The 0ne in search of zer0

Chapter 1

Borderlands fanfic chapter 1 – separate ways.

After the defeat of handsome jack, all the vault hunters headed out to Moxxi’s bar. Axton and Salvador were sitting on the stools, Salvador being drunk as hell put his arm on Axtons shoulder and said “you know what amigo, we need did it, you and me took on the world!” Axton laughed at his statement and Salvador fell off the stool knocking out the empty Rakk-Ale bottles on the counter and laughing while on the ground.

Mordecai sat in one of the booths with Brick and Marcus. They were having a drinking contest. It was obvious by the pile of empty Rakk-Ale bottles on Mordecai’s side that he was winning. Until Brick finally passed out and tumbles on to the ground taking the entire table with him.

Gaige sat at one of the booths with Tiny TIna and krieg drinking orange juice from TIna's tea set. Kreig's fingers crushes one of her tea cups and Tina screams and rants on about eating babies and Gaige laughes hard enough to pass out. 

Behind the counter, Moxxi, Maya and Lilith all laughed at Brick passing out. Moxxi looks at Maya eyeing Axton. “Hey girl, if you want him they just talk to him” said Moxxi. Maya looked at Moxxi and said “no way, I’m not even his type.”  Lilith giggled and said “oh so who’s your type, Mr. Mystery over there” she exclaimed while pointing towards a dark corner where Zer0 sat in, only visible by the glow of his sword. Maya chuckled. “I… I don’t know about him, even though we are partners, I don’t know him that much.” No one knows him that much. Zero is always on his own. Always in his silence.

As Maya had those thoughts she saw zero glitch out and disappeared.

In Zer0’s room

Zero entered his room behind moxxi’s bar underground. He held up his hand and pulled on a string that turned on two dim light bulbs that barely illuminated the room.  From the glow zero sat at his desk and took off his helmet.  As he lifted his helmet off his head, the helmet hissed releasing air that was pressurized inside and long white hair falls on his face.  He faces the helmet towards him and looks at himself in the reflection of the faceplate. He stared at his blue eyes being covered by his long white bangs. 

He sighed and stood up. He walked over to the wall behind him and hung the helmet on a hook with the rest of the other 15 helmets he had. He stared at them deeply.  “Why must it be me/ who must carry these thoughts/I should not bother.”  Zero never liked to bunk with the others at the HQ. He preferred his own place even though Lilith offered him the HQ room for free.  He liked his privacy. His moderately sized room with a single bed, a work bench, a small closet nears the bench and his wall of helmets.  No windows. The only thing that illuminated his room was the little bulbs which flickered as if they were about to run out of power.  Zero walked over to the closet and opened it.  Then he let out a hologram that walked over to the bed and lay down and looked as it was asleep. Then zero got inside the closet and closed it and watched hi hologram sleep through the slits of the closet doors.

He always did this, for he didn’t trust the security of the city. It’s not that the security is bad, it’s just in case even his team mates come inside to reveal his identity in his sleep. He prefers it this way. He always prefers to be careful with his identity.

Back at moxxi’s bar

 Maya walked outside to get away from the stench of Rakk-ale. She looked off to the side and saw a slit of dim light coming from what looked to be an open hatch. Maya had never seen this before. She always thought that there was nothing under all that pile of trash next to moxxi’s bar. She walked to it and lifted it up. It creaked as it opened fully revealing a set of stairs. Maya had second thoughts about walking down the dark stairs. But she shook it off and dematerialized her Maliwan fire pistol. Step by step she walked downstairs, silently on her tippy tows.  Maya remembers when zero taught her how to silently move around. She had almost mastered the technique. She had already entered the room and felt an ominous feel to it. She faced the wall of helmets and at that instant she knew who lived here. It wasn’t for a few seconds before her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could see the body of a man sleeping on a bed below the helmets.  Maya looked at him and thought “this is my chance… my chance to see his face.”  She walked towards the sleeping zero.

Then suddenly she felt an arm wrap around her neck and pull her back, not gripping enough to chock her, only hard enough to hold her.  Then her face glows as a sharp blue blade is placed under her chin. She struggles to speak but manages to let out a “z…ze..zero? is… is it you? The zero instantly recognized her voice and let her go and went back into the very dark corner to cover his face.  He put his hand on his face to cover his identity. Maya stumbled back and fell on the dusty ground.  She could only see his legs being illuminated and… is eyes. His eyes glowed blue in the darkness. Then the hologram disappeared and Maya gasped as she realized that it wasn’t really zero sleeping. Then almost instantly as the hologram disappeared, his eyes stopped glowing and now were blending with the darkness. 

Maya stood up and and walked forward to zero, almost a foot from him, she was the only person who ever got this close to zero. The only thought she was thinking about is that zero was helmet-less. She wanted to just pull him in to the light. But she was also thinking about his eyes. Why did they glow blue. 

She had only ever seen a glow like that when… no it cant be.  Maya put her hand on zero’s chest and the words left her lips before she could thinkof what she said

                                                            “Zer0….. what..are you?...”