Author's Note

WARNING WARNING WARNING: This chapter will be VERY heavy in violence and some mild gore. IF YOU DON'T LIKE EITHER OF THESE TWO THINGS DO NOT READ PAST THE SECOND LINE BREAK!!!!

Chapter 8*

Selene’s POV:

As princess Celestia cast her spell on Joel we stood by and watched as he and her both slowly faded out of sight. At first they glowed with a white light before they slowly turned transparent and soon they were gone completely. Luna marked with a pillow where the two were standing when the spell was cast and said that it was so we knew where they would come back. After she did that her horn began to glow with a dark blue aura and soon a big screen of the desert huts that Luna had shown us a minute ago appeared in front of us. In between the three buildings was Joel which must meant the spell worked and nothing went wrong.

“Now all that is left for us to do is sit back and enjoy the show.” Twilight said as she arranged the rest of the seat pillows in front of the screen for everyone to sit down. Jack and I moved ourselves accordingly as took our seats when there was a knock at the front door.

“I got it!” Spike said as he came out of the kitchen and ran up to the door before opening it. “Oh hey guys! What are you doing here?” Just about everyone all looked away from the screen Luna had made to see Fluttershy, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash standing in the front door way.

“Hello Spike, I was hoping I could find Joel here. Applejack said he came by sweet apple acers to get Selene before they came back here. He said he would help me fix the front of my house today after lunch so I figured me and him could go get a bite to eat before getting everything we needed from the town.” Fluttershy said smiling.

“Me and Dash here were having another iron pony contest when Applebloom came and told me Selene was coming here so ah came here to find her to see if everything was okay.” Applejack said before looking past spike to see us all sitting in front of the magical screen Luna created. “Princess Luna? I didn’t know ya was come to visit us.” She said as the three walked in and gave a bow to their princess of the night.

“Apologize but this is no casual visit. We are here on royal duties regarding our new friends here.” She said as she then went on to explain how she and her sister were here to train us. “Joel and our sister are both now in the process of training, thou are welcome to stay and wait for him if thou wishes.” She said looking at Fluttershy.

“Well I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to wait for him here, how long will he be training?” Fluttershy asked as she took a seat in front of the magical screen with the rest of us and Spike brought out more tea.

“Until our sister believes he has made enough progress for one day. Which maybe a while.” Luna joked and Jack and I chuckled.

“Well this I gotta see.” Dash said as she flew over to an empty seat cushion along with AJ who sat next to me before we all looked back to the magical screen.

Joel/Krieg’s POV:

Looking around the vacant desert that surrounded me and the three huts I was standing between I took note that the trade mark Hyperion station in the shape of an ‘H’ hung right in front of what appeared to be a massive moon. I had to admit, this simulation spell was almost dead on the mark with recreating borderlands. Celestia soon came into sight in front of me and aside from being slightly transparent she looked completely normal.

“So how did I do?” She asked as she looked around the world she had created for me to train in.

“I have to admit you pretty much perfectly recreated the world of Pandora, even Krieg thinks so.” I said and she seemed to be pleased to hear that part.

“I see, well then let us start your training.” She said as she stepped up towards me and I straightened up a bit. “We won’t start with combat just yet, for now I want you try and learn how your inventory works.” She said and I gave her a look of confusion. “In the memories we gathered from you, Krieg possess a type of digital screen that shows all the items in his possession. If you can access that, I don’t think I need to tell you what else you can access from that screen.” She said and it finally clicked in my head.

“My skill trees…” I mumbled and she nodded her head, if I could open up my menu I could figure out if I was built the same as in my game back home. “Okay I see your point but I haven’t the first clue on how to open it up.” I said and she smiled at me.

“That is why I am here to help you. Try picturing opening the screen with your thoughts, it’s possible that you may be able to control your skills through simple thought.” She said and I nodded and did as I was told, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes before I pictured the inventory screen opening up in my head. I pictured my load out and my glitched out backpack and the stat box for the currently selected gun. Opening my eyes however showed that nothing had happened.

“It doesn’t seem to be working, I’m picturing it in my head like you said but nothing’s happening.” I said and Celestia frowned.

“I see, perhaps I’m not having you think of it correctly then.” She said which made me confused, how could I be thinking about it wrong? “Joel, in your world how did you control your character in the game?” She asked.

“With a controller, it’s a handheld device with a bunch of different buttons on it. Why?”

“I want you to picture yourself pushing the button that opened up the screen in the game, maybe your skills react the same as your character would in the game.” She said and I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try. Once again I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I imagined holding my controller and pressed the ‘select’ button. “Ah ha!” Celestia exclaimed and my eyes shot open to a massive blue screen with a giant map covering it.

“I can’t believe that actually worked.” I mumbled to myself as I looked over the screen in front of me and took note of the icons at the top. There was the objective screen icon, one for the map, my inventory, skills and my badass rank screen. I soon however found that once the screen was open the idea of pressing buttons on the controller in my head no longer worked. I also found that I was stuck in place, unable to move my legs from where I was standing, but my upper body seemed to be free to move.

The map screen wasn’t out of my reaching distance so I figured it might act like a touch screen so I reached out and tapped the inventory icon. To my delight the screen changed to the inventory screen from the game with all two hundred and fifty seven items out of thirty three still all there. It was at this time I was so happy I had glitched out my game so I could do that. I saw that my flaming infinity pistol was in its usual spot along with my conference call shotgun along with my slag Norfleet rocket launcher and my Attack Veruc rifle. Below my guns were the four item spots for my shield, relic, class mod, and grenade mod. Reaching out I pointed my finger at my Rough Rider shield and it light up and displayed the usual stat box to the left, zero shield capacity twenty percent damage reduction and over a quarter million extra health.

“I think I’m getting the hang of this.” I said as a grin spread across my face behind my mask as I equipped my homing quasar grenade mod and blood of the ancients relic and found that everything was working just like the game only it was now touch screen. After I was satisfied with my load out I tapped on the skills icon and my skill trees opened up. This screen however wasn’t like the game in terms of how thing operated, instead of putting points in skills like in the game this screen just said that the skill was either on or off. In the bottom corner it said I had one skill point to spend and I began looking over my skills, for the most part they were the same, I was built to constantly be able to go badass mutant psycho. Pointing my finger at the hellborn skill tree it moved in front of the other two trees and I looked through it to see where I could spend a skill point. With a grin I pointed at the skill ‘Hellfire Halitosis’ and the switch turned from ‘off’ to ‘on’ and my skill points went to zero. On the left a small box that explained what the skill was told me how to activate it. It said to breath deep when the heat inside could be felt, which sound like Krieg had written the explanation. I looked over all of my other skills, most of which activated automatically when I did damage or caught fire, but the release the beast skill was different from the game. Instead of saying to activate my rampage when I was in low health it only said “Get angry”.

I guess that meant I could go mutant Psycho any time I wanted if I got angry enough. I then tapped on the badass rank icon and was presented with just the screen that told me my rank and the bonuses I had. My rank was still over twenty five thousand like in my game and just about everything was better by ten percent because of my bonuses I had selected. It didn’t have secondary screen like in the game that told me the challenges I had to complete to advance my rank. I finally closed out of menu and found Celestia looking as me, along with a new found heat in my chest.

“Well what did you find out?” She asked and I smirked behind my mask before taking a deep breath, the heat in my chest growing hotter as I did. Looking up towards the sky I blew as hard as I could, flames spraying from my mouth as I did. I blew until the heat in my chest was no longer there and as it ran out so did my flames. Looking back at Celestia I found she had a bit of a worried look on her face as I felt a warmth in my chest start to build up as my fire breath recharged.

“So I can do that now.” I said as I started begin enjoying myself with my new found powers. “I’ve also learned that I don’t have to be hurt to turn into a mutant psycho like in my game. I just have to get angry is what it said for me to do.” I said and Celestia nodded. “I also found out I have all the skills my character had from the game but I can still get more if I earn enough experience. I also have full access to my weapons and gear.” I said as I pulled of one of my grenades from my belt. “Spawn an enemy real quick, a stationary one that won’t fight back if you can.”

“Very well.” She said as he horn glowed and a basic bandit came out from one of the houses and stood in place. Pulling the pin on my grenade I tossed it up in the air and sure enough it homed on the bandit. Once it made contact it created a singularity like in the game before it began zapping the bandit with electricity before finally exploding out into lightning. Though I didn’t catch fire this time, I did start earning stacks of bloodlust as long as the bandit was being damaged. “It seems your equipment works the same here as in the game, but what of your skills?”

“They seem to work the same here too, I just started earning stacks of bloodlust from damaging the bandit and we already know I can catch fire.” I said as I imagined hitting the down arrow button on a controller in my head and my flaming infinity pistol digitally deconstructed and my Norfleet digitally constructed in my hand. “I’ve also learned how to change weapons in the middle of combat.” I said as I then switched to my assault rifle. “Do you think you can spawn some enemies so I can practice fighting like this?”

“Of course, just let me know if things get to tough or if things are too easy for you.” She said as he horn glowed and mixed enemies spawned from the huts and began shooting at me. When they hit me I felt pain where I was hit but the wounds that were left behind quickly sealed up even though my health bar didn’t go back up.

“This is gonna be fun.” I said with a smirk as and pulled out another grenade and tossed it. The grenade did just like before and pulled in a group of bandits before zapping them, causing me to catch fire. I then aimed down my sights and shot the bandits that weren’t being zapped and light them on fire. After just about all of the enemies around me were all taking elemental damage I switched to my Norfleet and jumped back before firing. Despite it being a massive rocket launcher I felt next to no kickback as three massive elemental balls traveled from the barrel and exploding by the bandits, coating them all in slag. Looking at my health I saw that I was getting close too critically low health and smirked as I pulled out my buzz axe and looked over to where Celestia was.

“You wanted see him, WeLl TaKe A gOoD lOoK aT hIm!!!”

Selene’s POV:

“He’s not really going to…” Jack started to say as we watch Joel’s fight from the screen Luna made. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy were all watching with mouths hanging open, whether it was out of horror or amazement I couldn’t tell. The rest of us were relatively calm until Joel pulled out his buzz axe and spoke, his and Krieg’s voice mixed as his body began to shake.

“He is…” I replied to Jack as Joel’s body shook with great force and he became larger. There was an audible crackling as his right arm and shoulder began to shrink and his left began to massive size. By the time his transformation was over Joel must have grown at least fifty percent of his own size and his left arm must have been the size of thick tree trunk.

He gave out a roar that sounded like something that came from a wild beast as he clutched his buzz axe in hand before sprinting straight at the group of bandits. His buzz axe was burning and a stick of dynamite was attached to the side just like in the game, which meant these bandits didn’t stand a chance. No matter how much the bandits shot at him Joel didn’t even flinch, by now he must have massive damage reduction from his stacks and any damage they did do to him he’d get right back after a kill. He brought his axe down on his first victim and cut him clean in half, setting the corpse on fire along with himself.

“BurN bURN BUuuUuURn!” He screamed as he slashed another bandit across the chest and knocked him flat on his ass. Joel brought his foot down on the bandits head with a loud crunch before he charged to his next target. We could only sit in horror as Joel sliced his foes limb from bloody limb, I wasn’t even sure if this was Joel anymore, the actions looked like they were something Krieg would do. I’m pretty sure Fluttershy fainted and Dash had to cover her mouth to keep herself from vomiting at the gore feast going on while AJ just covered her face with her hat.

By the time Joel had gotten down to the last enemy he was completely drenched in blood and guts but he didn’t even seem to care in the slightest. Bandit corpses, or rather what was left of the corpses, laid all over the dessert sand and dessert soaked up the blood like a sponge. The last enemy Celestia had for him was a psycho midget that wasn’t even half the height of Joel’s leg. Joel grabbed him with his massive arm and pinned him to the wall of one of the huts and glared at him before taking in a deep breath. I clenched my eyes shut and looked away from the screen as I heard the unbearable screaming from the midget as he was light on fire.

When the screaming ended and I was finally able to bring myself to look back at the screen I saw Joel towering over the charred midget corpse. Suddenly his body began to shake just like when he transformed and his body contorted and his muscles shrunk in size and his arms returned to the way they were before. When he was finally back to normal he dropped to his knees and immediately began to hold himself as he shook violently.

“No more…” He mumbled. “…No more…No more…” He chanted as his voice began to shake with fear as he rocked himself a little. “N-n-n-no….m-more…” His voice cracked as tears began to stain his mask.