The leg made the last stretch unpleasant in the specific way of pain that is just manageable enough to stop you from sitting down present and deeply invested in reminding me of its existence with every step.
My HUD maintained a steady commentary.
HEALTH: 31%. STATUS: WORSENING. INJURY: ACID BURN / MINOR TISSUE LOSS.
"I know," I said.
"It's not sentient," Cortana said. "You're narrating to a readout."
"I'm aware. It's cathartic."
She didn't comment on that.
I walked with a metal rod as a makeshift cane and kept my eyes on the horizon. The road dipped around a rock formation, and when it came back up on the other side, the outline was there. Unmistakable. Rusted scaffolding, irregular structure, the specific silhouette of something built by people working with whatever they had.
Fyrestone.
I stopped, looking at it for a moment. In every version of this he'd known, it had been a starting point, the first named location in the world beyond the player character. Now it was ahead of him in the actual physical sense and my health was at thirty-one percent health and I would love some water.
"We're close," Cortana said. "Keep moving."
He kept moving.
The settlement's outer gate was exactly as described and slightly worse in person. The guard tower was empty. The gate itself stood open. A broken CL4P-TP unit lay half-buried near the entrance, its optical unit dark, its chassis scorched and missing two panels.
I looked at it.
"That's not him," I sighed, to myself as much as Cortana. "The one I'm thinking of, he's inside. This one's been out here a while."
"It's nonfunctional," Cortana confirmed. "No power signature."
I stepped past it and into the shade of the structure.
The temperature drop was immediate but not cool exactly, just out of direct sun, and after the road that qualified as relief. I put my back against a metal wall and slid down to sit in the dirt, eyes closed for a moment.
"now for the part I forgot"
I navigate to my echo device and click a button on its edge bringing up a large panel in front which is reminiscent of the second games inventory layout with stats, badass rank inventory etc. but where the game settings were is a customization setting for the panel
I admittedly get sidetracked but now my panels are more compact while giving more info on everything thanks to a slider labelled from psycho to egghead.
I soon went to the skill section noting I have a skill point which I check out the skill trees with my first choice being the physical skill tree which I assume is a mix of survivor and misc. skills and there's a lot of options compared to the games
My skill trees are split in four with Physical in place of survivor and some others mixed in like rolands Medic tree the next is spatial which covers my blink and other things i forgot completely about in the grab bag and some later sections are insane with blink being able to go even more distance and a skill allowing people to be dragged with me, the third is labelled ruin which you guessed it is all about the engine and upgrades for it some making the distance larger or even new functions like a filter and a later upgrade being a entropy breaker which I assume allows me to create energy at a small scale
segway aside I stop viewing the weird skills ranging probably over a hundred i put my point into hardy increasing health regen outside of battle to 1% per 10 seconds which would feel abysmal in game but surprisingly fast when your inside the universe itself
My HUD ticked slowly upward. 32%. 33%.
"We made it," he said.
"We made it," Cortana agreed. Her voice carried something that wasn't quite relief, like the settling of tension that had been held at a consistent level for too long.
He spent the next hour in the shade, letting the perk do its work and taking stock of what Fyrestone actually was.
It was not empty.
That was the first thing that surprised him. Not significantly populated, definitely not a town in any real sense but there were people here. A handful of them. A woman carrying supplies across a courtyard. An older man doing maintenance on a generator that sounded like it had two good days left in it. A kid who spotted me, evaluating and disappeared around a corner.
It made sense, he thought. In the game, settlements were sparse because the game engine had limits. Realistically Any location with partial shelter and intermittent power would accumulate people.
"Different from what you expected?" Cortana asked, watching him observe.
"Richer," Jay said. "Less like a game level and more like a place."
"Its best to leave the idea of it being a game behind."
"Yeah." I flexed my leg which my health is at 41% now, genuinely improving. "I need to find water. And I need to find out what day it is."
"The second question may be answered soon," Cortana said.
From inside the main building, a sound:
Wheels. A single wheel, to be precise. Moving with the uneven rhythm of something that ran on enthusiasm more than maintenance.
I braced for the inevitable.
Claptrap came around the corner like a small, loud, rectangular catastrophe.
"OH! A PERSON! A REAL PERSON! HELLO, PERSON! ARE YOU ALIVE? YOU LOOK ALIVE! GREAT! LIVING PEOPLE ARE MY FAVOURITE!"
I stared at the robot for a moment. In the game, this was comic relief. In person, the volume was significantly more physical and more jarring. No wonder everyone shoots at him in game
"Hello," I said.
"I'M CL4P-TP! GENERAL PURPOSE ROBOT! REGISTERED FRIEND-HAVER! PANDORA'S MOST BELOVED—"
"What day is it?"
Claptrap paused mid-gesture, processing. "THE DAY BEFORE THE BIG DAY! VAULT HUNTERS ARRIVE TOMORROW! I'VE BEEN PREPARING! I MADE A BANNER! IT SAYS WELCOME EXCEPT I ONLY HAD ENOUGH LETTERS FOR WELCO—"
I just stopped listening after 'tomorrow.'
I found a cracked mirror in one of the disused rooms — attached to the inside of a bathroom stall door, the glass split in a diagonal crack that bisected my reflection into two slightly misaligned halves.
I looked.
I looked for a long time.
The face looking back was mine, clearly. Same eyes, same general structure. But the stress lines he'd accumulated over twenty-odd years had backed off considerably. The jaw was less set. The shoulders, even injured, had a different quality, not exactly a younger person's posture, but still, me from several years back. Seventeen roughly. Possibly sixteen.
"So that's a thing," I said.
Cortana said nothing, which was its own kind of acknowledgment.
"Young enough to still be categorized as a minor on most planets I assume," I continued, with the flatness of someone having to redo legal identification. "Fantastic."
I turned away from the mirror.
The New-U station was outside, near the gate. I approached it with the kind of optimism that came from knowing something was probably going to go wrong but hoping to be proven incorrect.
PLEASE SUBMIT DNA SAMPLE.
I pressed my thumb to the reader.
The machine beeped.
ERROR: DNA NOT COMPATIBLE.
SECONDARY ERROR: REGISTRATION BLOCKED — UNPAID TAXES.
I stared at the screen for a long moment. "I've been on this planet for less than two days."
"ATLAS TAXES EVERYTHING," Claptrap contributed helpfully from nearby. "BREATHING. THINKING. EXISTING IN A MANNER THEY FIND PRESUMPTUOUS."
I closed my eyes briefly. "So I have no fail safe."
"Confirmed," Cortana said. "Don't die."
"That was already the plan."
"I'm reinforcing it."
I walked back into the shade. My health was at fifty-three percent with my legs skin still scabbed but no longer indented from the corrosion. I had a roof, of a sort. I had an AI and a loud robot and a settlement that would have Vault Hunters in it by tomorrow. With no respawn.
Pandora, true to form, was not making anything easy.
I found a corner in the motel building out front, sat down, and began going through what was left in my bag.