#Mud Punk Skag

[unc0nquered]

Two years and ten months

... since the last time Zer0 was in Sanctuary.

The Crimson Raiders know Zer0′s alive. They’ve run into each other, from time to time, down on Pandora, out in the tundra. Sometimes the Raiders put jobs on the mission boards for Zer0 just to lure them in, see how they’re doing, ask if they won’t come back up to Sanctuary.

They always decline.

They’re bored. They’re so bored it’s killing them. All the gods and monsters are dead and all the bandits aren’t worth the bullets it would take to kill them. Money is easy to make, but hard to keep, and Pandora is easy to reach but hard to escape. And if they did escape, where would they go? Where, in the rest of the galaxy, all civilized and corporatized, would they to find a proper challenge?

So “I’m staying out here,” they tell the Raiders that come to check up on them. “Call me when you find a vault. Then I’ll come back up.”

They look like a bandit now. Bouncing over frozen ground in a squeaky rust bucket of a truck, skull spray-painted on their mask. They blend in with the Bloodshot punks, spend weeks at a time skulking in the shadow of the dam. Old tactical outfit stained and dyed so they camouflage with mud, with rusting shacks, with bloodstains. When other bandits see Zer0, now, they don’t call them “alien” or “android” or “ninja freak”; they treat them like a local enemy, look over their clothes and call them a “Bloodshart.” Zer0 thinks it’s funny.

They tell themself they think it’s funny or else they’ll have to admit that they’re afraid they’re gonna shrivel up and die on this planet. Just another dried-out bloody turd for the skags to chew on.

How long have they been on Pandora? Oh, god.