn’t totally in the dark, and what I found was a charnel house. Fresh, and old rotting bodies of people piled up around the space. I recoiled as I looked at the face of a man whose face hadn’t been carved off, and recognized him as the one who had antagonized me back at Fyrestone.

He and his wife had been stripped of their clothes and cut up for…I could only guess. Cannibalism is the first thing to come to mind, given all the psychos that the Hunters had killed. Face Pizza and all that.

Despite the sick feeling that threatened to overwhelm me, I scanned each person I could, and marked each person my “personnel file” possessed as deceased. There were twenty-one bodies in that place, with flies flying about in clouds. My files only recognized twelve of them.

On one hand, a part of me was relieved to see that there were no children among them. On the other hand, the couple here had two children with them as they left town. My stomach dropped in deep dread as to what fate they couldhave had. The human part of me, and the Claptrap part of me was screaming to find them. I didn’t resist it.

I crept as best as my wheel could about the room in case there were any hidden surprises. For the next six minutes I searched the room, scanning everything and anything to any sign or clue. I found a few medical injectors that seemed to have been missed, but there were no echo-units, no clothes, no personal effects, no convenient maps of the area, nothing.

I felt sorrow begin to fill me when I noticed it.

A small device on a nearby table, barely the size of a roll of quarters.

[quote]

ANAYLISIS COMPLETE

Device: Child Tracker

Manufacturer: Dahl

Model: Tyke-Finder Mk.21

One of the few technologies that pretty much all major and minor corporations share, because it would be bad for anyone’s image if you didn’t show you care about the crotch-spawn of the customers. Usually a child wears the transmitter, but sometimes it gets implanted into the kid if the parents really want to hover over them. Granted, it is actually a good product for a low price, and yeah it gets abused by jealous boyfriends who somehow managed to put this in his girls’ purse, even if they rightfully were suspicious of her closing the store during the day when her dad went out for deliveries. And maybe there is a market for this since it can end up with the guy finding said girl having sex with her fellow worker, despite being married to the boyfriend, who is ACTUALLY HER HUSBAND! SUSAN YOU FU…[/quote]

Uhh…okay then.

I turned off the scanner and grabbed the tracker and found I couldn’t open it. Fortunately, I had Hyperion Access, and with it the codes that grant me access if an “Amber-Alert” is occurring. It turned on, and instantly it appeared in my hud. A quest marker of a sort appeared in a distant square, and I recognized it as the direction of that bandit encampment at the north-east of the hills.

“Right then.” I grunted as I rolled back to the Stairs. It took me a few minutes to climb up the damned things, but the railings helped and I rolled out into the Pandoran Air.

The sound of gunfire filled the air in the distance, and I could only assume that the Vault Hunters were either at the Encampment or taking on the Skags. Either way, I had to get there. I rolled fast.

===

Mordecai shot a few larger Skags that tried to join in on the fun as Brick pummeled away at the fire breathing Skag. It was barely flinching as its claws rended onto the shield before the big guy had to back off. Roland’s Turret blasted away freely towards the lightning breathing Skag as the Soldier himself clambered up on a boulder. The lightning Skag flinched as bullets peppered its face and chest, and spat a ball of lightning in retaliation.

The turret took the hit, but immediately digitized itself afterwards. Roland had reached the top of the rock and kneeled down to fire several accurate bursts into the mouth of the Skag as it tried to fire another ball. It flinched back again with a roar, before rallying as more Skags came out of burrows and joined the fray.

“Dammit!” Mordecai yelled as he fired towards the new ones that were about to leap on the Soldier.

“This is becoming a problem!” Lilith yelled over the Echo as she blasted a few acid blobs out of the air while peppering the offending Skags with bullets that set what little grass there was on fire.

“Out! Of! Ammo!” Brick shouted, though he didn’t need an Echo to be heard. The big man was in a rage and punching the hell out of Skags left and right as heads turned to viscera as his fists slammed into them.

“We’ll fall back to the south-west! Mordecai, can you get Brick some space?”Roland shouted as he reloaded a magazine and quickly flung a mirv-grenade into the group that had gathered below his boulder.

“I might! Bloodwing! Sic em’ Boy!” Mordecai shouted as he fired another round into the head of an adult Skag that had clawed into Bricks shield protected back.

Bloodwing had been flying overhead in a circle until he heard his partner’s voice, and then shrieked as he erupted in lightning and thunder as he divebombed into the group. Claw strike after claw strike zapped multiple skags either dead from electrocution, or paralyzed into shock from a brush of lightning powered claws.

Brick grinned widely as he spun in place and smacked the group around him into a pile.

“Hell yeah!! Thanks, Bloodwing! You da’ Bird!” the big man cheered as he sprinted over the pile of Skag and towards the group that had been blown away by Roland’s grenade and clotheslined a bunch of them as he kept going.

Roland wasted no time jumping after the man as Lilith reappeared running beside him.

Mordecai had shifted as Bloodwing returned to him, only to realize that five Skags from the burrows near the bandit encampment had come to investigate the gunfire. They now growled as their mouths watered, and looked ready to leap.

“God-“

===

“-dammit!” I shouted as I dodged distant gunfire from some sniper bandits down the road towards the Depot. I zigged and zagged in a manner that only a Claptrap could, but still took a hit. Fortunately, he was beyond their effective range, and the bullets began to lose their power after that distance was reached. Only a little since some of those weapons fired rounds that were 100% in kinetic force up to 200 yards, but that little made the difference.

I rolled past the bend and finally up the hill out of their line of fire.

“F@%kers.” I growled as I went past the slumbering Rakk Hive, and towards the Skag Burrows. The sound of a distant rifle told me it was Mordecai, even though I couldn’t see him, because I knew the bark of his sniper rifle. Good. The Skags, and maybe the Bandits, will be distracted with him and the others while I go where I need to go.

I rolled quickly past the pack of Skags that were focused on the distant hunter, they did however pause to look at the thing that just went past them that wasn’t Skag, before promptly realizing there was still someone shooting at them.

I saw the bandit camp and readied myself.

===

A large Bandit with a rusty old Dahl support machinegun watched the skags run towards all the shooting with amusement, before his sight shifted at the sight of a green Claptrap rolling past the Skags.

“What the hell?” he wondered out loud as he walked down the foot path where the Robot would appear.

The green robot appeared and stopped as it saw him. He leveled his weapon at the bot, and grinned at the fun he was about to have.

“You came to the wrong camp tincan.”

“I have a delivery! A gift from a friend of yours!” the Green Robot shrieked as it waved its arms frantically.

He stopped in thought. While it was unusual…it’s not outside the bounds of possibility that the Claptrap was actually delivering something. He could just shoot it, but if it was stored away digitally, then he wouldn’t get whatever it was.

His shoulders slumped slightly as he rolled his neck.

“Alright. Who was it?”

The robot started rolling towards him and speaking while looking like he was thinking.

“Some guy named Slum? Sloore? Slate?” It said in that increasingly annoying tone before suddenly the robot pulled his pants with a hand, and shoved a grenade into it.

“Oh, his name was SUCK IT!” it shouted as it suddenly sped past him towards the huts.

He was too shocked and frantically trying to pull the thing out to hear the robot, which were the last words he heard when the grenade exploded him into a fine mist.

===

The explosion behind him and the sudden feeling of wetness across his back told me all I needed to know about the results of my bullshit gamble.

No longer gambling, I pulled out my shotgun and began rolling towards the farthest hut when suddenly a gigantic, mishappened psycho wandered out…with a small human leg his hand, which he had been munching on.

I stopped, frozen in horror at the sight. My eye zoomed in on the grotesque vision of the jagged teeth munching on bloodied meat.

The confused and manic look in the guy’s eyes had only begun to focus on me, when time slowed down.

I quickly changed from a shotgun to a sniper rifle, and in a few seconds of my time took aim and fired directly to the man’s heart. I felt satisfaction as the bullet penetrated and began to ricocheted off his inner ribcage and bounce around all over his chest cavity. Lungs, heart, stomach, and then intestines were shredded by the bullet bouncing about in the mutated structure of the freak.

The man barely realized he was shot when he fell to his knees and face planted to the ground.

Time went to normal as I shifted again to normal time and put the weapon away.

I opened the canvas door, and saw a boy holding his leg helplessly as he began to go pale, as his younger sister trying to do compute what was even happening, but failing.

I quickly pulled out a medical vial, and rolled up to the boy who barely noticed me until I grabbed at him. He tried to push me away, but he was far too weak and I just stuck him. Only then did he noticed I was a green robot and blinked as if seeing for the first time.

I ignored it and looked about for something to act as a torniquet, and found a sling for a rifle. I tied it around the boy’s leg as tightly as I could manage as he cried in pain. The girl finally had awareness of me too, and crawled over to her brother, sporting a gaze that wasn’t all here.

“Alright! Listen up. My name is Gates, and I’m here to get you back to Fyrestone, which we are doing right now!” I shouted as I picked the boy up and draped him over my back. The weight increase would slow me down, but I can manage it. The girl however was still just sitting there, staring at me with that thousand-yard stare.

I reached out for her, but she just kept staring.

Before I could do anything else, suddenly the door was ripped off, and a psycho with a buzzaxe stared at me with a wide grin.

“Black! Black Blood! I’ll drink it with a Bolt and nut!” he shouted before slamming into me.

The boy had enough sense to jump off me as adrenaline rushed into him, but I was still slammed onto my back as the Psycho Bandit readied to cut me down with his spinning axe.

Pulling out my own at the last second, I managed to block his blade with my own.

I slowed time down again, and quickly looked at my situation. I had a lunatic currently trying to cut me open with a spinning blade through my damned eye. What can I do? I was already blocking him, but that’s only going to be for a few more moments before he overpowers me.

That’s when suddenly the boy appears in my vision. In slow motion I watched as he leaped on one leg into the shoulder of the Psycho. His eyes were one of panic and instinct at this moment, and likely was just reacting.

The psycho, to my surprise, was thrown off balance completely and began falling onto his side. His blade lost contact with mine, and I had an idea. I shifted the Buzzaxe for my pistol, and lifted myself off the ground with my left arm so I could see to my right.

In about seven seconds, I was pointing the pistol in my right hand at the facemask of the psycho, and fired. I kept firing until I was out of ammunition.

Time sped forward, and I placed the weapon away, and then just laid on my back for a few moments.

“This is my life now…” I grumbled before lifting myself back onto my wheel.

With a glance to the children, they were both out of it still, but for different reasons. I sighed, and quickly got the two of them prepped to leave.

“Let’s see if we can get back without any more-“

===

“-Trouble.” Roland grunted as he sat next to the propane tank near the guard station.

“I guess a Claptrap is gonna be a Claptrap, even if the ghost lady says otherwise.” Mordecai snarked a bit as he reloaded his rifle. Bloodwing was cleaning his wings on the awning above him.

Lilith looked a bit irritated, but also a little concerned as she looked about for any sign of the robot.

Brick was straight up calling out.

“Gatey gatey gatey. C’mon boy!”

“He’s not a dog Brick.” Lilith sighed.

“Hey, you never know. He might answer. Gatey!” he shouted out the name.

“Over here!” the tinny voice of the robot sounded.

Everyone looked over towards the path. Whatever annoyance they felt died immediately upon seeing the robot carrying two children, one who was on one leg and looked ready to die on the spot, and the other in its arms who looked like a doll.

“A little medical help here please.” Gates requested with its cheery tone that was definitely laced with anger.

Mordecai was already up and pulling out a kit from his belt as he took the boy and looked his leg over. Roland was also looking it over, before looking at the robot who was handing the girl off to Brick.

Brick carefully took the child, that really looked like a doll in his hands, and held her close to his chest with the most serious look they’ve seen on him.

Gates turned to Roland, his eye slightly red, before speaking.

“Before you ask, if you want to know why I suddenly have two kids with me, go into that shack and go into the cellar.” He stated, pointing an arm.

“What’s in there?” Lilith asked, somewhat nervous.

The robot looked her in the eye, its own eye glowing red before speaking.

“Death.” Gates said before turning and rolling back towards the boy.

Roland, stared at the robot before staring at the structure, and then began walking into it. Lilith followed a bit afterwards.

When they came back out, the boy had been properly handled until they could get back to Zed, and the girl was asleep in Bricks arms.

Mordecai and Brick looked to their friends, and knew it was bad. Lilith looked sick, and Roland looked pissed.

“Let’s get back to town. We’re not ready to tackle this, just yet.” Roland commanded.

No one argued as they all began to walk back towards the Badland, all of them occasionally looking towards the small robot that rolled slightly ahead of them all.