I decided to recheck the skill menu.
With the prechecked physical or survivor+ i mentally labelled I could finally glance through the rest with the fourth skill tree just called 'unnamed' catching my eye and it was something.
Unnamed was weird and it took that with pride with the first tier of skills 'something wrong', 'flickering eye' and 'unplace' each one being also weird with one making me more intimidating to those i want and flickering eye increasing perception through cosmic stuff and unplace just straight messing with everyone's ability to recall information about me.
I shelved the thoughts aside and closed the panel and rest my eyes keeping awareness through my ears more so .
The evening was quiet in the way of places that are never entirely safe but had reached a temporary equilibrium. Claptrap had exhausted his repertoire of entrance announcements and was now spinning in a loose circle on the other side of the courtyard, humming something tuneless. The people of Fyrestone moved through their routines; evening maintenance, securing things that needed securing, the small rituals of people who had learned to treat each day's survival as a logistical project.
I sat with my back to a section of wall that gave him sightlines in two directions and watched.
Cortana materialized in audio form; her projection kept small to conserve the Echo device's power. "You should eat something."
"I know. I've been absorbing trace minerals through the Engine all day."
"That is not a substitute for food."
"I'm aware, Cortana." He'd found a ration bar in the bottom of the bag — dense, tasteless, probably years old. He'd eaten half of it an hour ago and saved the rest. "I'll check out the inner town tomorrow."
"Tomorrow is the day the Vault Hunters arrive." A pause. Not hesitation — consideration. "How much of that do you want to interact with?"
I've been thinking about this.
The honest answer was I wanted to interact with all of it, because the academic version of him that had spent years with this universe was deeply invested in every detail. The practical answer was I was going to be under levelled, under-armed, still healing, and had exactly the kind of meta-knowledge advantage that I could very easily throw away by being too eager not to forget I die permanently.
"I follow canon," I said. "For now. I don't get in front of events I don't need to be in front of. I don't disrupt mission chains before I'm capable of handling the consequences. I know what's coming if nothing i do changes anything drastically."
Cortana processed that. "A disciplined choice."
"A survival choice." I leaned my head and back against the wall. "When I'm stronger I can choose be less careful. But sticking to canon helps me out alot in the long run."
"Agreed." A beat. "The Siren is arriving tomorrow, Lilith. She's significant."
"She's significant to the whole story, yeah and one of the few beings that lives very long in this worlds timeline. As for the others? They are still important and need to live through this first plot"
"I meant her power profile." Cortana's tone was precise, analytical, but with something underneath it — the quality of someone relaying information that means more to them than they're explicitly stating. "I detected unusual dimensional signatures when I was scanning for environmental hazards earlier. Something at the edge of what my sensors can classify. I think there's more than one Siren active in the region already."
Jay looked up. "Two Sirens in the same place."
"Working theory."
"Well," I said. "That's interesting."
He slept in the storage room he'd claimed — three walls solid, one side open to the courtyard, the Engine maintaining its background hum. My health was at seventy-one percent when I closed my eyes. My ammo was low. My revolver was still in burst mode and I have plans for that.
Claptrap rolled past the doorway twice, paused both times to verify I was present, and moved on without comment. I chose to interpret that as companionable rather than surveillance.
Cortana dimmed into monitoring mode.
Tomorrow, the story would start.
Taking the chance, I slept.
I didn't mean to fall asleep properly. Just resting my eyes, staying aware through sound, the usual routine of sleeping somewhere you can't fully trust. But somewhere between the generator hum and Claptrap's off key humming I had gone out proper.
What woke me was the gunshot.
Not close. Maybe three buildings over, but on a quiet night with nothing else moving that was close enough. I was on my feet before I was fully awake, revolver in hand, back against the wall next to the open side of the storage room.
Another shot. Then shouting.
Cortana came online without me asking. "Multiple hostiles entering the settlement from the north gate. I count at least seven, possibly more. Armed, moving fast, not being careful about noise."
"Bandits."
"Almost certainly. This looks coordinated, not opportunistic."
I checked the revolver. Six rounds, which was going to be a problem if there were seven or more of them. The Ruin Engine was already pulling in ambient material, the usual background itch of it running warm in my chest. Not much to work with but enough for a few shaped projectiles if I needed them.
"Where's Claptrap?"
Cortana hesitated for half a second, which from her was significant. "Courtyard. He rolled out when the first shot fired."
I moved to the edge of the doorway and looked out.
The courtyard had two bandits in it already, both heading toward Zed's clinic with the purposeful stride of people who had done this before and knew where the supplies were kept. One had a shotgun. The other had a pipe that had been modified in ways a pipe shouldn't be modified.
No sign of Claptrap.
Then from across the courtyard, loud and completely without self-preservation instinct: "HEY! THIS IS A SETTLEMENT! SETTLEMENTS HAVE RULES! RULE ONE: NO SHOOTING!"
I closed my eyes briefly.
The bandit with the shotgun turned toward the sound and fired without really aiming, more to shut it up than anything else. There was a crash, a spark, and then silence, which was somehow worse than the noise.
"Claptrap is down," Cortana said. "Non-functional. The shot hit his power coupling."
I was already moving.
The courtyard wasn't big. Two buildings on each side, the generator shed at the far end, Zed's clinic on the left. I came out of the storage room at a low angle, absorbed a chunk of wall material on the move, and put a shaped spike into the pipe-weapon bandit's knee before he clocked I was there.
He went down loud.
The shotgun bandit turned. I blinked, misjudged by half a metre like always, came out sideways facing the wrong direction, took a wild step and got my footing back just in time to duck the follow-up shot that took a chunk out of the doorframe behind me.
I fired twice. One hit, one didn't. The bandit staggered back into the clinic wall and slid down it, not dead but done.
More shouting from the north side of the settlement.
I pressed against the wall and did a quick count. Two down in the courtyard. Cortana had said seven plus. That left at least five somewhere in the narrow streets between the buildings, probably splitting up to hit multiple points at once.
"Where are the others?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
"Two heading toward the east supply stores. Two more at the north gate, looks like they're holding it open for someone. One unaccounted for."
The unaccounted for one was going to be the problem, I already knew.
I moved through the courtyard, keeping low, the Engine running warm and pulling in material as I went. Claptrap was against the far wall, eye dark, one arm bent wrong, a thin curl of smoke coming from his chassis. Not exploded, just shut down hard. I didn't have time to fix it.
"Later," I told him, which felt stupid to say to a powered-down robot but also seemed right.
The east alley was narrow enough that two people couldn't walk side by side. I reached the mouth of it and could hear the two bandits before I saw them, one of them already working at the lock on the supply store door while the other watched the street.
The watching one saw me the same moment I saw him.
He raised his weapon. I blasted grit at his face. It wasn't meant to be lethal but it was, the mix of sand and random junk shredded his facial tissue grinding the skin of like a sandbelt.
The one at the lock had a knife out by the time I turned. He was faster than I expected, closed the distance before I could bring the revolver up and got inside my reach, which was bad.
What followed was ungraceful. We both went into the wall. I got an elbow somewhere useful, he got a knee somewhere that wasn't. The Engine reacted without my input, pulling material from the alley floor and pushing it outward in a rough expanding bubble that separated us by force and cost me a spike of nausea from the uncontrolled output.
He hit the opposite wall. Didn't get up quickly.
I stood there for a second breathing and let the nausea pass.
"You have two remaining," Cortana said. "North gate. And the unaccounted one just appeared on nearby tech, he's on the roof of the generator shed."
Roof. Of course.
The north gate pair turned out to be easier than expected. They were holding the gate but not looking inward, watching the road like they expected someone or something to come through it, and I caught them from behind in a narrow angle they hadn't covered. Two shots, two down. I used the last two rounds in the cylinder on that and reloaded with the spare six I had in my jacket pocket, which put me back to a full cylinder and nothing else.
Twelve rounds total remaining. I needed to find more ammunition before morning.
The roof bandit was the problem I had been waiting to become a problem. He'd had time to get a position, had a decent line of sight on most of the courtyard, and by the time I worked around to where I could see him he had seen me first.
The first shot punched through the air next to my ear. I blinked without thinking, overshot again, ended up on top of the generator shed roof two metres from him instead of behind him like I had intended.
We looked at each other.
He swung the weapon toward me.
I grabbed his wrist with one hand and pulled the Engine outward through my palm with the other, absorbing the gun in a single directed burst that left him holding nothing. He stared at his empty hand. I put him down with a straightforward headbutt that hurt both of us but mostly him.
He rolled off the generator shed roof and hit the courtyard with a thud.
I sat on the roof for a moment and checked my arm. the Engine had been running hot enough during that last twenty minutes that I could feel a hint of use on my stamina. Not notable exactly, just a warm awareness along my forearm and ribs where it sat closest to the surface.
"Settlement is clear," Cortana said. "Seven hostiles, all down or incapacitated. No civilian casualties. Minor structural damage to two buildings." A pause. "And Claptrap."
"I know about Claptrap."
I climbed down from the shed roof and crossed the courtyard. Zed had appeared in his clinic doorway at some point during the last fight, standing there in his night gear holding a wrench and looking at the two bandits near his wall.
"You did that?" he said.
"Most of it."
He looked at me for a long moment with the particular expression of a man revising his initial assessment of something. Then he looked at Claptrap. "I can't fix the robot. Not my area."
"I can fix the robot," I said. "Tomorrow. After I sleep."
Zed nodded slowly. "Right. Well." He looked at the courtyard full of unconscious bandits. "I'll, uh. Get some rope." which he left with that and a small amount of giggling
I went back to the storage room. Sat down. My hands were shaking a bit, which was the adrenaline working out of my system, normal, not a problem. The HUD put my health at sixty-eight percent, which was down from seventy-one before the fight. I had taken a few hits through the environmental absorption running uncontrolled.
Twelve rounds left. Less than ideal going into tomorrow.
I leaned my head back against the wall and thought about what Cortana had said, that the bandits holding the north gate had been watching the road like they were waiting for something. Not like they were the main force. Like they were holding a door open for one.
I filed that away.
Claptrap's eye was still dark across the courtyard, one arm bent wrong, smoke long since stopped curling.
"Tomorrow," I told myself again.
I meant it this time.