Tim has been here for, like, half an hour before he's got... somebody?... poking at him. Which, like, story of his life, it's almost as though he has a target on his back that says 'harass this guy, he's too polite to tell you to fuck off'. Maybe he just gives off those vibes? Maybe it's his face.
Wait, no, he has the face of an asshole. Never mind.
But now he's got this pink-haired, overly excitable lady up in his face, grabbing at his wrist to look at the device that he uses to spawn the DigiJacks. And a couple of seconds ago she had been interested in his shield, and a few before that, his Oz kit, and he would really rather sacrifice one of those to this weird scientist lady than have her mess around with something Jack made. God, Jack would kill him if something happened to the DigiJacks, he programmed those things himself. And Tim's not even sure if Jack's in this... whole weird he's-not-entirely-convinced-he's-not-dead place to get mad at him to begin with, but he also doesn't want to lose the only backup that he can, you know, really rely on.
"Can you... maybe not? Do that?"
At his refusal, she looks up at him and she's totally giving him whatever her species' version of the Sad Eyes is, he's got a whole lot of big, jewel-colored sad eyes staring up at him right now and his resolve is cracking. He's so bad at this, if he was good at saying 'no' to people, he wouldn't have such a punchable face right now.
"...Please?"
Someone save him.
III. I'm Not Going to Feel Okay For a Very Long Time
There's something scuttling along the path up ahead, something lizard-y and puffy and trailing a leash behind it while it hisses at people's ankles. It's sort of... cute, actually, in a huffy, scaley sort of way, kind of like the lizard equivalent of a grumpy tomcat. Everyone else seems to be giving it a wide berth, but, well, that makes a certain amount of sense. Nobody likes getting bit, right? Tim's used to it, though. He's taken bites from stray cats before when he tried to feed them (and... pet them, despite his better judgement, but cats are his Great Weakness), so this thing can't be any worse than those. It's just a fat, cranky lizard.
Tim walks over, kneels down, and picks the thing right up. It puffs up with a surly noise and he feels little pricklies in his palms, like he's getting poked with tiny pins. People are staring.
"Oh, don't be like that," he says to the lizard, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in this situation, and stands. "Who do you belong... to..."
Everything just distorts, like that one time in university when he ate a bunch of those brownies at a party before he realized that they were special.
"Oh." The trees are all in technicolor and dripping like ice cream cones. The lizard in his hands is now Claptrap, and calls him minion. Tim doesn't like it. "Oh, this is an ordeal now."
He's not going to feel okay for a very long time.
V. I Can't Lie to You About Your Chances, But You Have My Sympathies.
Tim has totally seen a movie that starts out like this.
Or, rather, he saw like the first ten minutes of a movie that starts like this before he got scared and switched to something else. He's not a horror kind of guy, okay? But he almost wishes that he had actually gotten through it-- what was it called again? Extraterrestrial?-- if only so that he would be able to predict which one of them would get eaten by the big nasty first. Knowing his luck, it's him.
But he's also a vault hunter. He killed a lot of bandits on Elpis, and awful nasty space monsters, and... the whatever the fuck the Sentinel was. He's a badass, right? Yeah, he's totally a badass. He can handle this, this can't possibly be worse than, like, the entirety of the Elpis shitshow. There's no way this is worse than a vault, there's been exactly zero tentacles trying to kill him so far. And no bandits jumping out and yelling about meat bicycles and nipple salads. See, Tim? Already better than Elpis!
Timothy Lawrence | Borderlands
"Um?"
Tim has been here for, like, half an hour before he's got... somebody?... poking at him. Which, like, story of his life, it's almost as though he has a target on his back that says 'harass this guy, he's too polite to tell you to fuck off'. Maybe he just gives off those vibes? Maybe it's his face.
Wait, no, he has the face of an asshole. Never mind.
But now he's got this pink-haired, overly excitable lady up in his face, grabbing at his wrist to look at the device that he uses to spawn the DigiJacks. And a couple of seconds ago she had been interested in his shield, and a few before that, his Oz kit, and he would really rather sacrifice one of those to this weird scientist lady than have her mess around with something Jack made. God, Jack would kill him if something happened to the DigiJacks, he programmed those things himself. And Tim's not even sure if Jack's in this... whole weird he's-not-entirely-convinced-he's-not-dead place to get mad at him to begin with, but he also doesn't want to lose the only backup that he can, you know, really rely on.
"Can you... maybe not? Do that?"
At his refusal, she looks up at him and she's totally giving him whatever her species' version of the Sad Eyes is, he's got a whole lot of big, jewel-colored sad eyes staring up at him right now and his resolve is cracking. He's so bad at this, if he was good at saying 'no' to people, he wouldn't have such a punchable face right now.
"...Please?"
Someone save him.
III. I'm Not Going to Feel Okay For a Very Long Time
There's something scuttling along the path up ahead, something lizard-y and puffy and trailing a leash behind it while it hisses at people's ankles. It's sort of... cute, actually, in a huffy, scaley sort of way, kind of like the lizard equivalent of a grumpy tomcat. Everyone else seems to be giving it a wide berth, but, well, that makes a certain amount of sense. Nobody likes getting bit, right? Tim's used to it, though. He's taken bites from stray cats before when he tried to feed them (and... pet them, despite his better judgement, but cats are his Great Weakness), so this thing can't be any worse than those. It's just a fat, cranky lizard.
Tim walks over, kneels down, and picks the thing right up. It puffs up with a surly noise and he feels little pricklies in his palms, like he's getting poked with tiny pins. People are staring.
"Oh, don't be like that," he says to the lizard, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in this situation, and stands. "Who do you belong... to..."
Everything just distorts, like that one time in university when he ate a bunch of those brownies at a party before he realized that they were special.
"Oh." The trees are all in technicolor and dripping like ice cream cones. The lizard in his hands is now Claptrap, and calls him minion. Tim doesn't like it. "Oh, this is an ordeal now."
He's not going to feel okay for a very long time.
V. I Can't Lie to You About Your Chances, But You Have My Sympathies.
Tim has totally seen a movie that starts out like this.
Or, rather, he saw like the first ten minutes of a movie that starts like this before he got scared and switched to something else. He's not a horror kind of guy, okay? But he almost wishes that he had actually gotten through it-- what was it called again? Extraterrestrial?-- if only so that he would be able to predict which one of them would get eaten by the big nasty first. Knowing his luck, it's him.
But he's also a vault hunter. He killed a lot of bandits on Elpis, and awful nasty space monsters, and... the whatever the fuck the Sentinel was. He's a badass, right? Yeah, he's totally a badass. He can handle this, this can't possibly be worse than, like, the entirety of the Elpis shitshow. There's no way this is worse than a vault, there's been exactly zero tentacles trying to kill him so far. And no bandits jumping out and yelling about meat bicycles and nipple salads. See, Tim? Already better than Elpis!
The power of positive thinking or whatever.
"I, uh. I guess I'll go in front?"
Don't worry, he's totally got this.
VI. Deuces, Jacks, and the Man With the Axe
[Wildcard!]