The first shot came from the north side of the settlement.
I was off the porch before the echo of it finished.
Cortana was already running it. "Multiple hostiles, north gate and east approach. At least eight. They were staged outside while the bus had everyone's attention."
Smart. Annoying, but smart. Someone had been keeping an eye on the bus schedule and planned around it, which meant this wasn't random. That was a problem for later. Right now the problem was the two bandits cutting through the east alley toward the supply store.
I pulled the revolver and moved.
I was already pulling material as I went, passive absorption running warm. I came around the corner of the generator shed and caught the first bandit mid-stride, shot him in the shoulder, and he went down and stayed down. The second one spun toward me and I blinked, overshot by a metre like always, came out facing the wrong direction, got my feet under me and turned.
Lilith was standing at the alley entrance.
She had her repeater out and had already put a round through the second bandit while I was sorting out which way I was facing. She looked at the body. She looked at me.
"You live here?" she said.
"Sort of."
"Good enough." Already moving into town.
"Eight minimum. possibly more."
I should keep cortana a secret for now
I had seen Phasewalk in gameplay, described in wikis and lore documents. None of that prepared me for watching it happen three feet away. She was there and then she wasn't, and the air where she had been registered in the Engine before my eyes caught up, a slight breeze, a small dimensional signature that would be overlooked. Cortana had flagged it on the passive sensors when the bus arrived. Feeling it firsthand was different.
I didn't have time to think about it. The north gate had three bandits holding it and one of them had spotted me crossing the courtyard.
The shot clipped the generator shed wall close enough that I felt the air. I got behind the corner and breathed once.
"Gate bandits behind the barriers," Cortana said. "Two rifles, one shotgun. I advice going after Rifles first."
I leaned out and fired twice, not trying to hit anything, just buying movement. Then I blinked to the opposite corner of the courtyard, overshot again, ended up slightly sideways but with a better angle on the shotgun bandit that the rifle pair couldn't cover from their position.
I fired once.
Lilith reappeared behind the rifle pair. The first one didn't see it coming and the second one had about half a second to understand what was happening before she put him through the barrier hard enough that the barrier lost the argument.
That left five somewhere in the settlement.
We found three at Zed's clinic, which was exactly where I had expected some to go. Two at the door, one already inside, and the whole thing resolved itself in close quarters that was loud and ugly and fast. When it was done I was standing outside Zed's door with a ringing ear and Lilith was wiping something off her knuckles and Zed appeared in the doorway holding a wrench.
He looked at the two bodies outside. He looked at us. "You two do that?"
"Between us," Lilith said.
"Make it six." He gestured inside with the wrench, unbothered. "One came through the window. I was a field medic."
I looked at Lilith. She looked at me. Neither of us said anything.
"Right," Zed said, and went back inside.
Two left. Cortana had them on the roof of the supply store on the east side, which explained why I had missed them in the alley — they had gone up instead of through. Smarter than the others, or at least more cautious.
I blinked up, landed badly, one hand catching the roof edge while the I threw a burst of compressed grit at the closer one on reflex . Not shaped. Not precise. Just force, the way the Engine sometimes acted when I needed it. It worked well enough. The bandit went down hard.
The second one ran. Lilith Phasewalked up from the courtyard below and was beside him before he made three steps.
He didn't make a fourth.
I sat on the roof for a moment. The Engine was running warm, the familiar ache along my forearm and ribs that came after it had been working hard.
Lilith pulled herself up onto the roof edge without apparent effort and looked at what was left.
"That all of them?" she said.
"That's all of them," I confirmed through the Echo.
The settlement went quiet in the specific way of a place that had just stopped being loud. Generator running. Wind through the courtyard. A loose piece of metal tapping somewhere. Normal Pandora sounds.
Then from the courtyard, a crash and a spray of sparks that I recognised without looking.
Claptrap had rolled out into the middle of the fighting at some point — trying to help, or at least trying to observe — and caught a stray shot directly in his power coupling. He was against the supply store wall now, eye dark, one arm bent at an angle arms weren't supposed to bend at, a thin thread of smoke from his chassis.
I climbed down from the roof.
Lilith dropped beside me and looked at the downed robot. "Is that normal?"
"For him, not really. For Pandora, yes."
She looked at him for a second longer than I expected, something passing across her face that wasn't quite sympathy but was adjacent to it. Then the full weight of her attention shifted to me, all of it, the way it had been distributed across the settlement for the last few minutes now landing in one place.
"Jay," I said, before she could ask.
"Lilith." Her eyes moved across me the way they had in the alley — not checking out, just cataloguing, the automatic assessment of someone used to reading people fast. "You knew that was coming."
"I had a feeling," I said. "The timing was predictable. bus arrives with someone who looks notable. bandits raid a small town for anything ranging from women to screws"
She held that for a second. It was true as far as it went, which was the useful thing about partial truths — they didn't require maintenance the way full lies did.
"Where'd you learn to fight like that?" she said.
"On the job," I said. "Mostly."
"The teleport thing."
"Yeah."
"That's not a skill you pick up on the job."
"It was a weird job."
She looked at me for another second, noting things, not pushing. Then she turned toward the clinic. "Come on. that Zed guy will want to talk and we should probably let him."
I looked at Claptrap. Dark eye, bent arm, the smoke thinning to nothing.
"I'll fix him tomorrow," I said, to nobody in particular.
I followed Lilith across the courtyard, stepping around the evidence of the last twenty minutes. Zed was already outside again, looking at the mess with the cheerful pragmatism of a man who had made his peace with the world being chaotic a long time ago.
"Well," he said. "Welcome to Fyrestone." He looked at Lilith, then at me, then back at the courtyard. "You two work well together for people who just met."
"We haven't met," Lilith said. "We just shot at the same people."
"On Pandora that's basically the same thing," Zed said. He waved them both inside. "Come on. Got work to talk about and I'd rather do it where things aren't on fire."
Nothing was on fire. I didn't point that out.
Inside, Zed leaned on his counter and looked at us both with the directness of a man who had no particular interest in small talk.
"Nine-Toes," he said. "Bandit lord running out of Skag Gully, about four kilometers northeast. Been raiding this settlement and the farms south of here for the better part of a year. There's a bounty, it's not big but good enough, and I'll add my own credits on top if you bring me confirmation he's dead." He paused. "There's also a CL4P-TP unit in the courtyard that needs fixing before it can give you the inventory upgrade it's supposed to give you. That's worth doing first."
Lilith looked at me. "You said you'd fix it."
"Tomorrow," I said.
"Today," she said. "If it means more carry slots."
I looked at Zed. Zed shrugged with the expression of a man who had no stake in this particular negotiation.
"Fine," I said. "Today."
Lilith almost smiled. It was a small thing, quick, the corner of her mouth doing something before she pulled it back. But it was there.
"Good," she said. "And after that, the bounty board. I want to see what else is available before we commit to anything."
She said it like she was already planning the next three moves, which I was fairly sure she was. Most likely not but who knows but she is smart considering throughout the games she has lead multiple factions.
I had known that going in, from everything I had read and watched and thought about over the years.
Knowing it and seeing it were, as I was finding out about most things here, not the same thing at all.