Chapter Text
“On the right!”
The warning came only seconds before a modded Outrunner slammed into the side of their car. The Light Runner, built for speed over control, spun off-course, narrowly avoiding a sand-smoothed boulder bigger than itself.
Gaige gripped the wheel with both hands. Her metal fingers sunk deep into the wheel’s leather covering as she tried desperately to correct the car’s path. They’d forgone the spiked treads in favor of the increased speed of regular tires. She wished now she’d gone with the spikes.
By some miracle, they didn’t flip over.
The other Runner, piloted by two dingy-looking bandits, was back on them in a second. The front of their Runner was modded with huge, sharpened sheets of metal, giving the bumper a fanged underbite. The “teeth” glimmered in the Pandoran sunlight as the car raced toward them, the bandits inside hooting and hollering their usual nonsense.
“Hey!” Moze leaned out the window, helmet bouncing as Gaige stomped on the gas again, driving them right toward the other car. As soon as they were in range, he hefted his Yellowcake rocket launcher onto his shoulder, took aim, and shouted,
“Kiss my fat balls!”
In a matter of seconds, the other Runner had exploded in a pillar of neon yellow radiation.
“Holy shit, dude!” Gaige swung the car around, already taking aim at an armored Technical that was chugging toward them. “Think we can take that one?”
Moze slapped another mag into his launcher and laughed. “Is that seriously a question?”
Gaige grinned, revealing her sharp, jagged teeth. “Not for me.”
The enemy Technical was equipped with two side arms and a barrel launcher on top. The drivers wasted no time launching one of those barrels directly into Gaige’s path. It exploded against the reinforced windshield, spawning spiderweb cracks all across its surface.
“Glad we sprung for the windshield now?” Moze asked with a smirk in his voice.
“Still say it’s slowing us down.” Gaige swerved around another barrel impact. This one exploded just a few feet from them.
“We’d be a lot slower if we were in pieces.”
Moze aimed his Yellowcake out the window, staring down a direct hit of his own. With his finger settled on the trigger, he narrowed his eyes, and then squeezed.
No sooner had the launcher ignited than the opposing Technical hurled another barrel at them. It sailed through the air, loaded to bursting with deadly explosives.
The Yellowcake rocket met the barrel midway between the two vehicles.
Moze barely had time to get out an “Oh fuck-” before both projectiles erupted in a radioactive explosion. The Yellowcake, in its usual fashion, created a massive burst of energy, enough to peel both vehicles clean off the ground and fling them in opposite directions.
They were airborne for a few seconds, just long enough for Moze to glance over and see Gaige looking back at him. Her mouth was clamped tightly shut, as if she were holding in a laugh.
They smashed into the sand roof-first. The Runner slid across the ground until it hit a rock, which flipped it onto its driver’s side.
With the car tipped over, Moze found himself on top of Gaige in the driver’s seat. They scrambled to orient themselves.
“We probably shoulda worn seatbelts,” he murmured as he grabbed the Runner’s smashed passenger window frame and hoisted himself up through it. Once he was on top of the vehicle, he climbed down the front, careful to avoid all the broken glass on the ground from the windows and headlights, and said, “Keep your hands in.”
Gaige peeked at him through the slats in the roof. When he got close, she gave him a little finger wave. He pulled his shoulders back and gave her an overly-formal salute. Through the thick metal plating, he then saw her gag.
With a grunt, he shouldered the Runner. It wobbled, but didn’t tip back over. He tried again, harder the second time. The car rocked, but it was too embedded in the sand to flip.
“Need a hand?”
He glanced up to find Gaige popped out of the passenger window, smiling down at him. The way the sun shined on her hair reminded him of the beacon fires the Corps used to light on remote missions, so no one in the squad ever got lost. A welcome sign of home.
A half-second later, a metal arm bounced off his helmet and clanked to the ground. Moze dutifully picked it up. It reached up and gave him two pats on the head.
Gaige then crashed down beside him with all the grace of a person falling out a window. Once she was on her feet, he handed her her arm back. She snapped it back into place with ease.
When the two of them pushed together, they managed to flip the car back onto its wheels.
“You think it’ll start back up?” Moze said, looking it over. The Runner looked like it had been squished by a giant cartoon mallet.
“It better,” Gaige replied as she climbed in through the shattered driver window. “I do not like losing.”
The Technical they’d gone up against was still standing, though parts of its thick metal armor had been blown off by the explosion. The truck wasn’t moving, though.
Their Light Runner’s engine tried to start, but wouldn’t turn over. “Shit.” Gaige tried it again. The motor was audibly chewing itself up. “Oh, come on!”
Moze nudged her through the window. “Gaige.”
Gaige turned the key a little too hard. The engine squealed, then smoke began leaking out from under the hood.
Moze poked her arm. “Gaige.”
“UGH!” Gaige punched the steering wheel, blasting the horn and scaring off several Rakks in the distance. “If we can’t get the car to start then we’re disqualified.” The last half of her sentence turned upward into a whine. She gave the steering wheel a few more whacks for good measure. “Stupid thing!”
Moze wandered away from the totaled Runner, over toward the Technical. Sure enough, as he got closer, he caught sight of the other driver. He was sitting back in his seat, legs spread, elbow perched casually on the armrest.
His face was completely melted off.
“See?” Moze called over his shoulder while he pointed to their faceless opponent. “This is why I insisted on a windshield.”
Gaige was beside him in a moment. “Are they both dead?”
Moze went around to the passenger side of the truck. Stepping up onto the side bar, he reached in and pulled the other guy out through the window. He was almost as badly burned as the driver, but his face was still mostly intact.
With a gurgle, he grabbed hold of Moze’s arm.
“Aghh! Radiation zombie!” Moze threw him to the ground. The man groaned and reached weakly out to them.
Gaige whacked him in the head with the hammer she always carried. “Die, zombie!”
After enough smacks and kicks from the two of them, the zombie stopped moving.
“That was close,” Gaige breathed. “So c’mon, let’s take their stuff!”
They climbed into the Technical. This one was wide open, no windshield or windows. A pretty stupid design for a vehicle that was meant to be armored, but Moze had long since given up on questioning Pandora’s customs.
“We don’t know the specs on this thing,” Gaige noted as she tried the engine. To both of their delight, it started right up.
“It’s big. And heavy.”
“Solid assessment, my guy.” Gaige ran her fingers over the various buttons. “Seems like a pretty standard Technical...don’t know what this does though.” Her finger hovered over a button with what looked like the top half of a circle on it.
“I wouldn’t press it if you don’t know what it-”
Gaige pushed the button.
Moze half-expected to be ejected from the car or something. But instead, the glove compartment opened, and a tray slid out.
“Oh shit!” Moze picked up the hot, hard-shelled taco that had appeared in front of him. “Glove box taco!”
“I wouldn’t eat that.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Moze said through a mouthful of meat and cheese. “Good, actually.”
“Attention all survivors of Round 2!” Ellie’s voice echoed through The Dust, amplified by mounted loudspeakers all around. “The Pandoran Dust Demolition Derby will continue after a brief intermission. Please assemble your ve-hicles back at the startin’ line in the next ten minutes.” There was a pause, followed by the rustle of papers. “...I’m s’posed to read some bullshit from Marcus, ‘cause he’s supplyin’ the ammo for the cars. Feel free to tune me out while I read this crap.”
In spite of its run-in with a nuclear warhead, the Technical purred like it was fresh off the assembly line. “We probably shoulda been driving one of these right along,” Moze conceded, nibbling on the crunchy shell of his taco.
“It’s so slow, though.” Gaige slumped in the seat and sighed. “I hate driving slow.”
“You wanna trade this round?”
“Hm.” Gaige glanced across the dashboard. “Yeah, I wanna throw barrels at people.”
They shimmied around each other to trade seats. Moze quickly familiarized himself with this particular Technical’s controls. While he was looking them over, he felt the remaining half a taco get plucked out of his hand. From the corner of his eye, he saw Gaige take a juicy bite out of it.
The Technical was slow, but it still got them to the starting point with eight minutes to spare. They rolled up to where Ellie was checking names off. She brightened visibly when she saw the two of them pop out of the truck.
“Oh hey! I was afraid you two didn’t walk away from that crash. Looked pretty nasty.”
“Yeah, our car’s totaled,” Moze said. “Luckily these guys weren’t using theirs anymore.” He jerked a thumb toward the hood, still decorated with splotches of the old driver’s blood.
Ellie got a good laugh out of that. “Resourceful. I like that in a man!”
Gaige licked the last bits of taco grease off her fingers. “So how many contestants are left?” she asked.
Ellie looked around pointedly. Other than the Technical, only three cars had pulled up–a Runner modded with bladed metal arms on either side of it, another Technical, this one painted in neon rainbow colors, and a type of vehicle Moze had never seen before–a low, flat red tank-like thing with two mounted turrets on top and tires nearly as tall as Moze himself.
“Damn,” Gaige whistled. “And we don’t even know anything about the car we’re driving.”
“Hey, we know it has a taco button,” Moze replied. “That’s good enough for me.”
Ellie smiled, but it was heavy. “Y’all can thank my brother Scooter for that,” she said. “He always did have some strange priorities when it came to buildin’ cars.”
Moze had never met Scooter, but he seemed to have been quite beloved among the Raiders. Gaige, however, never had much to say about him. So Moze concluded that he couldn’t really conclude anything about him.
They spent the next eight minutes doing what quick repairs to the Technical that they could–bending the side view mirrors back into shape, wiping blood off the seats with Gaige’s oil rag, that sort of thing.
At one point, Moze caught a glimpse of Gaige in the mirror he was adjusting. She was checking the pressure in one of the rear tires, unaware of Moze’s attention. With one hand, she reached up into her hair and pulled a thin metal tire gauge from somewhere in her pigtails. She then scratched her nose with her free hand, leaving a little dot of grease on its bridge.
He smiled as he watched her work. He nearly forgot he’d been adjusting a mirror at all.
At the ten-minute mark, Ellie’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers again. “All right ladies and gentlefolks, intermission’s over! Time for Round 3...SUDDEN DEATH!!”
Moze furrowed his brow. “Isn’t Sudden Death usually when there’s a tie-”
The neon-painted Technical beside them exploded into a thousand shards of metal and fuel vapor.
Moze grabbed Gaige and dove under their own vehicle. Moments later, several clangs struck the roof and hood of the Technical. A giant tire then crashed to the sand right where Moze and Gaige had been standing.
It was second nature for Moze to use himself as a shield when ducking from shrapnel. Of course, that meant he was now lying on top of Gaige, and from the wheeze she’d let out when he landed, he was pretty sure he’d knocked the wind out of her.
Moze climbed off of her, brushing the sand off her jacket.
“Land mine,” he mumbled.
Gaige squirmed out from under him. “What?”
“Land mine.”
She coughed up a puff of sand. “Why do you keep saying ‘land mine’?”
He blinked down at her. “’Cause it was a land mine.”
Sure enough, once they crawled out from under the Technical, Moze saw the blown-open hole in the ground where the other vehicle had been. Now it was nothing but burning bits of gas-soaked car and body parts.
“Too bad, #7 parked on the land mine.” Ellie’s tone was far more chipper than the situation called for. “Didn’t care much for their paint job, anyway. Much too tacky for this formal ee-vent.”
Moze and Gaige quickly climbed into their vehicle, unspoken fear of a second land mine hastening their step.
“And now we enter the most excitin’ part–the final round!!” Ellie drew closer to the mic. “Our three brave contenders must outwit and outcompete each other, all while survivin’ the terrifying...”
The ground under them began to quake. Moze instinctively floored the Technical in reverse. Just moments after he’d relocated them, the sand they’d been parked on collapsed into a massive sinkhole.
“She’s really not taking it easy on us, is she?” he breathed.
He was answered by a guttural roar. With a shower of sand, a huge, thick worm-like creature burst forth from the ground.
“Oh shit!” Gaige bounced in her seat, eyes sparkling. “It’s a sand worm!”
At its full height, the beast dwarfed even the chunky Technical. It swung its head toward each contestant in turn. It had no eyes that Moze could see, but it somehow knew exactly where they all were.
The beast’s face split open into a wide mouth ringed with a half-dozen rows of teeth. Six long, thin tongues snaked out from it in all directions.
“This here’s Jasper! Sumbitch tried to eat me when I was recoverin’ a sand skiff to digitize for the Catch-a-Ride. Thought he was kinda cute, in a vermin-like way. And he keeps the looters out when I ain’t around!”
The worm dove back down into the sand and disappeared. It left a gaping hole that would wreck any car that fell into it. That hole was soon joined by another, then another, and then another.
“Just pretend he ain’t there,” Ellie said, a devious chuckle in her voice.
It was tough to focus on the opposition when holes kept opening in the ground–something Moze assumed was the intention behind having a sand worm involved in the derby– but his curiosity was piqued by the tank-like vehicle that was setting up a stretch away from them. He’d never seen anything like it. It was heavily armored, yet sleek, like a hybrid of a Technical and a sports car. Its blood-red paint glittered in the sunlight. A fancy white letter A was painted on each side.
The Light Runner they were up against was no joke, either. In addition to the jagged blades on either side of the car, it was also reinforced with a layer of armor, and had a modified rocket booster affixed to its back end. The pair driving that car were clear COV stragglers, painted up in blood and covered in cult tattoos. The front of the car bore an ornate blood symbol that Moze could only assume was related to all that garbage, too.
“All righty competitors, get ready!” Ellie waited a few seconds, then blew an air horn. “Aaaand go kill each other!”
Moze’s first goal was to get away from the sand worm. All it would take was getting sucked into one of its sand pits and they’d be done for. Gaige looked around pointedly as he drove them far away from the competition, but all it took was one eruption of dirt right behind them, and she understood.
The COV Runner was as bloodthirsty as Moze had come to expect from their ilk. They were immediately on the offensive, chasing down Moze and Gaige with enough speed to easily overtake the tanky truck.
“These guys are right on our ass,” Gaige said, her head stuck partway out the window.
“Keep your head in,” Moze warned.
“Why? You had your-”
A rocket seared the air inches from her face. Gaige fell backwards into her seat.
“Okay, good point.”
The Dust was wide open enough that Moze knew he could lead them around for a bit. The Light Runner was faster, but he could use that to his advantage.
Using the Technical’s spiked tires, he made a tight left turn. The Runner whizzed past them. Of course, they attempted to turn as well, but the sudden change in direction ripped the car right off the ground, flipping it over just as their Runner had done. It bounced on its roof, then on its side. Then it landed right on its wheels again, and was back on Gaige and Moze in a second.
“Shit.” Moze ducked as a series of machine gun bullets whistled past him. “You wanna barrel ‘em?”
“I’ve been waiting for that question all my life.” Gaige scrambled up into the turret without another word.
A few seconds later, a barrel exploded off the Runner’s hood, sending them swerving. They corrected quickly, though, and the Runner’s passenger fired off a series of rockets that all nailed the Technical, punching through its thick armor.
Moze’s curses were lost beneath both the grinding roar of car engines and now the whistle of the wind through the holes in their vehicle. He briefly considered why he had even chosen to enter this crazy derby. Then he remembered it was because Gaige had entered, and she’d never do anything dangerous alone so long as he was alive to do it with her.
The Runner activated its modded booster, shooting right up beside them. Its thick blades began to dig into the side of the Technical, slicing through its rollbars.
There was no way Gaige could hit them this close without blowing the two of them up in the process. After mentally sorting through his backpack for a gun that wouldn’t kill them all, he eventually whipped out his P.A.T. Mk. II.
“P.A.T.,” he said, turning the gun over in his hand, “can you get these guys off us?”
P.A.T. sprang to life. “I will kill for you, Papa.”
It flew out Moze’s window and right into the Runner’s. The Runner started to swerve again. The moment it was far enough away from them, Gaige launched another barrel. It hit dead-on, sending the other car spinning out.
“Good shot!” Moze called up to her.
Gaige blew him a kiss.
The COV Runner was down, but not out, and it picked right back up even after taking the explosive blast. With its impressive speed, it caught up to them in no time.
The driver pulled right up beside Moze. His wingman leaned out the passenger window. The next thing to emerge from the car was a rocket launcher.
“Gaige!” Moze ducked as a rocket shot in his window. It exploded inside, and the energy from the blast sent him right through the non-existent windshield. He bounced off the hood, his short nails unable to garner any sort of grip on the metal.
Gaige dropped into the driver’s seat without a second thought. She tried to brake, but the other competitors were right on her, aiming another shot in the window.
“Don’t stop!” Moze yelled, clawing desperately at the hood. His voice was all but lost in the wind. “I’ll climb back in!”
The COV Runner swerved into them, driving its blade into the side of the Technical. The impact knocked Moze sideways, leaving him clinging to the side of the car. Through the passenger window he could see Gaige struggling to maintain hold of the steering wheel as the Technical rocked and began to fill with metal-cutting smoke.
The ground under them shook. The vibrations jiggled Moze’s fingers, loosening his grip until he lost hold completely. His fingers slipped off, and he peeled off the side of the vehicle.
As he was flailing to grab on to any part of the car while he sailed by it, an ethereal blue fog blossomed in his vision. The fog soon revealed an all-too-familiar young woman’s face, with long, wispy black hair partially concealing one of her glowing blue eyes.
She tossed that hair out of her face and offered Moze a smug smile. “It would seem you’re about to die a gory vehicular death,” she said in the peppy voice of an AI assistant. “Would you like me to assist?”
“Would kinda rather die,” Moze said as he blessedly grabbed hold of a handle on the back of the truck. His arm practically dislocated from the inertia of sailing through the air, but it didn’t, and therefore he was fine. Ish.
“Hm. Okay!” She faded from his vision.
“Wait, I didn’t mean it!” With only one hand gripping the truck, Moze was flapping in the breeze like a flag of meat and bones. “Angel!”
Gaige had to swing wide to avoid another slam from the Runner. Moze used the change in direction to swing closer to the truck, grabbing the back of it with his other hand and landing his feet on the rear bumper.
In that position, he was no longer actively in danger of falling off. Of course, he couldn’t exactly stay in that position if he wanted to avoid getting turned to Swiss cheese by a machine gun.
Thus began a long and desperate shimmy across the side of the truck, to the passenger window. The Technical had enough rough spots and peeled armor to grab onto, so traversing it wasn’t too hard. He made it to the passenger door just in time to avoid a spray of bullets inches from his body.
The window was small, but he could get through it at the right angle. Of course, the right angle meant he had to release his foothold on the side of the truck, grab hold of the rollbars, and swing his way in.
And of course, the moment they saw him do that, the COV rammed their Runner full force from behind. The car lurched forward, and Moze’s grip slipped off the dusty bars. Almost in slow motion, he closed his fingers around empty air. The Technical bombed forward without him. And then he was being carried by the wind.
“SHIIIIIIT!”
As he was tumbling backward through the air, he suddenly recalled a time when Vladof had been experimenting with adding boosters on their mechs. Achieving short-distance flight would have come at the expense of about fifty percent of the mechs’ armor weight, and about thirty percent of its weapon loadout. At the time, Moze had told anyone who’d listen that he couldn’t care less about flying.
As it turned out, he still felt that way.
He kept waiting for the crunch as he hit the dirt like a crumpled soda can, but it never happened. After what felt like a lifetime with his eyes squeezed shut, he finally eased them open again.
There were two metal hands wedged under his armpits, carrying him just above the ground.
Moze breathed a sigh of relief. “Holy shit. Thanks, man.”
Deathtrap purred.
The COV Runner was driving in circles around Gaige, laying down fire from all angles. Gaige was trying to aim the Technical’s guns at them, but accuracy wasn’t her strong suit to begin with, and even less so while she was trying to drive.
Deathtrap brought the two of them right up to the passenger window. Moze swung his legs, trying to get his feet in the window. With Deathtrap’s help, he was able to get close enough for the robot to push him in through the window and back into the passenger seat.
“So glad you’re okay,” Gaige breathed, still trying in vain to fend off their attackers. “Sorry I couldn’t stop.”
“It’s cool. Wouldn’t have wanted us both to die.” With clumsy synergy, they traded seats. Gaige’s aim immediately improved, punching holes in the COV Runner with a thousand machine gun bullets.
Deathtrap wasn’t fast enough to keep up with them, so he instead grabbed hold of the COV Runner and started digging his claws into it, pulling its already-flimsy armor right off.
The driver slammed the brakes to send DT flying. Unlike Moze, of course, he had a hover propulsion system, so he was fine. He caught himself in mid-air, then deconstructed, returning to Gaige’s arm as a wisp of light and data.
The Technical couldn’t stop nearly as abruptly. Gaige used the distance between the cars to pelt them with another barrel. This time, with the armor torn into, the Runner started to smolder.
“They’re going down,” Moze said. “Try to hit the engine.”
The next barrel missed, exploding harmlessly in the sand. “Damn.” Gaige launched another one. It missed by a wide berth as well. “Shit!”
“You got this,” Moze called up to her. “Take a minute if you need to.”
Her fingers unclenched from the turret. She sucked in a deep breath, then gave Moze a little nod.
The next barrel hit them square on the hood. The Runner’s driver screamed out a curse as the car burst into flames.
The fire that seeped out of the hood began to melt away the metal. The blood painted on it started to run as it re-liquefied in the intense heat. What had started as an ornate symbol soon became little more than smears and drips down the side of the vehicle.
Gaige had that familiar gleam in her eye as she dropped down into the passenger seat again. “Let’s finish them off,” she breathed, her fingernails growing longer and sharper. Her cybernetic eye was glowing bright red, the pupil forming the shape of a skull. When she grinned at Moze, he saw every one of her crooked, pointy teeth.
Moze pushed his helmet up out of his eyes. “You go do your thing,” he said. “I’ll be here if we need to make a quick getaway.”
Gaige leaped out of the car like a pouncing saurian. She landed on their hood, and with one smooth swipe of her claws, she swung around to the car’s side, grabbed the passenger door, and ripped it right off. The man inside shimmied as far back as he could in the Runner’s tiny seat. Gaige reached in and clenched his throat in her metal fingers.
Moze tugged at his shirt collar.
Gaige’s raw strength had always been impressive, but since she and Moze had started working out together regularly, she was truly something to behold. Her shoulder flexed as she lifted the man out of the car and held him up off the ground. Her other hand trembled up to the elbow.
“Worshipper of false gods...” the man choked out. Gaige tightened her fingers. “I’ll gladly die to join Them in Their mighty kingdom!”
“’Kay.” Gaige plunged her claws into his chest, ripping downward until Moze could see the sunlight through him. The man kicked and writhed. When he opened his mouth to scream, blood poured out from between his lips.
With a giggle, Gaige slammed him down into the dirt and tore him apart like a skag with a chew toy.
The Runner’s driver could have fled. Gaige was quite busy, and Moze was just sitting there watching her, trying not to look like the lovestruck fool he was. But the driver stayed, and in fact, he got out of the car and came around to meet Gaige.
Like many COV, he wore a mask painted with blood. He was shirtless, and his pants were stained and baggy, likely looted off a dead body. He wielded an axe that looked hand-forged, ending in a mounted sawblade.
“Though Her mortal form has departed, the God-Queen's spirit is eternal.” His voice was gruff and hoarse from a lifetime of shouting. “Your poor soul, stranded in darkness, could never comprehend the depths of Her love.”
Gaige rose slowly from the man she’d dismembered. Globs of thick blood dripped from the tips of her claws. Her cybernetic eye fixed crosshairs directly on the surviving man.
He raised his axe high. Gaige locked right on to it. The moment he swung it down, she jumped back, cackling as he drove his blade down into his friend’s carcass instead.
“Heretic!” With a wet splatter, he yanked the axe out of his friend and swung it like a baseball bat at Gaige. She raised her metal arm. The axe struck the metal and bounced right off. “I’ll make your teeth into a necklace for our next ceremony!”
“Considering the amount of cavities I definitely have, you probably wouldn’t even need to drill holes in them!” She laughed as she dodged another blow. “Not gonna happen, though. Sorry.”
He surprised her with a quick forward thrust. The sawblade mounted on the axe’s head jabbed into her stomach, knocking her backwards.
Moze was out of the car in a second.
Caught off guard by the blow, Gaige clutched her stomach and coughed wetly. Blood began to bloom into view through her shirt.
“Lucky shot,” she muttered.
“Not luck,” the man boasted. “A divine hand guides me.”
He swung again, this time downward, a blow hard enough to crack a skull. Gaige tried to leap back, but that meant the blade was instead coming down directly on her face.
Or rather, it would have, if the bandit hadn’t been tackled first.
Wielding every bit of his 49kg, Moze slammed into the guy, knocking him down into the dust. The man recovered inhumanly fast. Leaping up again, he grabbed Moze by the throat with thick, calloused fingers.
“You,” he growled, throwing Moze to the ground. “Slayer of the God-Queen's mortal vessel. An eternity of judgment awaits you.”
“An eternity being tortured by Tyreen Calypso?” Moze tilted his head, then nodded. “Could be kinda hot, sure.”
“BLASPHEMY!” The man drove his axe into Moze’s throat, the sawblade’s sharp tips piercing the soft flesh of his neck. Before he could drive it any deeper, Moze kicked him in the stomach, knocking him off. With the precious few seconds that granted him, Moze scrambled to his feet and scurried away.
“Blasphemer,” the man uttered. He pointed his bloody axe their way. “You know nothing of the love of a god!”
Soft fingers patted a bandage onto the poke marks in his throat. He slid his eyes over just long enough to get a glimpse of Gaige beside him. She was bleeding worse than he was, but wouldn’t feel it much until her Anarchy wore off.
“I’ve got gauze in my bag,” he said quickly, nodding over his shoulder.
“I’m good.” She twitched a little. “I like a good bleed every once in a while. Gets the adrenaline going.”
Before he could comment on how he’d never met someone with her outlook who was still alive, the ground shook again.
The man raised his other arm high. “You see? Judgment has come!” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “The God-Queen is with us still. O mighty Goddess, swaddle me in Your loving arms!”
In an eruption of sand, Jasper the sand worm shot up out of the ground, sending the man flying into the air. The beast whipped its neck around, opened its mighty jaws, and snapped him up before he hit the ground.
As soon as the sandy dust settled, Moze saw the worm’s scaly lips peel back, and its multi-pronged tongue run over its bloodied teeth. It then sank back into the ground, apparently sated for the moment.
“Damn,” Moze said. “Guess Tyreen was a real one after all!”
“Ungh.”
His momentary victory rush was squelched the moment he heard Gaige groan. With a small, weak cough, she sank to one knee, her palms grasping at the sand.
“A good bleed, huh?” Moze grabbed his roll of gauze from his bag and quickly tore a strip off. He lifted Gaige’s shirt carefully, exposing her pale stomach. It wore a gnarly gash across it.
Even in her weakened state, Gaige managed a delirious little giggle. “I need a medic,” she said as he gently patched up her wound. “I need a strong, handsome medic to have his way with me. I mean heal me.”
Moze snorted, but he kept his concentration on closing up her injury.
The moment she was patched up, Gaige sprang to her feet again, as if nothing had happened. “All right! That’s one car down. Now we just need to find that other one.”
The mysterious red tank-car had been suspiciously absent during their battle with the COV Runner. It was a smart strategy–wait for the other competitors to weaken each other, then close in for the kill. Clearly this was not their first rodeo.
Moze noticed as he hopped back in the Technical that the bandages Gaige had stuck on his throat had a smiling orange cartoon horse on it.
“Did you seriously patch a sawblade wound with a My Pretty Ponies bandage?” he asked as he shut the door behind him.
Gaige nodded eagerly. “It’s Applejack.”
“Applejack?”
She gazed pensively out the window. “You remind me of Applejack,” she said.
Moze started the Technical. It complained, but eventually grumbled to life. The spiked wheels grabbed hold of the sand, still shifting from the sand worm’s sudden appearance, and began to pull them forward.
“I don’t even see that other car,” Gaige said. Her head was entirely out the window again. “Maybe they got killed by the sand worm?”
“Or maybe they’re lying in wait for us.” Moze kept his eyes forward, alert for any sudden movements in their path.
Gaige eventually pulled her head in. “Maybe we should wait for them, too.”
“Staying in one place isn’t a good idea. That fucking worm’ll get us.”
“Mm. You’re right.” Gaige stared out the window some more. The Pandoran sunlight glittered off her left arm and kissed her freckled face. Moze allowed himself a half-second to take his eyes off the road and steal a glimpse at her.
“So I’m Applejack?” he said.
Gaige shrugged. “I mean, out of the Mane Six, yeah.”
Even though he had no idea what any of it meant, he felt compelled to ask, “Which one are you?”
Gaige lit up, obviously waiting for that very question. “Well, I used to think I was Twilight. Underappreciated genius of my time.” She tapped her metal fingers against the armrest between them. “But as my brain’s gotten weirder, I think I’m more like Pinkie now.”
Moze nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I could see that.”
She whipped around. “Wait, you know–?!” Her eyes went narrow. “...You’re just bullshitting.”
“No, no. I’m an expert on Pretty Little Pony. There’s Applejack, and Twilight, and, uh...”
Gaige looked at him flatly. “Pinkie Pie.”
“Yeah, Pinkie Pie. See? I’m a pro.”
Gaige folded her arms. “I’m gonna make you watch it someday. All two-hundred and twenty-one episodes. Plus the movie.”
“Long as I get to watch it with you.”
“Of course. How else would you get all the fun behind-the-scenes facts? I can tell you when and how every single Mane Six voice actor died.”
“Oh hell yeah, what’s a pretty prancing pony show without constant reminders of our own mortality?”
Speaking of their own mortality, Moze was beginning to feel a quake underground again. “Shit.”
There was no outrunning that monstrosity. It was either going to kill them or it wasn’t.
The quakes grew stronger, until Moze could barely hold on to the wheel. Eventually, when he suspected the moment was right, he slammed on the brakes. Gaige went flying into the dashboard.
About three seconds later, the worm surfaced right in front of them. “Oh shit!” Gaige grabbed hold of the armrest. “Good call braking!”
Moze floored it in reverse. Of course, “flooring it” on sand meant they didn’t go anywhere very fast. The engine screamed as the tires tried to dig themselves out of the pit they’d just created.
Jasper the sand worm turned their way, apparently drawn by the noise. It lowered its head to study the car, flexing its fanged mouthparts hungrily.
“Why did Ellie wanna keep this thing again?” Gaige whispered.
“Probably does a damn good job keeping out intruders.” Moze ducked low in his seat. Gaige followed his lead, though her pigtails still peeked out over the dashboard.
He wasn’t sure the worm could eat the Technical. Size-wise, it probably could, but would it choose to? Are you stupid? he reminded himself. This is Pandora. The wildlife here eats live grenades for snacks.
The two of them ducked down by the pedals. Despite their present mortal peril, Gaige was still giggling.
Moze brushed his hand against hers. She returned the gesture, though more with the force of a whack than a gentle brush.
“This is really exciting,” she whispered.
The worm leaned down and sniffed their hood. Its tongue forked out again, and it touched each of its endings to the scorching metal to taste it.
Moze ducked as low as he could and tried to hold perfectly still. Beside him, Gaige was still shaking. He knew it wasn’t with fear.
The massive worm brought its head around to the driver’s side door, studying that as well. Moze held his breath.
Bits of tongue flicked in through the driver side window, feeling all around inside the car. Moze pulled as far away from it as he could. That involved him leaning into Gaige, who leaned into him right back, grinning.
The worm’s tongue flicked right near Moze’s left arm. Moze felt himself break out in sweat. So close to Gaige, he had a passing thought that he probably should have worn deodorant.
Maybe it was his sweaty, no-deodorant, testosterone-fueled stink, or maybe he just didn’t look that appetizing, because the worm eventually pulled back and dug itself back into the sand.
Moze clutched his heart, finally allowing himself to breathe.
Gaige popped back up to watch its tail slither down into the hole.
“Think that just shaved a couple years off my life,” Moze said as he hesitantly joined her.
Once the creature had fully disappeared, Gaige looked to Moze.
“Would you still like me if I was a worm?” she asked.
Moze stared at her for a few long seconds.
Gaige’s eyes went big and round.
“Would you be trying to eat me?” he said.
She shrugged. “If you’re into that.”
He stroked the peach fuzz on his chin. “I’d be willing to give it a try.”
His response, of course, earned him a laugh from Gaige, which was his intention. He swore her laughter could heal wounds and bring even the most deadened hearts back to life. When he heard that giggling and saw that crooked smile, he felt like everything in his fucked-up life might just be all right after all.
His moment of smitten contemplation was broken by a bolt of blue light across the sky. It was so bright that, for a moment, everything else under Pandora’s harsh sun looked dark as night.
“Whoa!” Gaige stared directly at it without flinching. “That’s a solid-state fiber laser! But a huge one!”
Moze turned to where the laser had fired from.
Sitting a stretch away from them, its multiple weapons all aimed directly at them, was the red tank-car. Its engine idled loudly, like the deep growl of a Vault monster.
“Oh, I’d love to know the wattage on that,” Gaige was still rambling from behind him. “Or what element it’s mixed with in the gain medium...and such a huge blast radius, too! I wonder how you’d have to arrange the cladding to achieve total internal reflection that focuses but in such a wide diameter...”
Moze stared at the vehicle. It had no visible windshield or windows, and every inch of it was reinforced with thick armor. Mounted to the back were two jet boosters as well. Not only was this thing a tank, it was a tank that could probably outrun them.
With no other choice, Moze stepped on the gas. The Technical lurched forward, screaming as it tried to race over shifting sand.
Another bolt of laser-lightning launched at them, this one hitting dead on. Every bit of electricity from the impact was sucked into Moze’s Transformer shield, not currently deployed but mounted on his hip in standby mode.
“Man, I love this thing.” Moze gave it a loving little tap with his fingertips while it sparked and glowed a vivid blue.
Of course, it didn’t take the other competitor long to realize the laser wasn’t effective. They soon switched to their turrets instead, and started zooming after Moze and Gaige with both guns blazing.
The inside of the Technical was flooded with the pingpingpingping of machine gun rounds lodging themselves in the car’s metal body. Gaige took control of their own weaponry, swapping fire with the tank. It was, of course, entirely useless. Bullets, and even explosive barrels apparently, bounced off the armored vehicle with minimal impact.
“Man, what the fuck is that thing?” Moze said as he attempted to lead their opponent in a sloppy circle, passing under the cliff edges at the far side of The Dust.
“I have no idea, but I want their laser tech.” Gaige had to shout over the roaring engines and bullet spray. She used her free hand to pull her ECHO device from her pocket. The first bump Moze hit, it fell from her fingers and hit the floor with a smack.
Moze dared to take one hand off the wheel long enough to grab the ECHO. He held down the side button meant for talking to the ECHO’s AI.
“Can we get some intel about this thing that’s chasing us down?” he asked.
Once he’d dropped the ECHO back down to the passenger seat, it began to glow. Within moments, the screen had been taken over by a blinding blue light. That blue light soon shaped itself into a holographic person.
“Ah, a Lancer!” A tiny projection of Tannis stood on top of the glowing screen, rocking from the balls of her feet to her toes and back. Even the size of an action figure, Moze could see the mad delight on her translucent little face. “I haven’t seen one of those in years. I would have assumed they’d been scrapped for parts. I guess nothing on this junkyard planet is ever truly gone!”
“Do you know how we can destroy it?” His question was punctuated by another hail of bullets burying themselves in the Technical.
Tannis tapped her chin. “Well, a vehicle that heavily armored must be quick to overheat. Perhaps if you have a fire weapon you could, as they say, ‘smoke out’ the operators inside.”
“On it.” Moze unzipped his backpack and fished around until he pulled out his Hellwalker. “Where should I aim?”
Tannis made a discontented little sound as his driving caused her to shift across the seat. “You’re asking me for tactical advice? Have you suffered any head trauma lately with that ill-fitting helmet of yours?”
“Excuse me for assuming you know everything. You know a lot of things.”
Tannis pulled herself up tall. “Yes, yes I do.” She eyed his battered old Jakobs shotgun with a curl to her lips. “Is that the best incendiary weapon you’ve got?”
“It’s all I need, Doc.”
The tank-car, apparently called a Lancer, pulled up beside them. With the Technical’s spiked tires, and the Lancer’s heavy booster, the latter was able to keep pace with ease.
Strangely, even though they had a clear shot at Moze through the driver’s side window, they didn’t shoot into it. They didn’t even ram the car, which would have done significant damage given how heavy the Lancer was. They were still shooting the Technical, but the body of it. Not anywhere that really mattered.
A barrel of explosives hit one of the Lancer’s machine guns. The Lancer swerved away from them.
“Nice one,” Moze called up to Gaige. “Can you get the other turret?”
She tried, but the Lancer was, for some reason, driving away from them now.
A game of chase. They want us to get distracted.
He hadn’t forgotten the environmental threat slithering just beneath their tires.
Moze stayed on their tail. If that worm was going to get one of them, it was going to get both of them. He’d make sure of that.
A few more barrels exploded off the back of the Lancer, carving indents and burn marks across its armored surface. The Lancer shot backward at them with its one functional gun. Their bullets sprayed wildly, with aim almost as poor as Gaige’s.
“They seem to be panicking,” Moze said. “That, or this is all an act.”
“I doubt they’re that panicked,” Gaige replied. “They made it this far.”
Gaige's ECHO device had gone dark, indicating Tannis had lost interest in their life-or-death face-off. It bounced around on the seat as Moze took to steering with one hand, the other trying to wield his Hellwalker out the window.
The Lancer ignited their boosters, blazing fire and smoke right in Moze’s face. Hacking, he fired off a blind shot toward them. The bullets spread into their signature pentagram shape, burning an outline into the Lancer’s armor. A few bullets hit the boosters themselves and exploded in the fire, causing some localized damage to the Lancer’s body.
“Badass,” Gaige said.
“I know.” Moze fired off a few more rounds. The Lancer swerved away again, but not before one of its boosters began to melt the damaged metal around it.
“I’m thinking Corrosive might work better than fire here,” Moze called. “But I didn’t bring any corrosive weapons.”
Gaige pulled a pistol from the holster on her waist and tossed it to him. Her beloved Hornet.
With the splash damage the Hornet dealt, it wouldn’t take long to start eating away the Lancer’s armor. Moze fired a few rounds. The acidic bullets pierced the old vehicle’s thick shell, hissing as they began to chew through the metal.
“Oh yeah, that thing’s going down,” Moze said.
Then the Lancer dropped something. A small, thick disc of metal. It landed in the sand, right where Moze and Gaige would be in a few seconds.
Moze could recognize a mine anywhere.
“Hold on!” he yelled as he was already swerving. Gaige went tumbling from the turret seat, saved only by the grip of her metal hand from flying right over the top of the vehicle.
As abrupt as his turn was, it wasn’t enough to avoid grazing the mine. Moze could hear his pulse pounding in his ears as the front left tire bumped the side of the mine.
A half-second later, the Technical was blown right off the ground. It went airborne for a few heart-stopping seconds. Moze grabbed as tight a hold as he could to anything that would keep him from falling out and getting crushed when the truck landed.
They hit the sand on the truck’s side, scraping across the dirt and kicking up a storm of dust. They slid right into a deeply-embedded rock that flipped the Technical right over it. With a loud, metallic crunch, the Technical landed right on its roof.
Moze shook his head, trying to correct his spinning vision. Once he’d recovered, his eyes took instantly to searching for that familiar fiery orange and spiky denim.
He appeared to be alone in the vehicle.
“Gaige?” He crawled across the roof-turned-floor, looking for splatters of blood, or anything else that could hint where she’d ended up. He found nothing.
The Lancer circled the overturned Technical. At that point, they were the least of his concerns. “Gaige!” Moze clambered out the window. The Lancer opened fire. Four spidery metal arms forked out from his backpack, digistructing Iron Bear around him. The mech took the bullets like always while Moze stomped through the dust, following the path they’d engraved into it with their slide.
In the distance, he could see something lying half-buried in the shifting sand. “No.” He pushed Iron Bear as fast as it could go, hardly caring that the Lancer was still laying down fire on him. “Oh no. Oh fuck.”
Iron Bear faltered as a bullet struck one of its leg joints just right. “Fuck!” Moze whipped around to face the Lancer. “Fuck it!” he shouted through Bear’s external comm system. “I surrender! I don’t care about this stupid thing if she’s hurt.”
His boots hit the sand hard as he ejected from Iron Bear, leaving the mech standing guard. To his slight surprise, the Lancer did not pursue or shoot at him. It just sat there, engine idling.
The thing he’d spotted was completely buried in sand by the time he got to it. Even so, he could clearly make her out.
Gaige was lying on her stomach. Her head was wrenched sideways, her legs were bent wrong, and her organic arm was flopped behind her, over her back.
“Gaige!” Moze dropped to his knees and started brushing the sand off her. When she didn’t respond, he flipped her right over and cradled her with one arm, the other checking for a pulse. He found one rather quickly.
Gaige coughed, puffing a bit of sand in Moze’s face. “Ngh...”
Moze gave her a light shake. “You okay? Talk to me.”
Though she was alive, she was limp in his arms. The spikes on the back of her jacket stabbed into his thighs. He didn’t dare shift her position.
Gaige’s eyes pulled open for just a moment, heavy and tired.
“Ytterbium-doped,” she mumbled.
Moze tilted his head. “What?”
Gaige forced her eyes open again, staring past him. “The laser. I used to get yb-doped and thulium-doped fiber lasers mixed up all the time. I had to commit it to memory that gain-switched, Ytterbium-doped lasers are the ones that have the highest peak power to wattage.” She laughed breathily. “So embarrassing.”
Moze hugged her tight to his chest.
The Lancer rolled up beside them. The heat from its engine washed over the two of them in suffocating waves.
Gaige coughed again, another puff of sand that settled on Moze’s jacket. “Shit,” she murmured. “We still gotta beat these guys!”
Moze looked away. “Actually I, uh, surrendered.”
“You what??”
The Lancer’s roof split in half, folding down on either side to present the operators inside. Two people in head-to-toe red armor jumped up out of their seats.
Through a heavily-filtered mask, the driver said,
“Yeah! You surrendered! That means we win!” The two of them hi-fived each other, then locked arms and twisted them around, some sort of stupid-looking secret handshake.
Moze squinted at them. Out of context, it took him a minute to realize he recognized those armored suits. Once they climbed out of the Lancer, though, it hit him.
He gingerly released Gaige from his grip, making sure she was able to stand on her own.
“Are you guys from Atlas?” he asked.
The two soldiers paused their celebration. They exchanged a glance. Then the driver said, “What’s it to you, Pandoran?”
“I’m not Pandoran.” Moze folded his arms, then nodded at them. “You know Lorelei?”
The other man, shorter and stockier than the first, brightened. “Of course we-”
The first man elbowed him in the gut. “That’s classified information. We don’t give out intel like that to civilians.”
“Do I look like a civilian to you?” Moze gestured to the array of medals he still wore patched to his jacket. “And Lorelei’s one of my best friends. We fought Maliwan together last year.”
The Atlas soldiers leaned in and whispered to each other. The shorter man pulled back first. Moze could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “Wait, are you a Vault Hunter?”
Moze smirked. “Yep. Name’s Moze. And I’ve opened a whole bunch of Vaults, actually.”
“Cooool.”
The taller man stepped between the two of them. “We’re here because our boss wanted us to try to recover some old Atlas tech from this planet. We found this old Lancer, and we were supposed to bring it right back to Rhys, but...”
“It looked so badass,” the other soldier said. “We just had to test it out.”
“Although now it’s kinda banged up. Rhys is gonna be mad.”
“Nah man, we’ll tell him it was like this when we found it. It’s Pandora! He’ll believe it.”
“I can’t believe you surrendered!” Gaige grabbed onto Moze’s arm with her titanium fingers. “We were so close!”
“I was worried about you!” He picked her fingers off him. “I thought you might’ve been killed getting thrown out of the truck like that!”
“So you thought I gave my life for us to win this competition, and you still surrendered??”
“I’m sorry, should I have left you lying in the dirt while I chased these guys down?”
“Yes!”
Moze shook his head. “Sorry to say that’s never gonna happen. I don’t leave people I care about behind.”
“Ugh. You're such a damn hero.” She reached up and pushed his helmet down over his eyes.
“Looks like we might have ourselves a winner, folks!” Ellie declared. “Not exactly what I expected, but that’s the fun of these things, ain’t it?”
“Nice to meet you, Vault Hunter,” one of the Atlas soldiers said as they climbed back into their vehicle. “Sorry we almost killed your girlfriend.”
“Oh, she’s not my...” He trailed off, casting an uncertain glance over at the girl beside him. Gaige avoided his eyes.
They drove off before he could think of how to finish his sentence. The wind was uncharacteristically calm in that moment, leaving nothing but a thick silence between them.
“I really wanted to win,” Gaige mumbled.
“Man, I’m sorry.” Moze reached partway out to her, but his arm withered back down to his side before he touched her. “I was worried. I was...I was real fuckin’ scared.”
“Why?” Gaige angled herself away from him. “Not like I’m your girlfriend or anything.”
“Well you’re not! Just ‘cause we’ve been on a few dates...”
He could tell he was saying everything wrong. When Gaige finally turned back to him, she leveled him with eyes red and glimmering, maybe from the sand, or maybe something else. It was hard to tell.
“We got second place?” he said, his attempt to reassure botched by his own unconvinced high note at the end.
“Second place.” She let out a long breath. “Of course. I never win anything.”
He brushed some of the sand off the collar of her jacket for her. “Well, maybe for second place you get taken out for a nice meal by a guy who thinks you’re always a winner.”
She sniffled, her lips curling just the tiniest bit upward. “I’m trying to be mad at you here.”
He leaned in to give her a peck on the cheek. She turned so his lips met hers instead.
The ground began to quiver under their feet.
“Oh shit.” Gaige skittered back a step. “Let’s save the gooey stuff for a safe place.”
Moze held out his hand. After a theatrical moment of consideration, Gaige took it, and they hurried back to Ellie’s garage before their consolation prize became a trip through a sand worm’s digestive system.
“I can’t believe you two didn’t win!” Ellie had to shout over the buffer as she ran it over Gaige’s left arm, working out the array of micro scratches from the sand. “Y’all have gone soft since ya started gettin' all lovey-dovey with each other, I swear.”
“Is being concerned for your teammate’s safety considered ‘soft’ now?” Moze sat on top of an old car in the garage, watching as Gaige got her cyborg spa treatment.
Ellie tutted and shook her head, leaving no room for argument. She then set the buffer down and headed over to the work bench, where a bottle of heavy metal polish sat waiting. “And why won’t you call her yer girlfriend already?” she asked over her shoulder as she plucked up the bottle. “You’re breakin’ my poor girl’s heart over here. Bein’ a typical man.”
Even though he was being scolded, he found himself swinging his legs a little at the admonishment.
“I dunno,” he said, “we’ve only been on a couple dates. I don’t like rushing into things.”
Ellie spilled some polish onto a rag and brought it over. Even from a distance, the acrid smell was eye-watering. “Miss Gaige,” she said as she took Gaige’s arm in one hand and the rag in the other, “you have my permission to kick his ass any time you want.”
Gaige giggled as Ellie rubbed the polish in. “Thanks. It’s not like that, though. I think he’s just scared I’m gonna die on him.”
Moze crossed his legs, feeling very small under Ellie’s stare.
To his surprise, Ellie eventually softened a bit. “Aw, well, that’s a real concern ‘round these parts. Hard to get too attached to anyone.” The metal of Gaige’s arm squeaked as Ellie rubbed it good and shiny. “There. Ain’t that lookin’ pretty.”
Gaige studied her arm with a satisfied smile. “Thanks. It’s hard to do it with one hand.”
“Happy to help, girlfriend.”
When Ellie was through with it, Moze could see himself reflected in Gaige’s arm. He was still all scratched up and dirt-caked, and he still had the silly little Apple Pie pony bandage affixed to his throat.
Truthfully, he had felt like a loser long before surrendering in the derby.
Gaige was also a mess of dirt, blood, and split ends, but she wore it so much better. She looked cute, and mischievous, and a little dangerous, and unbelievably attractive to a muck-loving soldier like himself. When he saw her then, he thought back to the first time he’d laid eyes on her–the way she’d turned around, panting, digistruct claws out, soaked in blood and winter slush. He remembered the piles of bodies at her feet as she stepped casually over them, pulled a pencil from her hair, and declared, Oh! You’re the wedding guests!
He’d thought she was cute then. After going through the hell of a Vault monster’s insides, destroying an eldritch cult, and spending a night warming up together in one of The Lodge’s guest bedrooms, he was enamored in a way he hadn’t allowed himself since leaving home.
Gaige loved violence, something he was fine with, but she also loved danger, something he found himself hesitating to match after everyone he’d had ripped from him. Watching her intentionally put herself in mortal peril over and over, and sitting beside her while she drew up blueprints for how she wanted to chop the rest of her limbs off and replace herself bit by bit with metal, and hearing her scream as she tested her own pain tolerance in preparation of those eventual amputations...
Letting himself fall for someone like that felt like borrowing trouble.
He slid down the windshield of the old car he’d been sitting on, then hopped off and took his place at Gaige’s side. She was admiring her reflection in her arm. Again he thought of her babbling late in the night about how she’d developed a method that would rip her last organic eye out nice and clean, so she could implant the cybernetic before she passed out from the pain. He thought of her resting the sharp end of a cleaver against the skin of her right arm, eyes sparkling as she watched the blood begin to ooze out. It doesn’t even hurt that much! Cutting this thing off’ll be a cinch. He thought of her saying she enjoyed “a good bleed”.
She was incredible, almost unbelievable. He was afraid she was the kind of person who blazed bright like a bonfire, then burned herself right to ashes. No one that remarkable could live in this hellish world for too long.
Gaige set her metal hand in his palm. Moze closed his fingers around hers.
“So,” she said, “can I claim that second-place dinner prize now?”
He wanted to kiss every inch of her scraped-up, dirt-stained face while she was here with him.
Instead, he simply gave her hand a squeeze. “Anywhere you want.”