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It was rare that the Vault Hunters received anything outside of Pandora. Sometimes Zer0 would receive money from old assassination jobs, but that was about it. The last time a package had been left in the HQ, it had been Axton’s divorce papers. No one liked to talk about it. Perhaps that’s why there was an overwhelming uneasiness in the room when Tannis handed Gaige a box marked with her name and a postmark from Eden-5.
“It’s from Daddy!” Gaige chirped as she sat on the floor and ripped the package open. The other Vault Hunters feigned disinterest as they watched her open the package from nearby.
Salvador chuckled as she stared into the box, pulling out various sweets and snack foods. “How the hell did that man find a way around Hyperion’s shipping blockade?” He leaned over and snagged a bar of chocolate, only to be met with a glare from the Mechromancer. It didn’t stop the man from eating it though.
“My dad’s good with things like that,” Gaige then responded, choosing to ignore him. “Woah!” She excitedly pulled out an ECHO recorder with an utterly ecstatic look on her face. “The new Bad Squirrel Revolution album! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?! Maya, you have to listen to it with me.”
“Sounds…like fun,” Maya finally said with a small defeated sigh. There was never any use in trying to deny the girl. Besides, her music was always pretty interesting, at the very least. “Anything else in there?”
“Uhh…yeah. There looks like there’s some kind of book.”
“READING IS FOR THE WEAK.” Krieg’s voice shouted from outside the room, twitching with the urge to go out and kill again.
“Krieg is incorrect / Though you have little downtime / Books are a strange gift.” Zer0 stared at the large hardcover book, sitting down next to Gaige on the floor, a question mark flashing on his visor.
“Well, there’s a note on the cover! Let’s see…” Gaige picked it up with a grin and begin to recite the note. “My baby girl- augh that’s so embarrassing- I’ve been listening to your ECHOcasts and I’m happy you’re doing well and making friends. I got some of your friends from school to sign a yearbook for you. I know you never liked yearbooks much, but I thought you’d want one of your senior year. Love, Daddy.”
Silence overtook the room for a long moment. Gaige ran her hand over the book quietly, her grin completely gone. Finally, Maya decided to break the silence. “Okay, do I want to know what a ‘yearbook’ is?”
Axton finally looked up from his turret’s mechanics to kick his feet up. “It’s a collection of pictures from a school year. You got your classmates, your teachers, your highlights. The works. It’s a way to remember everyone.” He said with a shrug, turning to the girl on the floor. “What’s the matter, babe? Don’t want to know what your friends had to say?”
Gaige flipped the cover tentatively. “I…wasn’t exactly the most popular girl in school.” She replied, thumbing through the pages. There were some scribbles throughout. A couple of people complimented her intelligence, two or three mentioned how “cool” her science fair presentation was. A teacher mentioned her always being a good student. But the rest…
“Yikes,” Sal said, looking at all the insults throughout the book. “You weren’t kidding.”
“This is uncalled for,” Zer0 said as she leafed through, flashing disapproving emoticons as he glanced over the pictures of the other students. “These children are uncultured/ Why call you these names?”
Gaige didn’t even respond. She just continued glancing through, looking at all of the pictures of her old classmates. Axton leaned over. “So where are you in this book?” He asked, trying to change the subject.
“Oh…I mean…picture day was kind of on a bad day so…”
“Found her.” Zer0 said with a hint of pride, pointing to a gangly redhead with her hair pulled into knots and in an unkempt uniform.
“Wooow,” Axton laughed. “Well if it’s any consolation, you cleaned up nicely before coming to Pandora.”
“She looks fine,” Maya then quipped quickly. “But yeah, you do look a lot better now.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Gaige laughed, her voice breaking slightly as she let the others look through it with interest. She didn’t want to think about it. It was a nice thought, but she wished her father had stopped at the snacks and the ECHO album.
Zer0 pointed at a page full of pictures and flashed a question mark on his visor, pulling back Gaige’s attention. “Oh. That’s the senior superlatives. Classmates vote on who they think has the nicest hair or is most likely to become famous or…OH YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME.”
Gaige ripped the notebook out of Zer0 and Salvador’s hands to flip fervently through the senior superlatives. “Marcy Holloway was voted for more than HALF of these? Are you KIDDING me?” She continued to flip through in a hysterical fervor. “Best smile? Best Personality? Best Dressed? We wear uniforms at our school. Why do we even HAVE that award?”
“Gaige,” Maya started to say to slow her down.
“Most school-spirited? Most athletic? Class clown? Oh PLEASE. Roland has a better sense of humor than that girl.”
“Gaige,” Maya tried again, trying to pull the girl back from the brink of a breakdown.
“OH MY GOD. She got Most likely to Succeed? HOW? Succeed at what? Being a glob of blood-paste? Because yeah. She did a REALLY good job at doing that.”
“No thanks to you,” Salvador said with a laugh, which was met by a gentle kick to the back from Axton.
“Then maybe I should have gotten most likely to succeed. I didn’t even get Most Rebellious or Most Bad Ass or Most Unique. I didn’t even get Most Likely to Invent a Giant Ass-Whupping Robot.”
Maya winced. “That can’t be an actual awar-”
“Some guy named Jason Polaski got it.” Gaige said with a defeated sigh, letting her head rest on Zer0’s shoulder. “No one even said they missed me,” she muttered under breath, so low that only Zer0 could hear it.
After another moment of silence, Gaige pushed forward some of the candy and snacks she received and stood up. “I’m going to go now and uhh…check on Krieg. I bet he wants to go fight skags or something. I’ll uh…enjoy the snacks, okay?”
Everyone exchanged glances amongst each other, wondering exactly what they should do before finally giving it up with a shrug. Everyone except Zer0, who simply watched the girl leave, not a single expression on his helmet.
----
Three days later, Gaige found another book on her worktable, slapped together crudely and tied up with leather string. The pages were splattered in blood and ripped from the magazines and posters found littering the ground. On the front, the words “Pand0ra Yearb00k” were written neatly across the top.
Underneath the words, a picture of all six vault hunters was taped to it, cut out from an old “This Just In” tabloid. They were laughing, and each holding a different body part of a Hyperion Loader. It was a pretty good day, up until the part where Salvador almost got his rib cage ripped out by a thresher. Gaige stared at the picture incredulously, and barely dared to flip the front cover of the book open.
Inside, there were all manner of unintelligible scribbles next to pictures of people all across Pandora, most of which were either taken from Wanted Posters or drawn crudely by what looked to be a drunk three year old. After staring at them for a while, Gaige went to work on reading the messages:
“Shorty, you da best fo’ real. We need to hang sometime, talk about our hair and killin’ stuff. Got some new bombs ya gonna wanna test wit me. They are off the chizzo for RIZZO this time. –Tina”
“Hey Gaige sweetie. Heard you were feeling down. Just stop on by my place sometime and I’ll whip you up something special to cheer you right up. Non-alcoholic, of course. I remember the last time we let you drink. –Moxxi”
“For an eighteen year old girl away from your family, you make good money. You do good work out there. We’re all proud of you. –Marcus”
And the messages went on, one from each person on Pandora that they had met: Scooter (with an unwanted pass at the girl), Zed, Lilith, Mordecai, even Tannis.
“Hey kid. I don’t say it much, but you and your robot are really something. We should install some those tricks into my turret sometime, make her even prettier than she already is. –Your Gorgeous Commando”
Gaige laughed, despite herself. “Yeah right, Axton” She turned the page.
“This is kind of a stupid idea and I still don’t understand it. I’m not really used to having friends, let alone other girls. I like having you around though. And I’m glad you’re one of Us. –Maya”
After that was a small message written in tiny, tight letters. But Gaige couldn’t make any words out under a large splatter of blood. The message was next to Krieg’s picture though. So she could guess what he had to say.
“Hey. Don’t let those pendejos up in Eden get ya down. You could kick all of their asses on your own. And even if you couldn’t, you got your buddy Sal to back ya up.”
After reading them all as best she could, she turned the page again. She wasn’t fighting back her smile at this point. When she got to the next section, it read in the same neat writing from the cover: “Seni0r Superlatives”, all with pictures taped next to them
Best Hair: Tiny Tina
Best Dressed: Maya
Class Clown: Salvador
Most Likely to Star in a Porn Parody Movie: Axton
Best Robot: Zer0 Deathtrap
Most Likely to Get Drunk and have Sex with a Bird: Mordecai
The list went on, with each person getting their own title. Gaige received more than a few, including “Cutest smile” and “Best fake limb” (though she was apparently tied with Hammerlock). The page for “Cutest Couple” had blood splatters on it and a very rough drawing of Maya and Krieg drawn in stick figures. Underneath was a small note apologizing:
Krieg drew the picture / We were afraid to say n0/ Maya d0es n0t kn0w
After reading this, she frowned, realizing that despite having put together the book, Zer0 hadn’t written anything to her. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful or anything, but she couldn’t deny that it was a bit of a disappointment.
Finally, she turned to the last page, where she found a copy of her own wanted poster, but with all the words scribbled out. Instead, written at the top was written: “M0st Likely to Succeed”, with a small note written underneath:
I’m happy y0u’re here / Marcy has n0hing 0n y0u / Y0u will g0 farther